Month: October 2017

Here is the sixth heresy The Cor­rec­tors claim to find in the text: “Moral prin­ci­ples and moral truths con­tained in divine rev­e­la­tion and in the nat­ur­al law do not include neg­a­tive pro­hi­bi­tions that absolute­ly for­bid par­tic­u­lar kinds of action, inas­much as these are always grave­ly unlaw­ful on account of their object.” Now, as I not­ed ear­li­er, it is a con­tin­u­al prob­lem to try to fig­ure out where The Cor­rec­tors think we are to find any one par­tic­u­lar heresy. They nev­er say “Heresy X is to be found in Para­graph Y.” We have to guess. They do slop­py work.

Here is the fifth heresy The Cor­rec­tors say they find in Amor­is Laeti­tia: “Cons­cience can tru­ly and right­ly judge that sex­u­al acts be­tween per­sons who have con­tract­ed a civ­il mar­riage with each oth­er, although one or both of them is sacra­men­tal­ly mar­ried to anoth­er per­son, can some­times be moral­ly right or request­ed or even com­mand­ed by God.” So the text says that God some­times can ask peo­ple in an irreg­u­lar union to keep engag­ing in the sex­u­al act. Real­ly? Is that the nec­es­sary inter­pre­ta­tion of Amor­is Laeti­tia 303? I’m skep­ti­cal.

Here is the fourth hereti­cal idea The Cor­rec­tors false­ly charge to Pope Fran­cis: “A per­son is able, while he obeys a divine pro­hi­bi­tion, to sin against God by that very act of obe­di­ence.” It just so hap­pens in this case that I know which text they mean. It is in §298, where the pope speaks of those in a sec­ond union, “con­sol­i­dat­ed over time,” with “new chil­dren,” who have “great dif­fi­cul­ty of going back with­out feel­ing in con­science that one would fall into new sins.” But the pope does not say going back would itself be a sin.