Is Amoris Laetitia’s discussion of culpability a “serious problem”? Part 1 of a response to Dr. E. Christian Brugger.

t Catholic World Report, Dr. E. Chris­t­ian Brug­ger has post­ed an arti­cle enti­tled “Five Seri­ous Prob­lems With Chap­ter 8 of Amor­is Laeti­tia.” It is a long arti­cle, which my own nev­er are; a full five thou­sand four hun­dred twelve words; longer than Chap­ter 8 itself. (For indeed, dear read­er, I count­ed.)

So this will take some time to work through. Dr. Brug­ger’s article—unlike so many wail­ing pan­ic attacks about Amor­is Laeti­tia that can be briefly scoffed at, and refut­ed, and left to dry up like a raisin in the sun—is, or aims to be, ana­lyt­i­cal and schol­ar­ly. It requires care. And here I must point out that I don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly dis­agree with every­thing that Dr. Brug­ger says. I must sep­a­rate the pro from the con.

To do all that (and since Dr. Brug­ger claims to have found five “seri­ous prob­lems” with AL) means that I will respond in five parts. I will take up these claims one post at a time.

•••

For overview, here are the “seri­ous prob­lems” Dr. Brug­ger finds in Chap­ter 8:

• It presents an erro­neous view of the role of “mit­i­gat­ed cul­pa­bil­i­ty” in pas­toral care;
• It is incon­sis­tent in its pleas to not judge oth­ers;
• It is flawed in its treat­ment of indi­vid­ual con­science;
• It insuf­fi­cient­ly describes the moral law in terms of a “rule” and an “ide­al”;
• It con­tra­dicts the Coun­cil of Trent.

Also for overview—and so the read­er may have a brief sense of how much goes awry in Dr. Brug­ger’s article—here are a few points of my own:

• Although the actu­al text of AL calls for “per­son­al and pas­toral dis­cern­ment,” Dr. Brug­ger elides this to “per­son­al dis­cern­ment”; as though the pope means for cou­ples to engage in dis­cern­ment all on their own.
• Dr. Brug­ger claims that AL nev­er men­tions the require­ment of con­ti­nence for cou­ples in an irreg­u­lar mar­riage; when, in fact, the pope does men­tion this in foot­note #329.
• Dr. Brug­ger begins his arti­cle by prais­ing AL for, among oth­er things, uphold­ing the Catholic teach­ing against con­tra­cep­tion; but lat­er, when dis­cussing his fourth point, he claims that AL per­mits con­tra­cep­tion.
• In his dis­cus­sion of his sec­ond claim, Dr. Brug­ger quotes AL’s descrip­tion of the cri­te­ria that one must apply to any act of judg­ment; but then pro­ceeds to treat it as though the pope has just for­bade judg­ing alto­geth­er.
• Dr. Brug­ger fre­quent­ly inter­prets entire pas­sages of text as though they affirm what the pope express­ly denies in oth­er pas­sages that Dr. Brug­ger makes no men­tion of at all.

I give these exam­ples to illus­trate why it is nec­es­sary to exam­ine this arti­cle as care­ful­ly as I do. One could eas­i­ly be be impressed by the weight and length of analy­sis Dr. Brug­ger pro­vides us; and yet, it is slips like these that call his claims into ques­tion and require some time and effort to iden­ti­fy and point out.

•••

I must com­mend Dr. Brug­ger, how­ev­er, for rec­og­niz­ing some key strengths of Amor­is Laeti­tia. For he does; and that is worth prais­ing in one of the pope’s crit­ics. I wrote a post ear­li­er this month point­ing out some pas­sages in AL that few, I sus­pect­ed, would make note of. Dr. Brug­ger is one of the few who do make note of them; even though his arti­cle is large­ly crit­i­cal of AL.

• Amor­is Laeti­tia affirms in §80 and §222 that con­ju­gal union must be pro­cre­ative. That is to say, Pope Fran­cis upholds the teach­ing of Humanae Vitae on the intrin­sic evil of con­tra­cep­tion.
• It reit­er­ates the evil of abor­tion in §83.
• It affirms, in §172 and 175, that every child has a right to both a moth­er and father, and that chil­dren need their fathers.

On this last point, Dr. Brug­ger points out that AL con­tains the length­i­est treat­ment of the impor­tance of fathers of any papal doc­u­ment in the last fifty years. That’s remark­able; Catholics should point that out, in the pope’s praise. I am glad that Dr. Brug­ger does.

For an exhor­ta­tion with these strengths, one should approach with cau­tion any claim that ortho­doxy has gone amiss in some lat­er chap­ter. But Dr. Brug­ger does not stop there; he goes fur­ther; he spec­u­lates that the pope may in fact have intend­ed het­ero­doxy:

“Chap­ter 8 … allows—and seems inten­tion­al­ly so—for inter­pre­ta­tions that pose seri­ous prob­lems for Catholic faith and prac­tice.”

This is unfor­tu­nate. The word “seems” seems to pro­vide Dr. Brug­ger with an escape from any charge that he has false­ly accused the pope. But give Dr. Brug­ger the word; how does he know this? What evi­dence does he have that all this is inten­tion­al? He does not say. He sim­ply makes the claim and pro­ceeds apace. That will not do.

•••

Dr. Brug­ger begins his review of his first claim—that AL presents an erro­neous view of “mit­i­gat­ed culpability”—with the fol­low­ing overview:

Catholic moral the­ol­o­gy has spo­ken about the impor­tance of pas­tors being sen­si­tive to fac­tors lim­it­ing a penitent’s sub­jec­tive guilt in order to help pen­i­tents assess their true guilt ret­ro­spec­tive­ly, i.e., to help them look at what they’ve already done to assist them to judge right­ly about their cul­pa­bil­i­ty, so they can repent and be for­giv­en and deal with those fac­tors and begin freely to choose right­ly.

Chap­ter 8 intro­duces a sig­nif­i­cant change in the role that mit­i­gat­ing fac­tors play in pas­toral care. Pas­tors are direct­ed to assess sub­jec­tive cul­pa­bil­i­ty as a way of “dis­cern­ing” what kinds of eccle­sial par­tic­i­pa­tion, includ­ing sacra­men­tal par­tic­i­pa­tion, are appro­pri­ate for peo­ple who are going forth from the con­fes­sion­al. It focus­es on assess­ing mit­i­gat­ed guilt for direct­ing prospec­tive action leav­ing in place the fac­tors that mit­i­gate guilt, so peo­ple may con­tin­ue to sin with­out ever becom­ing respon­si­ble enough to sin mor­tal­ly.

So accord­ing to Dr. Brug­ger, the pope is saying—think about this—that pas­tors should iden­ti­fy sit­u­a­tions of mit­i­gat­ed cul­pa­bil­i­ty; but then not help any­one to devel­op a ful­ly-formed con­science. Instead they should per­mit peo­ple to con­tin­ue sin­ning; they should leave mal­formed con­sciences as they found them.

Is that real­ly so? That’s a large claim to make. I would want strong evi­dence of this. Dr. Brug­ger gives us a few exam­ples where he thinks he finds this flaw; and I will look at them; but before I do that, I want to men­tion a few places that call this claim into seri­ous ques­tion.

• First. Pope Fran­cis’s dis­cus­sion in §295 of the “law of grad­u­al­ness; which Pope St. John Paul II first expound­ed in Famil­iaris Con­sor­tio 34.

Here is the def­i­n­i­tion we read in FC:

[M]an, who has been called to live God’s wise and lov­ing design in a respon­si­ble man­ner, is an his­tor­i­cal being who day by day builds him­self up through his many free deci­sions; and so he knows, loves and accom­plish­es moral good by stages of growth.

So Pope Fran­cis’s dis­cus­sion is ful­ly in keep­ing with the teach­ing of St. John Paul II. More than that, watch how he devel­ops the thought in §295:

This is not a “grad­u­al­ness of law” but rather a grad­u­al­ness in the pru­den­tial exer­cise of free acts on the part of sub­jects who are not in a posi­tion to under­stand, appre­ci­ate, or ful­ly car­ry out the objec­tive demands of the law. For the law is itself a gift of God which points out the way, a gift for every­one with­out excep­tion; it can be fol­lowed with the help of grace, even though each human being “advances grad­u­al­ly with the pro­gres­sive inte­gra­tion of the gifts of God and the demands of God’s defin­i­tive and absolute love in his or her entire per­son­al and social life.

The pope is describ­ing a process; but it is a process toward the “objec­tive demands of the law.” They are “demands” and they are “objec­tive”; God requirs them “with­out excep­tion”; we can fol­low them “with the help of grace.” Some peo­ple just aren’t there yet; and it is not help­ful to deny this, or the need for pas­tors to help such peo­ple along toward the good.

But it sure does not sound to me as though the pope means to say that pas­tors should allow peo­ple to remain as they are. The law of grad­u­al­ness is not a law of sta­sis; and the pope does not describe it as though it is. The text says no such thing.

• Sec­ond. Pope Fran­cis’s dis­cus­sion of the “call to per­fec­tion” in §291.

Although she con­stant­ly holds up the call to per­fec­tion and asks for a fuller response to God, “the Church must accom­pa­ny with atten­tion and care the weak­est of her chil­dren, who show signs of a wound­ed and trou­bled love, by restor­ing in them hope and con­fi­dence, like the bea­con of a light­house in a port or a torch car­ried among the peo­ple to enlight­en those who have lost their way or who are in the midst of a storm.” Let us not for­get that the Church’s task is often like that of a field hos­pi­tal.

The Church calls its mem­bers to per­fec­tion, even the weak­est. The Church calls peo­ple to a fuller response to God. Pas­tors must work to restore the weak­est among us to per­fec­tion. The pope does not say, “Let sin­ners remain as they are.”

One might object that, since the pope begins with the word “although,” he real­ly means to brush aside the call to per­fec­tion. But no. For what fol­lows “although” is sim­ply a reminder that no one achieves per­fec­tion all at once. That’s a very sen­si­ble reminder. Pope Fran­cis calls the Church to the work of “restor­ing” peo­ple with mal­formed con­sciences. To “restore” does not mean to leave peo­ple as they are. It takes time, but the pope is not describ­ing sta­sis.

The pope uses three images here to illus­trate what he means: a light­house, a torch, and a hos­pi­tal. Light­hous­es and torch­es direct peo­ple toward safe­ty; their pur­pose is not to leave peo­ple in dan­ger. Hos­pi­tals cure the wound­ed and the sick; they do not mere­ly diag­nose them.

I dis­cuss sev­er­al more such exam­ples in this post from April 14.

Any dis­cus­sion of the pas­sages that Dr. Brug­ger cites to bol­ster his claims must take into con­sid­er­a­tion oth­er pas­sages such as those above. A doc­u­ment must be read con­sis­tent­ly. You do not set one pas­sage at odds with anoth­er or ignore pas­sages that con­flict with your inter­pre­ta­tion of oth­er ones. There is no school of hermeneu­tics that can jus­ti­fy that.

One might wish to say, Well, the pope is just being incon­sis­tent. Per­haps he does so inad­ver­tent­ly; or per­haps he does so on pur­pose; but incon­sis­tent he is.

That, how­ev­er, is a sep­a­rate claim and it would require its own proof. Apart from proof, one must assume that AL is con­sis­tent with itself.

•••

Dr. Brug­ger cites two pas­sages where he finds evi­dence that the pope wants pas­tors to leave cou­ples in their state of dimin­ished cul­pa­bil­i­ty, allow them to return to com­mu­nion, and nev­er require that they aban­don grave sin.

The first of these is §300. Here is the part Dr. Brug­ger quotes:

If we con­sid­er the immense vari­ety of con­crete sit­u­a­tions such as those I have men­tioned, it is under­stand­able that nei­ther the Syn­od nor this Exhor­ta­tion could be expect­ed to pro­vide a new set of gen­er­al rules, canon­i­cal in nature and applic­a­ble to all cas­es. What is pos­si­ble is sim­ply a renewed encour­age­ment to under­take a respon­si­ble per­son­al and pas­toral dis­cern­ment of par­tic­u­lar cas­es, one which would rec­og­nize that, since “the degree of respon­si­bil­i­ty is not equal in all cas­es”, the con­se­quences or effects of a rule need not nec­es­sar­i­ly always be the same.

Dr. Brug­ger does not dis­cuss the first block of bold­ed text; but we should take note of it. If the pope is not issu­ing any new rules, or amend­ing canon law, it would fol­low that the exist­ing law is to remain as it is. Dr. Edward N. Peters, on his Canon Law blog, not­ed that very thing. He writes:

To leg­is­late for the Church popes usu­al­ly employ cer­tain types of doc­u­ments (e.g., apos­tolic con­sti­tu­tions, motu pro­prios, ‘authen­tic inter­pre­ta­tions’) or they use cer­tain kinds of lan­guage (e.g., ‘I direct’ or ‘I approve in for­ma speci­fi­ca’). Amor­is laeti­ti­ae, an “apos­tolic exhor­ta­tion”, is not a leg­isla­tive doc­u­ment, it con­tains no leg­isla­tive or authen­tic inter­pre­ta­tive lan­guage, and it does not dis­cuss Canon 915. The con­clu­sion fol­lows: what­ev­er Canon 915 direct­ed before Amor­is, it directs after, includ­ing that holy Com­mu­nion may not gen­er­al­ly be admin­is­tered to Catholics liv­ing in irreg­u­lar mar­riages.

But is the pope some­how giv­ing priests a license to ignore this law, even though it remains on the books? I am glad you asked, because the pope specif­i­cal­ly denies that he is.

And where does he do that? I am glad you asked that too, because he does so in §300. (And that’s the very sec­tion Dr. Brug­ger is quot­ing from at the moment Only, he does not quote that part.) Here is what the pope says:

For this dis­cern­ment to hap­pen, the fol­low­ing con­di­tions must nec­es­sar­i­ly be present [Dis­cern­ment has con­di­tions, the pope says.]: humil­i­ty, dis­cre­tion and love for the Church and her teach­ing, in a sin­cere search for God’s will and a desire to make a more per­fect response to it.” These atti­tudes are essen­tial for avoid­ing the grave dan­ger of mis­un­der­stand­ings, such as the notion that any priest can quick­ly grant “excep­tions”, or that some peo­ple can obtain sacra­men­tal priv­i­leges in exchange for favours. When a respon­si­ble and tact­ful per­son, who does not pre­sume to put his or her own desires ahead of the com­mon good of the Church, meets with a pas­tor capa­ble of acknowl­edg­ing the seri­ous­ness of the mat­ter before him, there can be no risk that a spe­cif­ic dis­cern­ment may lead peo­ple to think that the Church main­tains a dou­ble stan­dard.

So the pope express­ly denies that priests can “grant excep­tions” to Canon 915. More than that, he names the “nec­es­sary” cri­te­ria of dis­cern­ment. A cou­ple must be “respon­si­ble” and “tact­ful.” They must “not pre­sume to put [their] own desires ahead of the com­mon good of the Church.” (For “their own desires,” read “receive the Eucharist”; for “good of the Church,” read “avoid scan­dal.”) The pas­tor must “acknowl­edge the seri­ous­ness of the mat­ter.” Under no cir­cum­stances may the Church “main­tain a dou­ble stan­dard.”

Dr. Brug­ger does not men­tion any of this. What he does do is latch upon the phrase “per­son­al and pas­toral dis­cern­ment” (in the direct quo­ta­tion) and then change it (in his own reit­er­a­tion) to “per­son­al dis­cern­ment”; as though the pope is call­ing upon cou­ples in irreg­u­lar unions to do their own dis­cern­ing. Note where Dr. Brug­ger first does this:

The term “pas­toral dis­cern­ment” is used through­out chap­ter 8, but its mean­ing is not con­sis­tent. Here it refers to the “per­son­al dis­cern­ment of the divorced and civil­ly remar­ried. [Note the shift. AL 300 does not say “per­son­al dis­cern­ment,” sin­gu­lar; it says “per­son­al and pas­toral dis­cern­ment,” plur­al.] They are encour­aged to assess their own sub­jec­tive cul­pa­bil­i­ty in order to deter­mine what kinds of eccle­sial par­tic­i­pa­tion are appro­pri­ate. The text says that since “the degree of respon­si­bil­i­ty is not equal in all cas­es”, the con­se­quences of the “rule”—meaning con­se­quences of vio­lat­ing the rule—may apply dif­fer­ent­ly in dif­fer­ent cas­es.

But the text I quot­ed above, also from §300, does not, at all, coun­sel Catholics to do their own dis­cern­ing and decide for them­selves whether to stand in line for com­mu­nion. Instead, the pope says that true dis­cern­ment requires a “respon­si­ble” per­son to “meet with a pas­tor.” He says that true dis­cern­ment is respon­sive to “the com­mon good of the Church.” He says that dis­cern­ment must not lead to a “dou­ble stan­dard.” He says that dis­cern­ment must not allow priests to “make excep­tions.”

In oth­er words, what­ev­er the pope means when he says that the con­se­quences of a rule might not always be the same, it can­not mean what Dr. Brug­ger claims it to mean. He is inter­pret­ing §300 not only against oth­er sec­tions of Chap­ter 8, but against itself.

Dr. Brug­ger turns to a pre­dic­tion:

The text will be read by many “remar­ried” spous­es as mean­ing that they them­selves can “dis­cern” that, because of the com­plex­i­ty of their “con­crete sit­u­a­tions” (e.g., it is wrong to leave the kids and/or the new “spouse” and stress­ful to live as broth­er and sis­ter, etc.), they them­selves lack such a “degree of respon­si­bil­i­ty” as would have the con­se­quence that they are guilty of grave sin and ought not to com­mu­ni­cate.

Well, sure, some peo­ple might insist on read­ing the text that way. I doubt it noth­ing. But is that what the text says? If the pope express­ly says that he is speak­ing of the kind of per­son “who does not pre­sume to put his or her desires ahead of the com­mon good of the Church,” then this hypo­thet­i­cal mis­read­er that Dr. Brug­ger has in mind is ignor­ing the stan­dards of §300. It is that per­son who needs cor­rec­tion, not the pope.

But Dr. Brug­ger claims that even “pas­tors will inter­pret this in con­flict­ing ways”:

Those who are com­mit­ted to tra­di­tion­al Catholic doc­trine and prac­tice will inter­pret it to mean accom­pa­ny­ing remar­ried divorcees in their process of repent­ing for their sins, order­ing their rela­tion­ships accord­ing to the Gospel … and rein­te­grat­ing into the sacra­men­tal life of the Church. Oth­ers, how­ev­er, will inter­pret it to mean assist­ing remar­ried divorcees to arrive at the judg­ment that since they lack suf­fi­cient respon­si­bil­i­ty, noth­ing hin­ders the pos­si­bil­i­ty of fuller par­tic­i­pa­tion, pro­vid­ed they go through the for­mal­i­ty of get­ting their pas­tors to agree with their judg­ment.

Again, §300 specif­i­cal­ly states the for­mer. I don’t doubt that some priests might attempt to read into §300 the lat­ter; but the lat­ter is not what AL says. If one goes through all of §300, not just the parts of it Dr. Brug­ger quotes, he will find that the pope takes care to spec­i­fy the cri­te­ria of true dis­cern­ment.

Maybe we should con­sid­er the pos­si­bil­i­ty that, when the pope says pas­tors should iden­ti­fy what hin­ders full par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Church, he means that as the first step in remov­ing the hin­drance, not deny­ing it.

•••

The sec­ond text that Dr. Brug­ger cites is from §302. Here the pope dis­cuss­es what the Cat­e­chism has to say (§1735) about dif­fer­ent fac­tors that con­tribute to mit­i­gat­ed cul­pa­bil­i­ty for grave sin. This is a “sound prin­ci­ple of moral the­ol­o­gy,” Dr. Brug­ger says; but then claims that the pope applies it “in a prob­lem­at­ic way.” Here is the part of the text that he has in mind:

I con­sid­er very fit­ting what many Syn­od Fathers want­ed to affirm: “Under cer­tain cir­cum­stances peo­ple find it very dif­fi­cult to act dif­fer­ent­ly. There­fore, while uphold­ing a gen­er­al rule, it is nec­es­sary to rec­og­nize that respon­si­bil­i­ty with respect to cer­tain actions or deci­sions is not the same in all cas­es. Pas­toral dis­cern­ment, while tak­ing into account a person’s prop­er­ly formed con­science, must take respon­si­bil­i­ty for these sit­u­a­tions. Even the con­se­quences of actions tak­en are not nec­es­sar­i­ly the same in all cas­es.

Now, Dr. Brug­ger will want to claim that this last obser­va­tion, about the con­se­quences not always being the same, is specif­i­cal­ly a ref­er­ence to com­mu­nion. He says:

The text implies that mature “pas­toral dis­cern­ment” may include acquit­ting indi­vid­ual con­sciences to return to Holy Com­mu­nion with­out requir­ing the indi­vid­u­als to order their rela­tion­ships accord­ing to Jesus’ teach­ing.

But the pope says no such thing. He is mak­ing a gen­er­al obser­va­tion; to assume that he has in mind a spe­cif­ic con­se­quence is to read into the text some­thing that is not there. And in fact, since the pope says ear­li­er (in §300) that pas­tors can not just “grant excep­tions,” it would seem evi­dent that the pope has a dif­fer­ent set of “con­se­quences” in mind.

Nor does the pope say that indi­vid­u­als need not “order their rela­tion­ships accord­ing to Jesus’ teach­ing.” For he specif­i­cal­ly says, in the pas­sage from §295 I cit­ed above, that the moral law is an “objec­tive demand.” God calls every­one to it, “with­out excep­tion.” We can fol­low the moral law, the pope says, “with the help of grace.”

How could §302 “imply” what the pope denies just sev­en sec­tions before? Am I to assume that Amor­is Laeti­tia is a series of dis­con­nect­ed sen­tences that we can lift out of con­text and cross-exam­ine for “impli­ca­tions” that are at odds with oth­er sen­tences else­where? Is that how you read a text? Is this hermeneu­tics?

Dr. Brug­ger is very con­cerned, how­ev­er:

But find­ing it “dif­fi­cult to act dif­fer­ent­ly” is not alone a suf­fi­cient rea­son not to invite remar­ried divorcees to extri­cate them­selves from objec­tive adul­tery. It is safe to say that most all of those who are in this sit­u­a­tion will find it dif­fi­cult to act dif­fer­ent­ly. But Jesus gives us sacra­men­tal grace pre­cise­ly so that we can do with his help what we find very dif­fi­cult to do on our own.

No doubt. But that is the very thing the pope him­self said in §295. Remem­ber? I quote again:

For the law is itself a gift of God which points out the way, a gift for every­one with­out excep­tion; it can be fol­lowed with the help of grace.

I find it curi­ous that Dr. Brug­ger feels the need to inform us that Jesus gives us grace so we can fol­low the demands of the law; for Pope Fran­cis just sev­en sec­tions ear­li­er tells us that Jesus gives us grace so we can fol­low the demands of the law.

“It is dis­turb­ing,” Dr. Brug­ger con­cludes, “that the text nev­er men­tions the uni­ver­sal moral oblig­a­tion held and taught since the Apos­tles for sep­a­rat­ed spous­es to abstain from non-mar­i­tal inter­course.”

Actu­al­ly, it does. Foot­note 329. I have writ­ten about that foot­note myself, both on this blog and in this arti­cle at Aleteia. Let’s go to the foot­note, which we find in §298.

In such sit­u­a­tions, many peo­ple, know­ing and accept­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of liv­ing “as broth­ers and sis­ters” which the Church offers them, point out that if cer­tain expres­sions of inti­ma­cy are lack­ing, “it often hap­pens that faith­ful­ness is endan­gered and the good of the chil­dren suf­fers.

I know that some have argued that this foot­note gives a dis­mis­sive wave of the hand against the require­ment of con­ti­nence on the idea that it might threat­en faith­ful­ness and the good of the chil­dren. I go into more detail about that in my pri­or arti­cles; but will say here that the fact that the pope notes that cer­tain cou­ples “accept” con­ti­nence puts such a read­ing into ques­tion. More­over, the fact that the pope says in §295 that grace is suf­fi­cient to allow every­one to fol­low the moral law, how­ev­er far from it they might present­ly be, rais­es a fur­ther dif­fi­cul­ty with that inter­pre­ta­tion.

The key point is that, con­trary to what Dr. Brug­ger claims, the pope does men­tion this “uni­ver­sal moral oblig­a­tion.”