Category: Moral Theology

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.

Per­haps one may not, overnight, be able to aban­don a sin into which one has fall­en and com­mit­ted for a long peri­od of time. Things you do by habit you often need to aban­don in stages. Yes, I avail myself of the con­fes­sion­al; I make a firm pur­pose of amend­ment; but per­haps in three days I fall again. The “most gen­er­ous response” is to rec­og­nize the error, return to con­fes­sion, and try again. God does not say, “I want you to keep sin­ning.” He does say, “If you can’t aban­don your sin overnight, I want you to move in that direc­tion.” That’s why the pope uses words like “for now.”

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 sote­ri­ol­o­gy.

At 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. 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. I don’t dis­agree with every­thing Dr. Brug­ger says.

In Chap­ter 8 of Amor­is Laeti­tia, Pope Fran­cis speaks of the “law of grad­u­al­ness”; John Paul II was the first to write of such a law, in Famil­iaris Con­sor­tio 34. Here is what John Paul II says: “It is always very impor­tant to have a right notion of the moral order, its val­ues and its norms; and the impor­tance is all the greater when the dif­fi­cul­ties in the way of respect­ing them become more numer­ous and seri­ous.” Very much so. That is the very sit­u­a­tion in which we find our­selves, in an increas­ing­ly sec­u­lar, even pagan, cul­ture. We have lost “the right notion of the moral order.”