Meaning of offensive to pious ears | Babel Free

Definitions

Describing a doctrine or proposition that is not heretical, but formulated improperly or ambiguously and hence liable to cause scandal. A formal censure.

Examples

“And Bishop Ullathorne concluded by condemning the journal as “containing propositions which are respectively subversive of the faith, heretical, approaching to heresy, erroneous, derogatory to the teaching of the Church, and offensive to pious ears.””

“It is therefore impossible from Exsurge Domine alone to determine whether proposition 36 is condemned as heretical or merely as “offensive to pious ears.””

“An investigatory commission in Oxford in 1378 declared that some of Wycliffe’s criticism were not incorrect in se but could be offensive to pious ears.”

CEFR level