I'm not sure why anyone would care what a random Catholic newspaper (from over a century ago at that) said; it means as much as a blog post does.
This one carries a little more authority than a random newspaper, though obviously hardly constitutes some kind of official declaration of the Catholic Church. Still, setting that aside, there are bigger issues with this one. In fact, it's odd you post it, given that in a previous topic I already pointed out the problems with this; one of the big ones being that "modify" is a mistranslation. This is especially problematic given you put so much emphasis on that word.
Since you apparently missed it the first time, here we go again. The below is a slightly edited version of exactly what I posted to you the last time:
Before we get into the mistranslation, I should note
quite a while ago someone offered this analysis:
I did a bit of research to find some more details. First off, this is the page on which the sentence appears – I’ve highlighted the relevant phrase.
Notice that the phrase appears in italics, after a citation: “Petrus de Anchar [asserit], in consil 373, n. 3, vers.” This citation is a reference to a book by Peter of Ancarano, whose name is also spelled Petrus de Anchar. The book in question is probably Consilium, which, according to an Italian page I found, is indeed by Peter of Ancarano and is available in printed form at the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana. The book principally discusses a heresy called conciliarism.
After googling for more information about this Peter of Ancarano fellow, I think I may have found out why he seems to have said that the pope can modify divine laws. The explanation involves a case of marriage law, so bear with me.
This page contains a description of a controversy in the 1400s, when Peter of Ancarano was alive, involving two competing anti-popes. One of these antipopes refused to grant a marital dispensation to a couple who wanted to marry but were impeded from doing so because they were members of the same family by a previous marriage. The other anti-pope acted differently in a similar case invovling a couple who thought he was the rightful pope – he granted them permission to marry even though they too were impeded for the same reason the other couple was. Before he made this decision, this second anti-pope consulted Peter of Ancarano and asked him for his opinion.
Now, in this controversy some people appealed to divine law to prove that the pope could not grant a dispensation in these cases. Specifically, they appealed to Leviticus 18:16, which forbids a man to marry his brother’s wife. The couples in question were each a nobleman and his brother’s widow – they probably wanted to marry to keep an inheritance in the family. Peter of Ancarano apparently argued that the pope had the power to dispense with the law of Lev. 18:16, even though it was a divine law, because Old Testament laws don’t work in the New Covenant.
So that seems to be the context in which this claim about the pope “modifying divine law” appears: it is a reference to the pope’s power to dispense with canonical impediments arising from Levitical laws that are no longer binding in the New Testament. Not the whopper that Seventh Day Adventists appear to think it is.
This seems to add up, and clears up what it's talking about. However, there is another big problem that is not even touched on by that analysis, namely the fact that the usage of "modify" is a mistranslation to begin with.
The Latin word being translated as modify is modificare (or modifico--some dictionaries list Latin words as infinitive (modificare), whereas others use the first person singular present tense (modifico)). This is where the word "modify" in English comes from. However, meanings can shift over time, and especially when they cross languages. In Latin, modificare does not mean to modify; it means to set limits or to control or regulate. This can be easily confirmed by any Latin dictionary; see, for example,
this one. Thus what this was saying, especially when viewed in the context of the above, is that the pope has authority to determine instances when divine law--the example being marriage law--does not apply. It says nothing about
modifying it.