Now, if Life Site News could correct the record. (Again.)

his post is intend­ed as a brief fol­low-up to yes­ter­day’s (here), in which I not­ed Card. Schon­born’s clar­i­fy­ing words on the issue of com­m­mu­nion for divorced and remar­ried Catholics. Briefly, Card. Schon­born not­ed that foot­note 351 in Amor­is Laeti­tia—the one that has been get­ting all the atten­tion and being used to claim that Pope Fran­cis per­mits a change in this regard—is only meant to be read con­sis­tent­ly with Famil­iaris Con­sor­tio 84.

In foot­note 351, Pope Fran­cis says that “in cer­tain cas­es” cou­ples in an irreg­u­lar union can receive “the help of the sacra­ments.” He does not spec­i­fy what those “cer­tain cas­es are”; but Card. Schon­born takes us to FC 84 and says the pope has in mind cou­ples who must remain mar­ried for the good of chil­dren, but who agree to prac­tice con­ti­nence.

Says Card. Schon­born:

Of course being care­ful not to give scan­dal. But Pope Fran­cis has a lit­tle note on that, where he seems to observe that nonethe­less 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.

In oth­er words, what Card. Schon­born says here is that foot­note 351 is not a depar­ture from Famil­iaris Con­sor­tio 84, but an appli­ca­tion of it.

Now, this pre­sen­ta­tion was giv­en on April 9 at the Inter­na­tion­al The­o­log­i­cal Insti­tute in Aus­tria. Three days lat­er, on April 12, Edward Pentin pub­lished the YouTube video at the Nation­al Catholic Reg­is­ter. So any­one, from April 12 on, could have checked this arti­cle, lis­tened to the video, and found this out.

The video is here, and you can see for your­self. The rel­e­vant part starts just after 59 min­utes into the pre­sen­ta­tion, and lasts about ten min­utes.

Then what hap­pened is that, on April 16 the pope was on a plane from Greece to Rome and gave an inter­view. You know the pars­ing that takes place after these inter­views. It’s a real cir­cus. But this was after Card. Schon­born’s pre­sen­ta­tion and Mr. Pentin’s arti­cle. A reporter from the Wall Street Jour­nal, Frank Roc­ca, asked the pope about com­mu­nion for the divorced and remar­ried. Are there open­ings? he want­ed to know.

The pope replied—and you can check the transcript—that the surest way to get a com­plete and accu­rate answer to the ques­tion would be to review Card. Schon­born’s pre­sen­ta­tion of Amor­is Laeti­tia. Now remem­ber: This is post­ed at the Reg­is­ter. It’s on YouTube. Card. Schon­born, said Pope Fran­cis, is a good the­olo­gian. He knows the doc­trine of the Church. “In that pre­sen­ta­tion,” the pope says, “your ques­tion will find an answer.”

Read care­ful­ly now, because this is where Life Site News comes in. The wery same day—April 16—LSN pub­lished an arti­cle by Jon-Hen­ry West­en about the inter­view. The title was: “Pope says Schon­born inter­pre­ta­tion on com­mu­nion for remar­ried is the final word.” “Final word” not quite accu­rate; that’s an embell­ish­ment; but I won’t quib­ble here. The key point is that Life Site News, because it was writ­ing about the pope’s inter­view and what he said about Schon­born, knew full well that the pope direct­ed the reporter to the car­di­nal’s pre­sen­ta­tion. And we find the video of the April 9 event at the Nation­al Catholic Reg­is­ter four days ahead of this. Life Site News even links to Mr. Pentin’s arti­cle; so it knew of the video.

How­ev­er, Mr. West­en’s arti­cle made no men­tion at all of Schon­born’s ten-minute dis­cus­sion of foot­note 351 and how it was to be under­stood con­sis­tent­ly with Famil­iaris Con­sor­tio 84. Instead, he spent the major­i­ty of his arti­cle claim­ing that foot­note 351 con­tra­dicts FC 84.

So I ask: How did this over­sight occur? It may very well have been a total­ly inno­cent goof. That hap­pens; been there, done that. But would­n’t it be prop­er, at this point, for Life Site News to explain that, accord­ing to Schonborn—the man Pope Fran­cis says holds the cor­rect under­stand­ing about the issue of com­mu­nion for the divorced and remarried—AL is actu­al­ly to be read in har­mo­ny with FC 84, not as a depar­ture from it? Would­n’t it clear up a lot of poten­tial con­fu­sion if Life Site News were to say, Okay, Schon­born spec­i­fies that the “cer­tain cas­es” in which “the help of the sacra­ments” may be giv­en are cas­es in which the cou­ple has agreed to prac­tice celiba­cy?

Note: The sec­tion of FC 84 that Mr. West­en quot­ed from to show that Amor­is is a depar­ture, was quot­ed by Car­di­nal Schon­born to explain how Amor­is is con­sis­tent. Should­n’t Life Site News make note of this? Per­haps they will wish to dis­pute that Card. Schon­born has the cor­rect under­stand­ing, even though Pope Fran­cis him­self said that he does have the cor­rect under­stand­ing. They have every right to do that. But would­n’t it be right for Life Site News to put all the facts out there, so read­ers can make a judg­ment for them­selves?

Just a sug­ges­tion.

•••

Update 5/3/16. I spoke this morn­ing with Jon-Hen­ry West­en of Life Site News, and he pro­vid­ed some clar­i­fi­ca­tion I want to make note of.

One of my con­cerns about his article—I talk about it here—was the sen­tence where Mr. West­en writes that foot­note 351 “is being seen as” open­ing com­mu­nion to the divorced and remar­ried who lack an annul­ment (inde­pen­dent of con­ti­nence). I believed that this phras­ing, in the pas­sive voice, could be tak­en to sug­gest that such a view is the com­mon con­sen­sus rather than what, in fact, it is: a claim that is in dis­pute.

Mr. West­en clar­i­fies that the ref­er­ence was to the world­wide media broad­ly, not the Catholic media in par­tic­u­lar.

He also points out that the pre­sen­ta­tion to which the pope had referred in his inter­view was Card. Schon­born’s orig­i­nal, Vat­i­can pre­sen­ta­tion. (The video of the Vat­i­can pre­sen­ta­tion is here and the writ­ten ver­sion is here. These links were pro­vid­ed to me by Mr. West­en.)

The pre­sen­ta­tion in Aus­tria, he says, was to a group of con­ser­v­a­tives, and his view is that Card. Schon­born may have been attempt­ing to assuage their wor­ries in his ref­er­ence to con­ti­nence as the “cer­tain cas­es” the pope has in mind. He also said that Card. Schon­born’s ref­er­ence to the “five atten­tions” was an impor­tant part of the over­all con­text that should not be over­looked in any dis­cus­sion of the video.

I do want to add, lest there be any con­fu­sion, that my point in this arti­cle was not to accuse Life Site News of any dis­tor­tion or delib­er­ate leav­ing out of the facts. My only point was my own opin­ion that Card. Schon­born’s clar­i­fi­ca­tion at the ITI pre­sen­ta­tion should be not­ed for the record, what­ev­er one makes of it, and should fac­tor in to how foot­note 351 is under­stood. That remains my view.