Crisis!!! plays Benedict vs. Francis on Amoris Laetitia.

ichard A. Spinel­lo, author of this arti­cle at Cri­sis!!!, goes as far as to claim that the pope emer­i­tus’s recent let­ter was an “implic­it rebuke” of Amor­is Laeti­tia. Odd, then, that the Vat­i­can gave the green light to B16. How very care­less of Frank, to miss his sub­text this way. But Spinel­lo sees all, even though “Bene­dict is quite dis­crete, of course, and nev­er men­tions Amor­is Laeti­tia.” It all has the tone of wish­ful think­ing on Spinel­lo’s part.

Here’s why I say that. First we must lis­ten to Spinel­lo:

[Pope Bene­dic­t’s] ref­er­ence to an ‘absolute good’ and to ‘fun­da­men­tal­ly evil’ actions stands in sharp con­trast to the more pli­ant moral doc­trine pro­posed in this papal pro­nounce­ment.

So I am to believe, am I, that Pope Fran­cis, in Amor­is Laeti­tia, rejects con­cepts of “absolute good” and “fun­da­men­tal evil.” Prob­lem is, if you actu­al­ly read the text—I have, dear reader—you will dis­cov­er that the pope explic­it­ly affirms these things. Here is §295:

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.

So there are no excep­tions to the divine law. But Amor­is Laeti­tia con­tin­ues. Here is §297:

Nat­u­ral­ly, if some­one flaunts an objec­tive sin as if it were part of the Chris­t­ian ide­al, or wants to impose some­thing oth­er than what the Church teach­es, he or she can in no way pre­sume to teach or preach to oth­ers; this is a case of some­thing which sep­a­rates from the com­mu­ni­ty (cf. Mt 18:17). Such a per­son needs to lis­ten once more to the Gospel mes­sage and its call to con­ver­sion.

So there is such a thing as “objec­tive sin,” accord­ing to Pope Fran­cis. And if you try to reject it, you are “separate[d] from the com­mu­ni­ty.”

Well, it sure does not sound as though Pope Fran­cis believes in a “pli­ant moral doc­trine.” Does it? Where there is some pli­an­cy in Amor­is Laeti­tia, it has to do with the real­i­ty that grave mat­ter does not always equal mor­tal sin. This is stan­dard Catholic moral the­ol­o­gy. The Cat­e­chism (CCC 1857) lists three con­di­tions for mor­tal sin, and only one of them is that grave mat­ter be involved. But there must also be “full knowl­edge” and “delib­er­ate con­sent.” And Pope Fran­cis rec­og­nizes, as did St. John Paul II before him in Famil­iaris Con­sor­tio, that indi­vid­u­als approach full under­stand­ing of the moral law grad­u­al­ly.

So there is a great deal of “pli­an­cy” there, but not at all on the fact that the moral law is objec­tive. The pope states clear­ly that it is, and Spinel­lo does not the truth when he tells you oth­er­wise.