Make no mistake about it. While thinking may be solitary, critical thinking is never executed alone. It presupposes a community, relationships. It is always political, carried out in a polis . These are threshold issues, no matter the subject matter.
Political choice is unavoidable in biblical studies and theology.
Understanding this places recent church pronouncements in perspective. These texts are pervasively political in character. Some commentators have described them as sunset documents, pronouncements designed to frame the succession struggle that comes at the end of this papal administration. They are that, and more. Autocratic systems breed dissimulation.