Does Amoris Laetitia tell us “Do not judge”? Part 2 of a response to Dr. E. Christian Brugger.

Note: This is Part 2 of a five-part response to Dr. E. Chris­t­ian Brug­ger’s cri­tique of Amor­is Laeti­tia. Part 1 can be found here. Dr. Brug­ger’s arti­cle can be found at Catholic World Report here. Amor­is Laeti­tia can be found here.

he sec­ond of five “seri­ous prob­lems” that Dr. Brug­ger finds in Chap­ter 8 of Amor­is Laeti­tia is that it is “incon­sis­tent” in its treat­ment of not judg­ing oth­ers. He deals with this “prob­lem” much more suc­cinct­ly than he does with the first one; so I can be suc­cinct as well.

Dr. Brug­ger is refer­ring to §298, which I will quote in full:

The Syn­od addressed var­i­ous sit­u­a­tions of weak­ness or imper­fec­tion. Here I would like to reit­er­ate some­thing I sought to make clear to the whole Church, lest we take the wrong path: “There are two ways of think­ing which recur through­out the Church’s his­to­ry: cast­ing off and rein­stat­ing. The Church’s way, from the time of the Coun­cil of Jerusalem, has always always been the way of Jesus, the way of mer­cy and rein­state­ment. The way of the Church is not to con­demn any­one for ever; it is to pour out the balm of God’s mer­cy on all those who ask for it with a sin­cere heart. For true char­i­ty is always unmer­it­ed, uncon­di­tion­al and gra­tu­itous.” Con­se­quent­ly, there is a need “to avoid judge­ments which do not take into account the com­plex­i­ty of var­i­ous sit­u­a­tions” and “to be atten­tive, by neces­si­ty, to how peo­ple expe­ri­ence dis­tress because of their con­di­tion.

The con­text is a dis­cus­sion of restora­tion and mer­cy, and that implies that wrong­do­ing has tak­en place. If no wrong has occurred, there is no need for mer­cy. We must ask for mer­cy  “with a sin­cere heart,” the pope says; mean­ing that one must repent and order his life toward God. The pope says as much else­where, and I dis­cuss that in part 1.

It is in this con­text that the pope tells us “to avoid judg­ments which do not take into account the com­plex­i­ty of var­i­ous sit­u­a­tions.” The qual­i­fi­ca­tion is impor­tant: The pope does not say we must not judge at all, only that we must know all the facts.

But watch the trail that Dr. Brug­ger goes down with this state­ment. He begins by describ­ing it as “sound advice” that “should be tak­en seri­ous­ly.” If you sus­pect this is a pre­lude to a “but,” you are right:

But if we shouldn’t—and indeed can’t—render a judg­ment of con­dem­na­tion on anoth­er person’s state of soul [which is not the kind of judg­ment the pope is talk­ing about in the first place], then we shouldn’t and can’t ren­der a judg­ment of acquit­tal either.

Except the pope did not just say we “can’t ren­der a judg­ment,” end stop. He said we can’t ren­der a judg­ment with­out all the facts. That’s dif­fer­ent. And deci­sions about the state of one’s soul is not the pope’s top­ic in the first place. He is talk­ing about pas­toral care and mer­cy.

Dr. Brug­ger goes on:

[C]hapter 8 implies that pas­tors can have ade­quate cer­ti­tude that a per­son lacks sub­jec­tive cul­pa­bil­i­ty and so can free them to par­tic­i­pate in the sacra­ments. [Not so. I go into that at length in Part 1: You can only come to that con­clu­sion if you ignore key parts of Chap­ter 8.] No. 299 even refers to the divorced and civil­ly remar­ried as “liv­ing mem­bers” of the Church. The com­mon under­stand­ing of a “liv­ing” mem­ber is a bap­tized per­son in grace.

I won­der whether Dr. Brug­ger would wish to iden­ti­fy any “seri­ous prob­lems” with Famil­iaris Con­sor­tio. For in §84 Pope St. John Paul II has this to say:

Pas­tors must know that, for the sake of truth, they are oblig­ed to exer­cise care­ful dis­cern­ment of sit­u­a­tions. There is in fact a dif­fer­ence between those who have sin­cere­ly tried to save their first mar­riage and have been unjust­ly aban­doned, and those who through their own grave fault have destroyed a canon­i­cal­ly valid mar­riage. Final­ly, there are those who have entered into a sec­ond union for the sake of the chil­dren’s upbring­ing, and who are some­times sub­jec­tive­ly cer­tain in con­science that their pre­vi­ous and irrepara­bly destroyed mar­riage had nev­er been valid.

Togeth­er with the Syn­od, I earnest­ly call upon pas­tors and the whole com­mu­ni­ty of the faith­ful to help the divorced, and with solic­i­tous care to make sure that they do not con­sid­er them­selves as sep­a­rat­ed from the Church, for as bap­tized per­sons they can, and indeed must, share in her life. They should be encour­aged to lis­ten to the word of God, to attend the Sac­ri­fice of the Mass, to per­se­vere in prayer, to con­tribute to works of char­i­ty and to com­mu­ni­ty efforts in favor of jus­tice, to bring up their chil­dren in the Chris­t­ian faith, to cul­ti­vate the spir­it and prac­tice of penance and thus implore, day by day, God’s grace. Let the Church pray for them, encour­age them and show her­self a mer­ci­ful moth­er, and thus sus­tain them in faith and hope.

It sounds to me as though Chap­ter 8 does no more than repeat FC 84: dis­cern­ment of sit­u­a­tions, not all cas­es are the same, the divorced and remar­ried are not excom­mu­ni­cat­ed, the Church must show mer­cy. John Paul II, like Fran­cis, is talk­ing about pas­toral care toward wound­ed, and even erring, mem­bers of the Church.

Now, it is cer­tain­ly true that the word “liv­ing” has a the­o­log­i­cal sense to it, in con­trast with the state of being dead in your sins. In that sense, a “liv­ing mem­ber” is indeed some­one who is in a state of grace.

But I would point out two things here. The first is that, if we are speak­ing about a sit­u­a­tion of dimin­ished cul­pa­bil­i­ty, it would be inac­cu­rate to say that such and such a per­son is “dead in sins.” If we are speak­ing about a per­son who is repen­tant and wish­es to be restored, it would be inac­cu­rate to say that such and such a per­son is “dead in sins.”

Indeed, whether a per­son is dead in sin is not what Pope Fran­cis is ask­ing us to dis­cern or judge. It is heresy to think one can know if any­one is or is not in a state of grace. (Remem­ber Joan of Arc? She was asked, in her tri­al, “Are you in a state of grace?” The ques­tion was a trap: If she answered “no,” it would be an admis­sion of guilt. If she answered “yes,” she could be con­demned for heresy. Joan’s answer was bril­liant: “If I am, I pray God may keep me there. If I am not, I pray God may put me there.”)

Therefore—second point—I do not think Pope Fran­cis had in mind a judg­ment on some­one’s soul. I am con­tent to fol­low Bene­dict XVI’s hermeneu­tic of con­ti­nu­ity (a hermeneu­tic Car­di­nal Burke applies to AL) and assume that when Pope Fran­cis speaks of such peo­ple as “liv­ing mem­bers” of the Church, he means noth­ing dif­fer­ent than John Paul II meant when he said that they “share in her life.” If you share in the Church’s life, you are in some sense a “liv­ing mem­ber,” are you not? No judg­ment is implied about whether or not such and such a per­son is in a state of grace.

“But how,” Dr. Bruger won­ders, “can a priest judge that such peo­ple are in grace with­out judg­ing? Pope Fran­cis insists, and right­ly so, that we mustn’t judge.”

No, that’s not what he said. He said we must­n’t judge with­out all the facts. He did not say we must­n’t judge at all, nor did he say we should judge whether any­one is in a state of grace. Dr. Brug­ger super­im­pos­es a sote­ri­o­log­i­cal con­text onto a dis­cus­sion of pas­toral care.

But I am con­fused. Dr. Brug­ger tells us that the pope is right to say we must not judge, he tells us that we can’t judge, and yet the pope is wrong because he tells us we should be judg­ing. The pope tells us not to judge, and he is right; but he asks us to judge, and he is wrong. If this makes sense to you, dear read­er, let me know.

Dr. Brug­ger goes on to explain why priests can not ren­der a judg­ment on a per­son­’s soul, but that was nev­er what Pope Fran­cis had asked us to do in the first place. This is a dis­cus­sion of pas­toral care, not a doc­tri­nal trea­tise on sote­ri­ol­o­gy. I don’t see any rea­son to assume a depar­ture in Amor­is from what John Paul II had already said. Pope Fran­cis does no more than to tell us the cri­te­ria for any judgment—“discernment” is a bet­ter word—that is made in a pas­toral con­text.