Category: Amoris Laetitia

The Cor­rec­tors claim the pope teach­es: “Our Lord Jesus Christ wills that the Church aban­don her peren­ni­al dis­ci­pline of refus­ing the Eucharist to the divorced and remar­ried and of refus­ing abso­lu­tion to the divorced and remar­ried who do not express con­tri­tion for their state of life and a firm pur­pose of amend­ment with regard to it.” Hmm. I’ve often had the dif­fi­cul­ty in find­ing out exact­ly where they find these here­sies, for they are slop­py. They nev­er say, “Heresy X is to be found in Para­graph Y.” Search for your­self. Report back to me if you see what I don’t.

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.

Once again, the actu­al text of Amor­is Laeti­tia does not say what The Cor­rec­tors claim it does. Nowhere does the pope say that those who have “full knowl­edge” and “vol­un­tar­i­ly choose” to com­mit adul­tery with­in an irreg­u­lar mar­riage are not in mor­tal sin. At best, this notion is read into the text. At worst, it is sim­ply made up. The Cor­rec­tors do not say where, they find this heresy. They quote a num­ber of pas­sages, but they don’t say which sup­ports their claims. I go in search of such a text and fail to find it, because The Cor­rec­tors do very unim­pres­sive work.

The “fil­ial cor­rec­tion” of Pope Francis—the work, of “a few dozen Catholics”; a “mar­gin­al fringe” of “main­ly obscure fig­ures” claims to find sev­en here­sies in Amor­is Laeti­tia. This time they charge the pope with the belief that peo­ple who sin grave­ly with full knowl­edge and con­sent of the will are not mor­tal­ly cul­pa­ble. But they leave out a great deal of §301 when they quote from it, but the miss­ing part is very impor­tant, since it talks about “mit­i­gat­ing fac­tors and sit­u­a­tions.” Oops. The Cor­rec­tors just don’t read very well, do they? Or per­haps they’re inten­tion­al­ly dis­hon­est. I can’t say.

Edward Pentin breath­less­ly says that this is the first “fil­ial cor­rec­tion” since 1333! I mean, wow. Let us cry over Jerusalem. But what canon­i­cal stand­ing do any of them have to be cor­rect­ing Peter? Can any­one cor­rect Peter, oth­er than Christ? The high­est-rank­ing soul among them is Bp. Fel­lay. But the SSPX is out­side the Catholic Church. The rest are a bunch of “lay schol­ars” and a few cler­gy. Main­ly, it reads like a who’s who of Who? Any­way, the Cor­rec­tors claim to find sev­en here­sies in Amor­is Laeti­tia. The unbi­ased may find an infi­nite num­ber of them, who knows?

How­ev­er one reads AL 301, he can not read it in such a way that it would deny what the pope had said just six para­graphs ear­li­er. The pope does not think that “the com­mand­ments of God are impos­si­ble to fol­low,” for he says in AL 295 that “every­one with­out excep­tion” can do so. Dr. Brug­ger does not men­tion this part. So what is the pope say­ing in AL 301? The first thing that must be kept in mind, when answer­ing that ques­tion, is the con­text: In 301 the pope is dis­cussing var­i­ous fac­tors that can mit­i­gate cul­pa­bil­i­ty when grave mat­ter is present.

I wish Pope Fran­cis had not used the word “ide­al” at all in ref­er­ence to the moral law; if for no oth­er rea­son than its poten­tial to mis­lead. I can be frank about that. The word can sug­gest that a moral life is no more than a goal; God prefers that you achieve it, but strict­ly speak­ing you can do with­out it if you fall short. But that is not what Pope Fran­cis meant to imply. And to know he didn’t, we need look no fur­ther than AL 295, where he speaks of the Law of Grad­u­al­ness. The moral law is “objec­tive”; it is “for every­one with­out excep­tion”; and it “can be fol­lowed.” Thus says Pope Fran­cis.