Did prayer to saints and angels develop in a way comparable to the development of the canon?

When the historical evidence against a Roman Catholic belief is brought up, a common Catholic response is to compare the development of that belief to the development of the canon of scripture or Trinitarianism. Here's something I recently posted in a YouTube thread about the subject. YouTube has had a problem for years with some people's posts sometimes not appearing. Many of my posts don't appear after I submit them, and I still haven't found a way to determine which posts will go through and which won't. The one below didn't go up. Here's a link to the YouTube comment I was responding to. You can read that comment and the surrounding context if you want more information about what led up to my response below.

A Lot Of Problems With The Assumption Of Mary

Cameron Bertuzzi just interviewed Gavin Ortlund about the Assumption of Mary. It's a good overview of the number, variety, and depth of problems with the claim that Mary was bodily assumed.

Some of the comments below the video bring up comparisons to sola scriptura, rejection of baptismal regeneration, or whatever other belief Catholics or those who sympathize with them allege to be comparable to or worse than an assumption of Mary. We have posts in our archives about those issues (e.g., here). And see here regarding the false reasoning about doctrinal development that often accompanies those kinds of comments.

In the video and in the comments below it, there are occasional references to how one or more of the documents referring to an assumption of Mary date or might date prior to the fourth century. Gavin addresses the subject in the video, but I want to add some other points. The New Testament authors address various false beliefs that existed in their day. Earliness is one of the factors we take into account when evaluating something, but it isn't the only factor. Gavin gave many examples of figures Catholics (and others) consider orthodox who rejected the assumption of Mary or discussed issues significantly relevant to an assumption of Mary without mentioning that she was assumed (e.g., church fathers referring to figures who were assumed into heaven without including Mary). Even if we were to accept the earliest dating being proposed for the earliest document to mention an assumption of Mary, we'd still have to take into account that the belief is coming from such a dubious source, it seems to be reflecting a view only held by a small minority at the time, and belief in an assumption seems to be absent and sometimes even contradicted in such a larger number and variety of sources who are of a more credible nature. Arguing for an earlier date for some highly problematic heretical or apocryphal documents doesn't do much to advance the argument for an assumption of Mary. As Gavin explains in the video, the problems with the belief are of such a nature that assigning an earlier date to something like a Gnostic document mentioning the assumption wouldn't do much to improve the Catholic argument. Remember, Catholicism has dogmatized the Assumption of Mary, and the Catholic Church claims to be the one true church founded by Christ, which allegedly is infallible and has maintained all apostolic teaching throughout church history. Catholics claim Mary is God's greatest creation, superior to all angels and other humans, the mother of the church, and so on. Pope Pius XII claimed that Mary's assumption is a belief "based on the Sacred Writings, which is thoroughly rooted in the minds of the faithful, which has been approved in ecclesiastical worship from the most remote times" (Munificentissimus Deus, 41). He refers to the assumption as "a matter of such great moment and of such importance" (11) and claims that the arguments for the doctrine are so good that it "seems impossible" (38) to avoid the conclusion that Mary was bodily assumed.

How could a papacy have been referred to?

I've explained, in my last post and elsewhere, why passages like Matthew 16, Luke 22, and John 21 don't imply a papacy. If a papacy were to be derived from such passages, it would have to be derived implicitly rather than explicitly. There is no explicit reference to a papacy in any of the earliest sources. That raises the question of what we should expect a reference to a papacy to look like.

Principles For Evaluating Development Of Doctrine

The subject of doctrinal development often comes up in discussions with Roman Catholics, but it's relevant to other contexts as well. We've written a lot about it over the years, and you can find many relevant posts in our archives. I want to outline several of the principles we should keep in mind as we think about the topic:

- Different individuals and groups make different claims about the beliefs under consideration, and they bear different burdens of proof accordingly. Catholics can't try to have the benefits of making higher claims about the alleged history of their doctrines without also paying the cost of bearing a higher burden of proof. The two go together. See the second-to-last paragraph of the post here regarding what Roman Catholicism has claimed about the history of the assumption of Mary or the opening paragraphs here regarding the papacy, for example.

Midcourse corrections

A stock Catholic objection to Protestant theology is that you can't find Protestant distinctives in pre-Reformation church history. For instance, you can't find sola scriptura or sola fide in the church fathers. Suppose we grant that contention for the sake of argument. How does that disqualify Protestant theology?

i) Truth isn't determined by taking a headcount. The correct interpretation isn't determined by taking a headcount. Many or most folks believe much or most of what they do due to social conditioning, which is one reason appeal to consensus is a highly unreliable guide to truth. 

ii) Popular opinion carries no presumption that the opinion is true. For that matter, mere scholarly opinion carries no presumption that the opinion is true. An interpretation is only as good as the logic and evidence adduced in support of the interpretation. Reasons rather than opinions are what merits consideration.

iii) Whether or not people find an argument convincing is irrelevant to whether it's a good argument. Atheists find arguments for Christianity unconvincing. That, in itself, doesn't invalidate the arguments for Christianity. Most Jews are not persuaded by the messianic claims of Jesus. But that, in itself, doesn't make the messiahship of Jesus doubtful. 

iv) It's also the case, in the history of ideas, that an erroneous idea may not appear to be erroneous at the outset. Or it might seem to be a minor error. We may only come to recognize the error, or appreciate the magnitude of the error, as it works out in practice. As people begin to build a political or theological edifice on that seminal, seemingly innocuous idea. Marxism is appealing on paper because it's utopian. The irony is the chasm between how idealistic Marxism is on paper and how inhumane it is in reality. 

Likewise, certain theological ideas involving the status of Mary or the nature of justification (to mention two examples) may have unforeseen consequences until those undergo further development in theory and practice. At that juncture it's easier to recognize where things got off to a bad start. 

The Catholic doctrine of justification gets bundled with other things like Purgatory, indulgences, and the treasury of merit. Likewise, Catholic Mariology begins to usurp the prerogatives of Jesus. Consider, too, the role of Marian apparitions in popular Catholic piety.  

Seminal theological errors have a snowball effect over time. At that point Protestants may bypass long stretches of historical theology and go back to biblical revelation because the development of dogma went offtrack, and that's easier to see in hindsight. That's a stimulus to reexamine traditional Catholic interpretations of Scripture. Something went wrong early on, requiring a midcourse correction. For Catholic apologists to complain that these are theological innovations misses the point. If Catholic traditions are a source of error, they need to be replaced. Like installing a new car part to replace a defective part. Redesigning the defective car part. If Catholic theology suffers from design flaws, and that becomes increasingly evident after the fact, then fixing them after the fact is necessary. And repairs will take place at a later stage in church history because the historical process exposes the design flaws. 

Newman never converted to Catholicism

Newman went deep into church history and discovered that he couldn't find Roman Catholicism in the first few centuries of the church, so he redefined Catholicism by inventing the theory of development. He didn't convert to Catholicism; rather, he converted Catholicism to himself.

Retroengineering the development of doctrine

Catholic apologists like to retroengineer the development of doctrine. With the benefit of hindsight, they retrace later positions and policies back to seminal ideas in the church fathers. 

Sometimes that's legitimate, but it an easily be an illusion. That's because it's often possible for the same ideas to branch out in divergent directions. So it's unpredictable. In themselves, the same ideas may have no orientation to a particular line of evolution. 

To take a comparison, consider the character of Batman, Superman, or Dracula. In later creative hands, these are open to a wide range of alternative developments that could not be foreseen or intended by the creators of the character. 

If you know how an idea began, and you stand at a certain point down the line, it may seem more inevitable that it was going to unfold that way. But suppose you didn't know how the character of Batman or Superman or Dracula originated. If all you had to go by were their current permutations, how successful would you be at recovering the Ur-character, with his original history? 

Sin against ecology

There is no such thing as a "sin against ecology"

There are sins that have a particular impact on the ecology and environment

There are sinful ideas whose impact on the environment is better understood over time.

Nobody actually reads the modern catechism.

Wait and breathe

— Kevin Tierney (@CatholicSmark) November 16, 2019

True, there's no such thing as a sin against ecology. However, Rome has been inventing sins for centuries, so this is just the latest in a string of new, hitherto unsuspected sins. Rome first invents a nonexistent sin, then invents the nonexistent authority to absolve the nonexistent sin. The perfect racket. That's been a thriving business, so why stop now?

Even making allowance for hyperbole, surely the CCC is for many observance Catholics the go-to reference work on official Catholic teaching. 

RadTrads are the new cafeteria Catholics

Another alternative is a conservatism that simply resolves the apparent conflict between tradition and papal power in favor of the latter, submitting its private judgment to papal authority in 19th-century style — even if that submission requires accepting shifts on sex, marriage, celibacy and other issues that look awfully like the sort of liberal Protestantism that the 19th-century popes opposed. This would be a conservatism of structure more than doctrine, as suggested by the title of a website that champions its approach: “Where Peter Is.” But it would still need, for its long-term coherence, an account of how doctrine can and cannot change beyond just papal fiat. So it, too, awaits clarifications that this papacy has conspicuously not supplied.

The plain fact is, a pope like Francis was not supposed to happen. Everybody knows that there have been bad popes — most notoriously, the popes of the Renaissance, in particular Alexander VI Borgia — but it has also been the case that however personally corrupt they might have been, they did not change Catholic doctrine. No one argues seriously that Francis is personally corrupt, but there is certainly reason to believe that he is either changing doctrine, either de facto or indirectly, by virtue of changing the disciplines of the Church, and allowing disfavored doctrines to wither on the vine.

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/what-about-the-protestant-catholics/

No hard feelings, right?

One of my objections to the doctrine of development is that it's so flippant. To take a few examples:

1. The medieval papacy authorized the use of torture on "heretics":

http://www.documentacatholicaomnia.eu/01p/1252-05-15,_SS_Innocentius_IV,_Bulla_%27Ad_Extirpanda%27,_EN.pdf

That's admitted in a roundabout way in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, but Rome now repudiates the traditional policy:

2298 In times past, cruel practices were commonly used by legitimate governments to maintain law and order, often without protest from the Pastors of the Church, who themselves adopted in their own tribunals the prescriptions of Roman law concerning torture. Regrettable as these facts are, the Church always taught the duty of clemency and mercy. She forbade clerics to shed blood. In recent times it has become evident that these cruel practices were neither necessary for public order, nor in conformity with the legitimate rights of the human person. On the contrary, these practices led to ones even more degrading. It is necessary to work for their abolition. We must pray for the victims and their tormentors.

But what good does that do for all the victims of papal-sanctioned torture? How does that restore all the victims who died under papal-sanctioned torture–or survived, but where maimed, mutilated, and/or disabled, living in chronic pain or psychologically broken from the effects of torture? 

We changed our mind. Sorry about that. No hard feelings, right?

2. For centuries, grieving parents were told that unbaptized babies went to Limbo rather than heaven. While that's better than hell, it also means the parents will be permanently separated from their deceased children. Even if the parents are ultimately saved, they occupy a different place than their children. 

When you consider the number of miscarriages alone, that's a huge number of unbaptized babies who died in the womb. Not to mention unbaptized dying newborns and toddlers. 

That centuries-old pastoral counseling has now been mothballed:

http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/cti_documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20070419_un-baptised-infants_en.html

But what good does that do for all the bereaved who were indoctrinated in the traditional teaching? It's too late for them. 

We changed our mind. Sorry about that. No hard feelings, right?

3. In traditional Catholic teaching, suicides were presumptively damned, denied a Catholic funeral service and consecrated burial in a Catholic churchyard. For instance:

Q. 1274. What sin is it to destroy one's own life, or commit suicide, as this act is called?

A. It is a mortal sin to destroy one's own life or commit suicide, as this act is called, and persons who willfully and knowingly commit such an act die in a state of mortal sin and are deprived of Christian burial.

http://www.baltimore-catechism.com/lesson33.htm

Until just a generation ago and for many centuries before, controversy over homilies delivered at the Catholic funerals of suicides was unheard of for the simple reason that Church law forbade all funerals for suicides, so, no funeral homilies on suicide could have been preached. See 1917 CIC 1240 § 1, n. 3.

https://canonlawblog.wordpress.com/2018/12/15/about-that-funeral-mass-homily-some-points/

So grieving survivors had a doublewhammy: the suicide of their loved one and Mother Church shunning their loved one. 

Yet the centuries-old policy has now been softened:

2282 Grave psychological disturbances, anguish, or grave fear of hardship, suffering, or torture can diminish the responsibility of the one committing suicide.

2283 We should not despair of the eternal salvation of persons who have taken their own lives. By ways known to him alone, God can provide the opportunity for salutary repentance. The Church prays for persons who have taken their own lives.

But once again, what good does that do for all the grieving survivors who lived under the traditional policy? It's too late for them. 

We changed our mind. Sorry about that. No hard feelings, right?

My immediate point is not to evaluate the positions in question. I'm not commenting on whether I think the new positions mark an improvement over the traditional positions, or vice versa. The point, rather, is that here's a denomination which lays claim to unique divine guidance and protection from error. 

Catholic apologists will counter that these changes go to show that the traditional teaching and practice never were infallible or irreformable. Yet these concern fundamental moral and pastoral issues. Not torturing religious opponents is hardly a marginal issue in social ethics. 

Likewise, what's more important than not telling grief-stricken family and friends the wrong thing about the fate of suicides and dead babies? Religion is centrally concerned with what happens after we die.

If the Catholic church wasn't protected from error on such crucial issues, why believe it enjoys any special protection from error? Why trust it with your immortal soul?

I'm not suggesting that Christians are obligated to give confident answers if we don't know the answer. But that's not what Rome did. Rather, Rome came down firmly on both sides of the issue at different times. It changes its mind: "We were mistaken, but that's water under the bridge." That's so flippant and callous.   

Artemis, Diana (4Th Century Pagan Goddesses), Pachamama, and Mary

Everett Ferguson writes,

In the Latin west and in the Greek east the church won only by detouring the traditional piety [pagan] to other objects. The martyrs and the saints received the homage once given to the heroes and nature and household spirits. The similarity between the cult of heroes and spirits in ancient Greece and Rome and the cult of the saints in medieval Christendom (Roman and Greek) has often been observed.

…. When Christianity replaced paganism, the saints took over the functions of the specialized local deities. The situation may be described as “the old firm doing the same business at the same place under a new name and a new management”. This perhaps says too much. It was not the ancient religion itself that survived but the mentality that was part of it. (Ferguson, “Backgrounds of Early Christianity”, pg 182.)

Every emperor, every municipality, every household, in fact, had its own “gods”, its own statues. The people of the ancient Roman empire didn’t wish each other “good luck”. They wished each other, instead, the good will of the “gods”.

The conservative and traditionalist Roman Catholics who are all up in arms about the Pachamama statue ought to keep this mind, and they ought to stand back and watch as the current hierarchy of the Roman Church invokes a process of “development” that will bring the Pachamama into its pantheon of “saints” in just the same way that such “development” brought the Greek goddess Artemis (Roman Diana) into that same pantheon as “the Virgin Mary” in the fourth century.

There’s an “Our Lady” of Just About Anything. Why Not “Our Lady of the Amazon”, Pachamama?

Pachamama, Our Lady of the Amazon

Traditionalist and conservative Roman Catholics (see here and here, for example) are going apoplectic over the notion that Pope Bergoglio brought Pachamama statues into the Vatican. “It’s a pagan idol” they say.

That should be beside the point. There’s a legal pope endorsing it, there’s a group of Italian bishops who wrote a prayer to Pachamama. Call it #developmentofdoctrine.

There’s an “Our Lady” of just about anything you can think of. “Our Lady of the Amazon” (Pachamama) certainly can fit into this calendar.

What follows below is from the “Marian calendar” published by a website called “Roman Catholic Saints & Heroes!” – Interesting that “Heroes” is added.

The site is owned by a layman, James Fitzhenry, “Through the Immaculate Heart of Mary”, who prays “that the example of their lives may inspire all Catholic children to imitate their virtues, and serve as well to remind men of our age of the great things that can be accomplished through dedication to purpose and the grace of God.”

There’s just about one for every day of the year:

The Church's Considered, Mature Rejection Of Roman Catholic Teaching

I want to add something to the points Steve Hays has been making lately about development of doctrine. It's common for Roman Catholics to tell us that the church often doesn't define a doctrine until it's been violated. Supposedly, the church develops a fuller understanding of the faith, or expresses what it understands more fully, as it struggles against heretics and other opponents. Or something that existed in seed form all along won't grow into a tree until the church later gives the subject more consideration for some other reason. Large and complicated beliefs that are not only consistent with scripture, but also implied by it, such as Trinitarianism and the canon of scripture, are often cited as examples.

Cardinal Müller on Catholicism and Protestantism

This will be a long post. The length is mainly due to the fact that it's running commentary on some things that Cardinal Müller said is three recent articles. If you wish to expedite the reading process, you can just skip the quotes.

Cardinal Müller represents the conservative, intellectual wing of the hierarchy. So it's useful to see how he defends Catholicism and critiques Protestantism. I always like to study the best of the competition:

A Catholic conudrum

The Magisterium must seek to present a convincing case, showing how its presentation of the faith is in itself coherent and in continuity with the rest of Tradition. The authority of the papal Magisterium rests on its continuity with the teachings of previous popes. In fact, if a pope had the power to abolish the binding teachings of his predecessors, or if he had the authority even to reinterpret Holy Scripture against its evident meaning, then all his doctrinal decisions could in turn be abolished by his successor, whose successor in turn could undo or redo everything as he pleased. In this case we would not be witnessing a development of doctrine, but the dire spectacle of the Bark of Peter stranded on a sandbank.

https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2018/02/development-or-corruption

Gerhard Ludwig Cardinal Müller is former prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

St. John Cardinal Newman

Cardinal Newman has been canonized. He may well be the most theologically influential convert to Catholicism. 

Newman was a man of many parts. He has interesting things to say about the nature of miracles. And his illative sense made an important contribution to religious epistemology. He stressed the value of tacit knowledge. He objected to armchair epistemologies. He was interested in how people actually come to believe what they do, and the kinds of evidence that contribute to belief formation. An often unconscious process with a cumulative effect.  

Newman was an original and independent thinker. Because he converted to Catholicism, he had a different approach than if he'd been a trained Catholic theologian. His center of gravity was patristic theology rather than Scholastic theology. And he represents an offshoot of British Empiricism. 

There's nothing distinctive Catholic about the illative sense. That can be incorporated into a Protestant epistemology or secular epistemology. 

As Benjamin King has documented in Newman and the Alexandrian Fathers, Newman is apt to use the church fathers as a mirror, where he's gazing at his own reflection. Newman resembles Luther inasmuch as both developed one-man belief-systems to resolve their personal religious quest. These are answers to their questions, which arise from their individual struggles. 

Newman's primary impact on Catholic theology lies in his theory of development. Historically, Catholicism takes the position that the era of public revelation terminated with the death of the Apostles. They left behind the deposit of faith. That's static. You can appeal to ancient tradition as a witness to the deposit of faith. But you can't add to the deposit of faith and you can't change dogma.

The theory of development was necessitated by the increasing strain between the appeal to tradition and innovations in Catholic theology. Innovations that lacked a documentable pedigree in primitive tradition. 

Newman replaced the static concept of tradition with a fluid concept. No longer grounded in primitive tradition but "living" tradition. This would have remained an idiosyncratic curiosity except that it was adopted by Vatican II. 

The increasing strain between tradition and innovation was like metastatic cancer. The theory of development was like cancer therapy. But there's a catch. Sometimes cancer therapy prevents a patient from dying of cancer: instead, the patient dies from complications due to cancer therapy. The therapy does so much damage that the cure kills the patient.

The theory of development solved one problem by creating another problem. It severed Catholic theology from any traditional moorings. Catholic theology is now adrift. It has no fixed center or boundaries. Catholic theology is now the theology of whoever the current pope happens to be. Like a chameleon, Catholic theology changes colors to match the shade of the current pope. 

Temporary infallibility

I agree with Weishaupt that the exclusion of women from priestly ordination was declared infallibly by Pope St. John Paul II in Ordinatio sacerdotalis (1994), that such a ruling must be definitively held by all the faithful as a “secondary object of infallibility” 

https://canonlawblog.wordpress.com/2019/10/01/brief-note-on-canonist-weishaupts-essay/

In light of Rome's doctrine of development, Catholic theology needs a new category: temporary infallibility. Dogma is temporarily infallible until the next pope whips out his eraser. 

Is the Catholic church 2000 years old?

Catholic apologists compare their "2000-year-old" church to upstart Protestant denominations. I've discussed that before, but I'll expand on that:

1. Suppose a young couple buys a Fixer Upper. At the time it's all they can afford on their meager income. As their income rises, they remodel the house. As their income continues to rise, they make additions on either side. Finally, they demolish the original house, preserve the additions, and build a new house in-between the flankers. Is the final house the same house as the original house?

There's a kind of historical continuity in play. But no part of the original house exists. It's been replaced, part by part. And not even by the same kinds of parts, but different kinds of parts. It's unrecognizable compared to the Fixer Upper. So mere historical continuity doesn't make it the same house or even similar to the original house. 

Moreover, even if some of the original parts were preserved, it's undergone so much change that it's equivocal to say it's the same house. It's the same in some respects but not the same in key respects. 

2. There are different ways a faith-tradition might be new. On the one hand, it might have new doctrines, new interpretations. On the other hand, it might be a new combination of old doctrines and old interpretations. It might recombine them in different ways.

3. To some extent, Protestant theology was new. It emerged in the 16C. However, it didn't pop in out of the blue. In many respects it had theological antecedents. And Protestants claim it's older than Catholicism because it represents a restoration of biblical theology, from which Catholicism deviated. 

However, the Catholic church under Pope Francis, or even under Pope Benedict XVI or Pope John-Paul II, is a different church than it was under Leo XIII or Pius IX. The Catholic church under Pope Innocent X and Pope Clement IX is a different church from the medieval church. By condemning Jansenism, they anathematized the Augustinian tradition. What held an honorable place in Catholicism prior to Calvinism became intolerable after Calvinism. Catholic theology is reactionary. 

One could give many other examples. There really is no such thing as "the Roman Catholic Church" because it keeps reinventing itself. Just as the Protestant movement emerged in the 16C, Catholicism reemerges in different mutations throughout the course of church history. 

4. Catholic apologists save face by distinguishing between two different kinds of change: 

i) In the case of inconsistent changes, those are extraneous to what's essential to Catholicism. Those were never dogmatic, infallible, irreformable, de fide teachings. 

ii) Other changes represent the development of doctrine. They are said to be consistent with dogma.   

But while that may be persuasive to conservative Catholics, it cuts no ice when debating with Protestants, since we don't grant their distinctions. These are ad hoc distinctions superimposed on Catholicism despite the evidence. While Catholics naturally assume a Catholic viewpoint, they can't reasonably expect or demand that Protestants share their viewpoint. So comparing their "2000-year-old" church to the Protestant faith begs the question. When we look at the history of Catholicism, we don't see a 2000-year-old church. Rather, we witness a dialectical succession of ideas. 

Like any historical process, you can retrace current developments to antecedent conditions and causes. That holds true for Catholicism and evangelicalism alike. But that doesn't mean the house standing on the same property as the Fixer Upper is the same house. 

Repent and submit to the pope!

Recently a Roman Catholic told me to "Repent and submit to the Pope".

But therein lies a dilemma. I couldn't submit to the pope even if I wanted to. Since popes contradict each other, which pope am I supposed to submit to? Should I just flip a coin?

We're told that we need a pope to play tiebreaker in case of disagreement. But when popes disagree with each other, one can't appeal to "the pope" to break the tie!

Given the development of doctrine, Catholics should only submit to the last future pope. Since they know that Catholic teaching will continue to change, but they don't know ahead of time how it will change, they ought to suspend judgment until the last future pope has the final word. The pope just before Jesus returns! That way, Catholic dogma can't change any more! 

Erasing Catholic teaching

The teaching of the Catechism of the Catholic Church (here after CCC) has undergone substantive since its initial publication. I wonder how many Catholics compare different editions to register the changes. In addition, there's a distinction between print editions and electronic revisions. Nowadays the CCC can be revised or updated without formally issuing or announcing a third edition, fourth edition, &c.. 

The official edition is at the Vatican website. While it's convenient to be able to read the CCC online, a downside of the electronic version is that whenever it's revised, that erases the prior history of the CCC's teaching. 

It's also becoming harder to check the online version against print editions because libraries are eliminating print books. They take up space and fewer borrowers check them out. 

Another complication is that the "canonical" text is in Latin, so the wording of English translations may vary a bit. Likewise, when the Latin text is revised, there might be lag time to revise translations. All these factors make it harder to compare different editions of the CCC back-to-back. Unless you happen to own a print copies of the first and second editions, it's hard to make a direct comparison from the primary sources. Sometimes you can get the text from secondary sources that discuss changes to the CCC. 

I see some Catholic apologists offer the face-saving explanation that the first edition was "provisional". But the first edition wasn't a draft copy. It was approved for publication by Pope John-Paul II and Cardinal Ratziger, then Prefect for the CDF and chairman of the CCC committee. It contains the foreword ("Apostolic Constitution") by John-Paul II, where he declares is "declare it to be a sure norm for teaching the faith":

http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/aposcons.htm

Let's compare two examples where the teaching of the CCC has undergone substantive alteration. 

1. Lying

Original edition

2483 To lie is to speak or act against the truth in order to lead into error someone who has a right to know the truth. 

Revision:

2483 To lie is to speak or act against the truth in order to lead someone into error.

2. Capital Punishment

Original edition:

2266 Preserving the common good of society requires rendering the aggressor unable to inflict harm. For this reason the traditional teaching of the Church has acknowledged as well-founded the right and duty of legitimate public authority to punish malefactors by means of penalties commensurate with the gravity of the crime, not excluding, in cases of extreme gravity, the death penalty. 

First revision (John-Paul II)

2266 The efforts of the state to curb the spread of behavior harmful to people's rights and to the basic rules of civil society correspond to the requirement of safeguarding the common good. Legitimate public authority has the right and the duty to inflict punishment proportionate to the gravity of the offense. 

Second revision (Pope Francis)

2267. Recourse to the death penalty on the part of legitimate authority, following a fair trial, was long considered an appropriate response to the gravity of certain crimes and an acceptable, albeit extreme, means of safeguarding the common good.

Today, however, there is an increasing awareness that the dignity of the person is not lost even after the commission of very serious crimes. In addition, a new understanding has emerged of the significance of penal sanctions imposed by the state. Lastly, more effective systems of detention have been developed, which ensure the due protection of citizens but, at the same time, do not definitively deprive the guilty of the possibility of redemption.

Consequently, the Church teaches, in the light of the Gospel, that “the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person”,[1] and she works with determination for its abolition worldwide. 

3. Taking stock

In the case of lying, the revision eliminates the proviso: someone who has a right to know the truth

In the case of capital punishment, the first revision eliminates the proviso: not excluding, in cases of extreme gravity, the death penalty. 

While the second revision rules out capital punishment in principle. 

These are fundamental issues in Catholic moral theology, so it's striking to see the teaching of the CCC undergo substantive change or reversal in the course of a few years. 

4. For further reference:

Catechism of the Catholic Church (1995 print edition)

http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2010/11/what-counts-as-lie.html

https://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/en/bollettino/pubblico/2018/08/02/180802a.html

https://web.archive.org/web/20130312145145/http://old.usccb.org/sdwp/national/criminal/catechism.shtml