The incoherence of “Just clarify Amoris! Answer the dubia!”

rue it is, and I have said it myself: Pope Fran­cis should answer the dubia on Amor­is Laeti­tia. I have also said, con­sis­tent­ly, time and again, on this wery blog, that AL is ortho­dox, is entire­ly con­sis­tent with Famil­iaris Con­sor­tio, and that any­one who reads it oth­er­wise is in error. I just wish the pope would say that him­self, rather than leave it to Car­di­nal Schon­born and Car­di­nal Müller. That’s not much to ask, I should think.

How­ev­er, what I find is this—that most of those who ral­ly, cir­cu­late peti­tions, ven­ti­late in the media, and oth­er­wise make a spec­ta­cle of them­selves are inco­her­ent in their demand that the pope give clar­i­ty and answers. On the one hand, they say, “The pope should answer the dubia. He should clar­i­fy.” On the oth­er hand, they have already made up their minds that Amor­is Laeti­tia is heresy. But if it is, why do they need the pope to answer any ques­tions? The text must be pret­ty clear if they are that cer­tain.

It makes me ques­tion their motive. Are they seek­ing a clar­i­fi­ca­tion, or a con­vic­tion? Are these Catholics, or Phar­isees? Do they want to take instruc­tion from the pope; do they seek to be taught by seri­ous answers to seri­ous ques­tions? Or do the just want to trap him in his words?

All this was brought home to me by this arti­cle in Amer­i­ca, by Ger­ard O’Con­nell. A “dis­senters’ con­fer­ence,” O’Con­nell writes, “call[s] for an answer to the dubia.” But who needs the pope to “answer the dubia,” if one has already made up his mind that Amor­is Laeti­tia is hereti­cal?

An Ital­ian pro­fes­sor, Clau­dio Pierantoni—he teach­es medieval phi­los­o­phy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chile—says that the pope is “defend­ing hereti­cal points.” Oh. He com­pares the Holy Father to Hon­o­rius and Liberius—two popes who, Pieran­toni is cer­tain, were heretics. (Of course, the Church has nev­er said that about either of them, but Pieran­toni knows bet­ter. He’s a pro­fes­sor! Who needs the pil­lar and ground of truth when we have a phi­los­o­phy pro­fes­sor in Chile, who’s Ital­ian?)

But if Pieran­toni has already made up his mind, what could the pope pos­si­bly say in answer to the dubia? The pope, Mr. Pro­fes­sor tells us, “defend[s] hereti­cal points.” These are not the words of some­one who still has ques­tions.

Accord­ing to the arti­cle:

The Ital­ian pro­fes­sor was the most out­spo­ken of the six speak­ers at a day-long con­fer­ence titled “Seek­ing clar­i­ty to Amor­is Laeti­tia, one year lat­er,” held at the Hotel Colum­bus in Rome, a stone’s throw from the Vat­i­can. The con­fer­ence, which chal­lenged Pope Fran­cis’ teach­ing in Chap­ter 8 of “Amor­is Laeti­tia,” was orga­nized by two Ital­ian news out­lets with dis­tinct­ly tra­di­tion­al­ist lean­ings: Il Tim­o­ne, a month­ly review, and La Bus­so­la Quo­tid­i­ano, an online dai­ly, edit­ed by Ric­car­do Cas­ci­oli, a mem­ber of the Com­mu­nion and Lib­er­a­tion move­ment. Both pub­li­ca­tions were sup­port­ive of the teach­ings of St. John Paul II and Pope Bene­dict XVI but have dis­tanced them­selves from that of Pope Fran­cis.

So the con­fer­ence “chal­lenged Pope Fran­cis’ teach­ing,” and yet it still says that “clar­i­ty” is need­ed and he must answer the dubia? If those at the con­fer­ence are unclear, what is there to chal­lenge? The pope has­n’t answered the dubia, so how do they know whether they should chal­lenge Chap­ter 8 or accept chap­ter 8? They have “dis­tanced them­selves from” the pope? Why? Because they have already made up their minds. They judge him guilty first, and only then say, “Well, we just want answers to hon­est ques­tions.” Sure.

I am afraid that is not how it works. This is not dubia, but duplic­i­ty. But it sheds light on Car­di­nal Burke’s refrain that, with­out answers to dubia, he will have no choice but to “for­mal­ly cor­rect” Pope Fran­cis? How so? If AL is hereti­cal, why do you sub­mit dubia? For clar­i­fi­ca­tion or con­vic­tion? If it is not hereti­cal, what are you cor­rect­ing? And if you don’t know, why do you pre­sume guilt?

Per­haps Pope Fran­cis does not answer the dubia, not because he thinks clar­i­ty is bad, but because he can dis­cern when a ques­tion­er has mali­cious intent and is seek­ing, not clar­i­ty, but entrap­ment. The Phar­isees had already judged Jesus guilty; they just want­ed grounds to con­vict him. Even an ortho­dox answer they would inter­pet as heresy and guilt. Which—you know the story—is exact­ly what they did.

Noth­ing new under the sun.