Sorry, but I’ve changed my mind about Pope Francis.

mean, I do like Pope Fran­cis. I’ve defend­ed Pope Fran­cis. I want to believe—I real­ly want to believe—that foot­note 351 of Amor­is Laeti­tia can (and should) be read con­sis­tent­ly with Famil­iaris Con­sor­tio 84. I have argued as much mul­ti­ple times on this wery blog.

The pope, in foot­note 351, says that “in some cas­es” cou­ples who are in an irreg­u­lar mar­i­tal union but unable to sep­a­rate for the sake of chil­dren can “receive the help of the sacra­ments.” In the main text (par. 305), he says that such cou­ples are in “an objec­tive sit­u­a­tion of sin,” even if “not sub­jec­tive­ly cul­pa­ble.”

Now, it is stan­dard Catholic teach­ing that, if grave mat­ter is present, mor­tal sin nev­er­the­less may not be. If a per­son has a cocaine addic­tion, for exam­ple, the pres­ence of addic­tion impairs free­dom of the will suf­fi­cient­ly that there is no “sub­jec­tive cul­pa­bil­i­ty.”

Of course, once such a per­son acknowl­edges this prob­lem, he needs to get help to break the addic­tion.

Sim­i­lar­ly, a cou­ple who con­tract­ed an irreg­u­lar mar­riage (divorce and remar­riage with­out annul­ment, for exam­ple) may not be “sub­jec­tive­ly cul­pa­ble” if their con­science had not been ful­ly formed at the time of the wed­ding. Or per­haps they were not Catholic at the time, and their church per­mit­ted such a mar­riage.

Again, once the cou­ple become aware of the “objec­tive sit­u­a­tion of sin,” it is their respon­si­bil­i­ty to cor­rect it. They can no longer appeal to their lack of “sub­jec­tive cul­pa­bil­i­ty.”

That said, Pope St. John Paul II rec­og­nized the pos­si­bil­i­ty that some cou­ples in such a sit­u­a­tion may be unable to sep­a­rate for the good of their chil­dren. In Famil­iaris Con­sor­tio, he said that, were such cou­ples to agree to abstain from sex­u­al union, there would no longer be an “objec­tive sit­u­a­tion of sin,” and they would then be free to receive the Eucharist at Mass.

So the ques­tion becomes: Are the “some cas­es” to which Pope Fran­cis refers in foot­note 351 the same that John Paul II men­tions in Famil­iaris Con­sor­tio. Or are there oth­er cas­es, unspec­i­fied in the text, in which cou­ples can return to the sacra­ment?

In one pub­lic address, Car­di­nal Schon­born seemed to say that 351 was mere­ly an allu­sion to FC 84. I wrote about that here and here.

Accord­ing to Schon­born, a cou­ple who can­not sep­a­rate, for the good of the kids, must be “care­ful not to give scan­dal”:

[N]onetheless they live a mar­ried life—not with sex­u­al union, but they live togeth­er; they share their life; and pub­licly they are a cou­ple. So I see the care­ful dis­cern­ment requires, from the pas­tors and from the peo­ple con­cerned, a very del­i­cate con­science.

Well and good. Pope Fran­cis even said that any ques­tions about foot­note 351 should make note of what Schon­born has to say, because Schon­born is a good the­olo­gian, and he gives great detail, so find what Schon­born says, what do I know, I can’t even remem­ber foot­note 351.

Prob­lem is, it turns out that His Emi­nence Car­di­nal Schon­born has been a tad incon­sis­tent about this foot­note. His words above were in April. Three months lat­er, in July, he gave an inter­view to Fr. Anto­nio Spadaro. In that inter­view, Schon­born says there has been “an evolution”—a “clear” one—in our under­stand­ing of fac­tors that mit­i­gate cul­pa­bil­i­ty for sin.

Okay, maybe so. But what are these new mit­i­gat­ing fac­tors? Schon­born goes on to quote from Amor­is, but that does not answer the ques­tion. The clos­est the text comes is this:

A sub­ject may know full well the rule, yet have great dif­fi­cul­ty in under­stand­ing ‘its inher­ent val­ues,’ or be in a con­crete sit­u­a­tion which does not allow him or her to decide dif­fer­ent­ly and act oth­er­wise with­out fur­ther sin.

That lacks—how shall I say?—precision. And Fr. Spadaro press­es Schon­born:

But this ori­en­ta­tion was already con­tained in some way in the famous para­graph 84 of Famil­iaris Con­sor­tio, to which Fran­cis has recourse sev­er­al times, as when he writes: “Pas­tors must … exer­cise care­ful dis­cern­ment of sit­u­a­tions.

Yes. “John Paul II,” Schon­born says, “already pre­sup­pos­es implic­it­ly that one can­not sim­ply say that every sit­u­a­tion of a divorced and remar­ried per­son is the equiv­a­lent of a life in mor­tal sin.”

Yes. But under which con­di­tions may such a cou­ple return to the sacra­ment? The pope says the Eucharist is not a prize for the per­fect but nour­ish­ment for the weak. How, asks Fr. Spadaro, can the Church “inte­grate” all this into its “clas­si­cal doc­trine”? “Is there a rup­ture here with what [the Church] affirmed in the past?”

Well, says Schon­born, what those “some cas­es” are, that has to be left to “indi­vid­ual dis­cern­ment.” There is no “gen­er­al dis­course” that can answer that. We now have a “dif­fer­ent hermeneu­tic.”

Spadaro will not let it go. “What does ‘some cas­es’ mean?” he asks Schon­born. Can we be giv­en an “inven­to­ry”?

No! says Schon­born. There is no “inven­to­ry.” An “inven­to­ry” would be tan­ta­mount to “abstract casu­istry.” But one thing is for sure, says Schon­born, and that is that the pope “does not stop short at the kind of cas­es” men­tioned by Famil­iaris.

Oh. So it’s not just those who agree to live togeth­er with­out sex­u­al union who can return to the Eucharist; there are oth­er cas­es in which one may do so, but we don’t say what those cas­es are, because that would be casu­istry, we can’t have an inven­to­ry, but we must have dis­cern­ment and con­science.

Got it.

•••

This is why there is a prob­lem with Amor­is Laeti­tia—because there are sec­tions of it, impor­tant sec­tions, that are vague, and which scream out for clar­i­fi­ca­tion; but attempts to clar­i­fy have led to fur­ther vague­ness (as in Schon­born’s inter­view with Spadaro) and incon­sis­tent opin­ions about what it was that the pope wants pas­tors to do, and not do, with cou­ples in an irreg­u­lar union seek­ing to return to the Eucharist. We have had assur­ances that Amor­is is utter­ly con­sis­tent with Famil­iaris and yet there are two prob­lems:

• Schon­born’s words have been incon­sis­tent and them­selves not at all pre­cise;
• None of these clar­i­fi­ca­tions car­ry Mag­is­te­r­i­al weight.

And because they do not car­ry Mag­is­te­r­i­al weight, dif­fer­ent bish­ops are inter­pret­ing Pope Fran­cis to pret­ty much be say­ing what they want him to say, and doing what they want to do, and there is no uni­for­mi­ty or cor­rec­tion where there has been fol­ly.

So four car­di­nals inter­vene with a series of ques­tions ask­ing the pope for clar­i­fi­ca­tion on foot­note 351. The full text is here.

These strike me as fair ques­tions. The car­di­nals are seek­ing a defin­i­tive, Mag­is­te­r­i­al answer to some peo­ple’s doubts—not answers in inter­views, not pri­vate lec­tures, not “go lis­ten to so-and-so.” The rea­son the Church needs a defin­i­tive answer is to pre­vent bish­ops in some places from run­ning wild and doing what­ev­er they want to the poten­tial harm of souls. If some­one in a state of mor­tal sin, not dis­posed to receive the Eucharist, receives the Eucharist any­way, that com­pounds the prob­lem. It is a harm to both the indi­vid­ual who receives and the priest who know­ing­ly dis­trib­utes. A defin­i­tive clar­i­fi­ca­tion would, poten­tial­ly, fore­stall this.

More­over, if there has been gen­uine and legit­i­mate doc­tri­nal devel­op­ment, then the pope needs to spell it out out in fair­ly pre­cise terms. What is this devel­op­ment? How are we to under­stand it?

Only the pope has the author­i­ty to answer such ques­tions. This is why the Church has a pope.

That Pope Fran­cis has refused to answer these ques­tions is a prob­lem. It is tan­ta­mount to the pope say­ing, “I know there is con­fu­sion, I know peo­ple want it cleared up, but too bad. Fig­ure it out your­self.”

Per­haps that is not an accu­rate rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the pope’s think­ing, but that’s what comes across. Con­fu­sion? Pshaw! Con­fu­sion upon your con­fu­sion!

And then, when the pope gives an inter­view attribut­ing con­cerns to “legal­ism,” he comes across as con­de­scend­ing.

And now Fr. Spadaro has writ­ten anoth­er reminder that the ques­tions have already been answered.

Real­ly? By whom? The pope? In what con­text? Are these answers defin­i­tive? Are they mag­is­te­r­i­al?

Only the pope can speak with author­i­ty in answer­ing these questions—not car­di­nals in inter­views, not car­di­nals in pri­vate lec­tures, not the­olo­gians writ­ing in jour­nals, not blog­gers on Patheos or One Vad­er Five.

And also, the Dean of the Rota gives a warn­ing that the pope could strip Car­di­nal Burke and the oth­er three of the car­di­nalate for their imper­ti­nence in mak­ing all this pub­lic and caus­ing scan­dal.

Well, okay, per­haps the car­di­nals should not have made it pub­lic. Per­haps that was ill-advised. But strip­ping them of their red hats would be “most child­ish and unbe­com­ing a suc­ces­sor of St. Peter,” to quote one indi­vid­ual com­ment­ing on the sto­ry on my Face­book page.

And because of all this, many believe that the pope wants con­fu­sion, likes con­fu­sion, does not wish to clear up con­fu­sion, and if there is con­fu­sion he must scoff at con­fu­sion.

No. We have a pope, in part, so that he can answer ques­tions such as these, which arise from time to time in the Church. They have arisen now. For the good of the body, for the uni­ty of the Church, the pope must answer them. He alone can do so with author­i­ty. That is why we have a pope.

I want to believe Amor­is Laeti­tia is con­sis­tent with Church teach­ing, but if it is, why does the pope have such a dif­fi­cult time clar­i­fy­ing that con­sis­ten­cy?

Roma, loquere.