Does Pope Francis deny mortal sin? Part 3 of a response to The Correctors.

his is the third part of a response to the opti­misti­cal­ly-titled “fil­ial cor­rection” of Amor­is Laeti­tia. In part 1 I showed that The Cor­rec­tors claim the text sup­ports an idea that the text express­ly denies. In part 2 I showed that The Cor­rec­tors read a a heresy into the text at the very place the text says the oppo­site. I now move on to the third heresy The Cor­rec­tors claim to find:

A Chris­t­ian believ­er can have full knowl­edge of a divine law and vol­un­tar­i­ly choose to break it in a seri­ous mat­ter, but not be in a state of mor­tal sin as a result of this action.

This is very sim­i­lar to Claimed Heresy # 2. And these are very spe­cif­ic con­di­tions: “full knowl­edge”; “vol­un­tar­i­ly choose.” Where does the text of Amor­is Laeti­tia say this? I have searched through the pas­sages quot­ed by The Cor­rec­tors. Here is what I find:

• §295 speaks of the Law of Grad­u­al­ness. Here the pope notes that, often, one acquires the abil­i­ty to act freely only with time, and not at once;
• §296–297 speaks of the impor­tance of mer­cy and not cast­ing off for­ev­er;
• §298 gives exam­ples of some of the rea­sons Catholics may have entered a sec­ond union. The pope urges that their “sit­u­a­tions” not be “pigeon­holed or fit into over­ly rigid clas­si­fi­ca­tions”;
• §299 speaks of the need to try to rein­te­grate the divorced and remar­ried into the life of the Church;
• §300 notes, as a gener­ic point, that the degree of cul­pa­bil­i­ty is not the same in all cas­es;
• §301, as I not­ed in part 2, speaks of sit­u­a­tions in which there is dimin­ished knowl­edge and dimin­ished free­dom of the will;
• §303 speaks of the role of con­science and dis­cern­ment of the will of God;
• §304, cit­ing St. Thomas Aquinas, notes that par­tic­u­lars make abso­lutist moral judg­ments impos­si­ble;
• §305, as I also not­ed in part 2, speaks of sit­u­a­tions of “objec­tive sin” but not “sub­jec­tive culpability”—that is to say, sit­u­a­tions where there is nei­ther “full knowl­edge,” nor “vol­un­tary choice”;
• §308 con­trasts the desire of some for one-size-fits-all approach­es with the real­i­ty of human weak­ness and the real­iza­tion that the details and par­tic­u­lars of peo­ple’s real lives are messy;
• §311 notes that moral the­ol­o­gy ought to take account of such fac­tors as the pope men­tions.

Once again, the actu­al text of Amor­is Laeti­tia sim­ply does not say what The Cor­rec­tors claim it does. Nowhere—nowhere—does Pope Fran­cis say that those who have “full knowl­edge” and “vol­un­tar­i­ly choose” to com­mit adul­tery with­in an irreg­u­lar mar­riage are not in mor­tal sin. He Does. Not. Say. That. Search as long as you like; you won’t find it.

At best, this notion is read into the text. At worst, it is sim­ply made up. The Cor­rec­tors do not say where, specif­i­cal­ly, in the text, this hereti­cal idea is to be found. They quote a num­ber of pas­sages, but they don’t say which par­tic­u­lar ones, or which par­tic­u­lar words, are sup­posed to sup­port each of the par­tic­u­lar here­sies they list.

That’s not very impres­sive work at all.