New York Times attempts to read the tea leaves ahead of Amoris Laetitia.

At the New York Times, there is an arti­cle today opti­misti­cal­ly titled “How Pope Fran­cis’ ‘Amor­is Laeti­tia’ Could Affect Fam­i­lies and the Church.” From the arti­cle:

 

In the doc­u­ment, known as an apos­tolic exhor­ta­tion, the pope could change church prac­tice on thorny sub­jects like whether divorced Catholics who remar­ry with­out hav­ing obtained annul­ments can receive holy com­mu­nion.

I think not. Did the New York Times not read the pope’s inter­view in-flight from Mex­i­co to Rome? He was asked about this wery thing. The pope said:

Inte­grat­ing in the Church doesn’t mean receiv­ing Com­mu­nion. I know mar­ried Catholics in a sec­ond union who go to church, who go to church once or twice a year and say I want Com­mu­nion, as if join­ing in Com­mu­nion were an award. It’s a work towards inte­gra­tion, all doors are open, but we can­not say, “from here on they can have Com­mu­nion.” This would be an injury also to mar­riage, to the cou­ple, because it wouldn’t allow them to pro­ceed on this path of inte­gra­tion.

So I don’t expect that. The Times, undaunt­ed, con­tin­ues:

He might address debates over same-sex rela­tion­ships, cohab­i­ta­tion and polygamy, an issue in Africa. [Meh.] Or, he could side­step such divi­sive top­ics and stick to broad­er philo­soph­i­cal state­ments.

[Much more like­ly.]

For the past two years, Fran­cis has guid­ed the church through a sweep­ing exer­cise of self-exam­i­na­tion that some schol­ars have com­pared to the Sec­ond Vat­i­can Coun­cil.

Real­ly? Methinks “some schol­ars” doth exag­ger­ate too much. Per­haps it is the result of their own pri­vate fan­tasies of hope and change.

Hav­ing led Catholics into such del­i­cate ter­rain, Fran­cis has stirred hope and fear. Some reli­gious con­ser­v­a­tives warn he could desta­bi­lize the church and under­mine Catholic doc­trine. [The sky is falling.] Some lib­er­als, though, are hop­ing Fran­cis will direct­ly address same-sex mar­riage and con­tra­cep­tion in a way that would make the church more respon­sive to today’s real­i­ties.

By “respon­sive,” read “obeisant.” That is what the Times hopes. But the con­ser­v­a­tives and the lib­er­als are both wrong. (That will not stop either of them, after tomor­row, from claim­ing vin­di­ca­tion; but wrong they are.)

Some who study Fran­cis pre­dict the apos­tolic exhor­ta­tion will be a broad state­ment on uni­ver­sal prob­lems affect­ing fam­i­lies, like pover­ty, migra­tion, domes­tic vio­lence, health care, youth unem­ploy­ment and the neglect of chil­dren and the elder­ly. Fran­cis’ encycli­cal on the envi­ron­ment, “Lauda­to Si’,” released in June, was an enor­mous study in con­nect­ing the dots, and experts are expect­ing a sim­i­lar sweep in “Amor­is Laeti­tia.”

That is prob­a­bly right.

One of the major issues debat­ed was the church pol­i­cy that bars divorced Catholics who have remar­ried with­out seek­ing a church annul­ment of their first union from receiv­ing the sacra­ment of holy com­mu­nion, a cen­ter­piece of Mass.

Well, I am not sure this ques­tion got quite so much atten­tion dur­ing the syn­od as it did in the ven­ti­lat­ing media. But I must point out here, to the New York Times, that this is not prop­er­ly described as a Church “pol­i­cy”; as though it were some­thing that might be changed. It is Church doc­trine that a sec­ond union, with­out annul­ment of the first, is adul­tery. The Church has received this teach­ing from Christ Him­self, in Mark 10:11. It is divine rev­e­la­tion; no pope has the author­i­ty to change this.

It is like­wise Church doc­trine that to receive the Eucharist in a state of mor­tal sin (and adul­tery is a mor­tal sin, being a vio­la­tion of the sixth com­mand­ment) is itself a mor­tal sin. This too is divine rev­e­la­tion, taught by St. Paul in 1 Cor. 11:27. The Church can­not just say: This is no longer a mor­tal sin; go ahead. No pope has the author­i­ty to do so.

This is not “pol­i­cy”; it is pro­hi­bi­tion of mor­tal sin. The pope can not just wake up one morn­ing and say “Meh!” to mor­tal sin. He can’t; he won’t.

We can be cer­tain there will be no change in this regard. Ever. Get used to it now, lib­er­als. It will save your fren­zied hearts from dis­ap­point­ment after dis­ap­point­ment for gen­er­a­tion after gen­er­a­tion. It has been 2000 years, you know.

At the syn­ods, many bish­ops insist­ed that giv­ing com­mu­nion to divorced Catholics would under­mine a core church doc­trine that mar­riage is indis­sol­u­ble. But oth­er bish­ops were intent on find­ing a way to wel­come back the divorced.

Well, it is the divorced and remar­ried; and that “way” of return has long exist­ed; it is called an annul­ment. I have one myself. Or adul­tery can be repent­ed of; yes, in a mar­riage such repen­tance does requires sac­ri­fice and the sup­port of the Church, but God gives us the all the grace we need to obey him.

It must also be said that com­mu­nion for the divorced and remar­ried does not under­mine the indis­sol­u­bil­i­ty of mar­riage so much as it under­mines church doc­trine about adul­tery. One can be divorced, with­out an annul­ment, and still receive the Eucharist as long as there is no sec­ond union.

What the pope can do, as the supreme leg­is­la­tor of the Church, is to make annul­ments quick­er and eas­i­er to obtain, in recog­ni­tion of the pecu­liar real­i­ties of the time we live in. (There may, for exam­ple, be more invalid mar­riages now than at ear­li­er times.) The pope has already made such changes, in a motu pro­prio enti­tled Mitis Iudex (here). I sus­pect that Amor­is Laeti­tia at most will sup­ple­ment what Pope Fran­cis had already done in that ear­li­er doc­u­ment.

I would not be sur­prised if the pope laid out steps the Church can take to reaquaint the cul­ture with the prop­er under­stand­ing of mar­riage, and to help Catholics in the pre-Cana process, so that few­er invalid mar­riages occur in the future.

Now, every­one is look­ing to Fran­cis to set­tle the mat­ter. But he may side­step it, some experts said, by reaf­firm­ing church teach­ing that mar­riage is per­ma­nent, while encour­ag­ing flex­i­bil­i­ty in pas­toral prac­tice toward the remar­ried.

Well, sure, but any such “flex­i­bil­i­ty” will need to come with pre­scribed lim­its, which can be set forth in this or future doc­u­ments from this or future popes. The point is not just that mar­riage is indis­sol­u­ble as much as that remar­riage (assum­ing valid­i­ty of the first mar­riage) is adul­tery.

Apos­tolic exhor­ta­tions are not as author­i­ta­tive as papal encycli­cals, and they do not nor­mal­ly change church doc­trine.

This is when you have to won­der what the Times under­stands. Church doc­trine does not change. It nev­er has. Name for me the last Church doc­trine that changed. Look long and hard and report back to me.

Fran­cis may want to be a bold reformer, but he knows the church can be pushed only so far, so quick­ly, espe­cial­ly giv­en dif­fer­ing opin­ions among church lead­ers. He needs the world’s bish­ops to be uni­fied behind him if he wants changes to fil­ter to the parish lev­el.

Church doc­trine can only change so fast, you know, it has­n’t in 2000 years, but it is at the very door.