Does Amoris Laetitia contradict the Council of Trent? Part 5 of a response to Dr. E. Christian Brugger.

Note: This is Part 5 of a five-part response to Dr. E. Chris­t­ian Brug­ger’s cri­tique of Amor­is Laeti­tia. Part 1 can be found here. Dr. Brug­ger’s arti­cle can be found at Catholic World Report here. Amor­is Laeti­tia can be found here.

r. Brug­ger’s fifth and final claim about Amor­is Laeti­tia is that it is “incon­sis­tent” with the Coun­cil of Trent. This one is very briefly refut­ed. He is think­ing of AL 301:

Hence it is can no longer sim­ply be said that all those in any “irreg­u­lar” sit­u­a­tion are liv­ing in a state of mor­tal sin and are deprived of sanc­ti­fy­ing grace. More is involved here than mere igno­rance of the rule. 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 act dif­fer­ent­ly and decide oth­er­wise with­out fur­ther sin.

Dr. Brug­ger finds this at odds with the Coun­cil of Tren­t’s insis­tence, in canon 18 of the Decree on Jus­ti­fi­ca­tion, that “If any one says the com­mand­ments of God are impos­si­ble to keep, even by a per­son who is jus­ti­fied and con­sti­tut­ed in grace: let him be anath­e­ma.”

But the read­er will recall AL 295, which I keep bring­ing up since Dr. Brug­ger does not men­tion it at all in more than five thou­sand words:

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.

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. He is not speak­ing about the truth of the moral law, nor one’s abil­i­ty to fol­low it, but instead whether one’s fail­ure to fol­low it con­sti­tutes mor­tal sin.

When that con­text is con­sid­ered, AL 301 does not become much of a prob­lem at all. “Hence it can no longer sim­ply be said,” the pope writes in the very pas­sage cit­ed by Dr. Brug­ger, “that all those in any ‘irreg­u­lar’ sit­u­a­tion are liv­ing in a state of mor­tal sin and are deprived of sanc­ti­fy­ing grace.” The dis­cus­sion here is about whether one can be charged with mor­tal sin, not whether one is unable to fol­low the moral law.

“What AL is ignor­ing,” says Dr. Brug­ger, “is the ade­qua­cy of grace to enable peo­ple to respond to the over­all objec­tive demands of the Gospel.”

Not so: Remem­ber AL 295: “It can be fol­lowed with the help of grace.” Where in that state­ment does Dr. Brug­ger find a denial of “the ade­qua­cy of grace”?

That is the unan­swered ques­tion.