Pope gives another interview; false reporting begins at 1 Vader 5 forthwith.

r. Steve Sko­jec, of 1 Vad­er 5 infamy (he calls it 1 Peter 5; he’s allowed), was quick to pounce, claws unsheathed, on the lat­est papal inter­view. He did so in order to make the self-affirm­ing claim that Pope Fran­cis gave an unam­bigu­ous, full-throat­ed “Yes!” to com­mu­nion for the divorced and remar­ried. Shaz­a­am. The pope, says Mr. Sko­jec, gave “a very straight­for­ward affir­ma­tion” in response to a “very direct ques­tion” from a reporter.

“Straight­for­ward,” you say? “Very direct,” you say?

Then let us hie our­selves to the text of that inter­view and take a look at this “very direct ques­tion.” It comes from Frank Roc­ca of the Wall Street Jour­nal.

If you per­mit me, I’d like to ask you anoth­er ques­tion about an event of recent days, which was your apos­tolic exhor­ta­tion. As you well know, there has been much dis­cus­sion about on one of the many, I know that we’ve focused on this a lot…there has been much dis­cus­sion after the pub­li­ca­tion. Some sus­tain that noth­ing has changed with respect to the dis­ci­pline that reg­u­lates access to the sacra­ments for the divorced and remar­ried, that the Law, the pas­toral prax­is and obvi­ous­ly the doc­trine remain the same. Oth­ers sus­tain that much has changed and that there are new open­ings and pos­si­bil­i­ties. For a Catholic who wants to know: are there new, con­crete pos­si­bil­i­ties that didn’t exist before the pub­li­ca­tion of the exhor­ta­tion or not?

Are there pos­si­bil­i­ties? Mr. Roc­ca asks. Well, surely—surely!—you can’t get more “direct” than the neb­u­lous word “pos­si­bil­i­ties.” Can you?

And in response to this ques­tion about the vague pres­ence of unspec­i­fied “pos­si­bil­i­ties,” Pope Fran­cis says: “I can say yes, many.”

Now, it is in the very nature of things for Mr. Sko­jec to end the quo­ta­tion with the word “yes.” He does con­cede that the pope’s “answer went on longer”; but he says noth­ing about what else the pope added. Naughts and cross­es from Mr. Sko­jec.

I, how­ev­er, will tell you. Here is the pope’s full answer:

I can say yes, many. [UPDATE 4/17/16: The cor­rect trans­la­tion is prob­a­bly “Yes, peri­od.” See my Face­book post here for a fuller expla­na­tion.] But it would be an answer that is too small. I rec­om­mend that you read the pre­sen­ta­tion of Car­di­nal Schon­born, who is a great the­olo­gian. He was the sec­re­tary for the Con­gre­ga­tion of the Doc­trine of the Faith, and he knows the doc­trine of the faith well. In that pre­sen­ta­tion, your ques­tion will find an answer.

So yes, Mr. Roc­ca, you know, there are “possibilities”—I don’t dis­cuss what they are and what they aren’t—but there’s more to it than that, this requires a fuller answer, and I direct you to Car­di­nal Schon­born’s pre­sen­ta­tion, where such an answer is to be found.

Sounds very “straight­for­ward” to me.

If truth be told, dear reader—as it must and shall—that is the most unspe­cif­ic “yes” I can recall read­ing in a month of 1 Vad­er 5 posts. It is a vague and fuzzy, kin­da-sor­ta non-answer. Sure, yeah, you know, there are pos­si­bil­i­ties, in an incom­plete kind of way, there are always pos­si­bil­i­ties, but go and read Schon­born, Mr. Roc­ca, what’s wrong with you, can’t you do your own home­work?

So doing our home­work (which Mr. Sko­jec, who stops at “yes,” does not do), let us hie our­selves, one more time, over to Car­di­nal Schon­born’s pre­sen­ta­tion, to which the pope referred the reporter. It is easy to find—lo, I make it eas­i­er—ever hear of Google, Messrs. Roc­ca & Sko­jec? Here is the rel­e­vant text:

What we are speak­ing of [i.e., with ref­er­ence to the divorced and remar­ried] is a process of accom­pa­ni­ment and dis­cern­ment which “guides the faith­ful to an aware­ness of their sit­u­a­tion before God.” But Pope Fran­cis also recalls that “this dis­cern­ment can nev­er pre­scind from the Gospel demands of truth and char­i­ty, as pro­posed by the Church.

Oh, yeah, that part is impor­tant. Dis­cern­ment “can nev­er pre­scind” from the truth about a cou­ple’s “sit­u­a­tion before God.” It can nev­er pre­scind from what the Church teach­es. One can not just go around say­ing, Oh, you’re good, and you’re good, and you over there, you’re good too; it’s all good. No. Pope Fran­cis says: Dis­cern­ment, right, but do not pre­sume that dis­cern­ment means that.

(I know: Peo­ple are going to pre­sume that any­way, because they want to. There’s a nar­ra­tive to con­sid­er. So it goes.)

Car­di­nal Schon­born con­tin­ues:

Nat­u­ral­ly this pos­es the ques­tion: what does the Pope say in rela­tion to access to the sacra­ments for peo­ple who live in “irreg­u­lar sit­u­a­tions.” Pope Fran­cis reit­er­ates the need to dis­cern care­ful­ly the sit­u­a­tion in keep­ing with St. John Paul II’s Famil­iaris Con­sor­tio.

Oh, this dis­cern­ment must remain con­sis­tent with Famil­iaris Con­sor­tio, must it? Yes, and you know, it’s fun­ny that foot­note 329 of Amor­is Laeti­tia would refer us to §84 of Famil­iaris. Just like Car­di­nal Schon­born said; you’d almost think he actu­al­ly read the exhor­ta­tion.

And what does St. John Paul II say there? I’m glad you asked. Let us take a look, shall we? (FC is here, for I have in mind your con­ve­nience, dear read­er, and link every­thing. Please check me out.)

[T]he Church reaf­firms her prac­tice, which is based upon Sacred Scrip­ture, of not admit­ting to Eucharis­tic Com­mu­nion divorced per­sons who have remar­ried. They are unable to be admit­ted there­to from the fact that their state and con­di­tion of life objec­tive­ly con­tra­dict that union of love between Christ and the Church which is sig­ni­fied and effect­ed by the Eucharist. Besides this, there is anoth­er spe­cial pas­toral rea­son: if these peo­ple were admit­ted to the Eucharist, the faith­ful would be led into error and con­fu­sion regard­ing the Church’s teach­ing about the indis­sol­u­bil­i­ty of mar­riage.

Oh, that’s what Famil­iaris Con­sor­tio says, does it? And pas­toral dis­cern­ment must be “in keep­ing with” FC, accord­ing to Car­di­nal Schon­born. Well now. Inter­est­ing what you’ll find when you fol­low the trail of bread­crumbs Pope Fran­cis throws down before a reporter.

Car­di­nal Schon­born con­tin­ues:

Dis­cern­ment must help to find pos­si­ble ways of respond­ing to God and grow­ing in the midst of lim­its. [Oh, there are lim­its? Schon­born, to whom the pope refers us, says there are lim­its. It’s not come one come all? Fas­ci­nat­ing.] By think­ing that every­thing is black and white, we some­times close off the way of grace and of growth, and dis­cour­age paths of sanc­ti­fi­ca­tion which give glo­ry to God’. … In the sense of this “via car­i­tatis,” the Pope affirms, in a hum­ble and sim­ple man­ner, in a note that the help of the sacra­ments may also be giv­en in “cer­tain cas­es.”

Okay, but which sacra­ments? Which cas­es? Well, that’s where things get tricky, and as Car­di­nal Schon­born says: “For this pur­pose [the pope] does not offer us case stud­ies or recipes.”

No, and he does­n’t give “case stud­ies” to Mr. Roc­ca at the Wall Street Jour­nal either. He cer­tain­ly sends no case stud­ies off to the inbox of One Vad­er Five. Much as Mr. Sko­jec wants to tell us that the pope gave a “straight­for­ward affir­ma­tion” that the divorced and remar­ried may just line up to receive the Eucharist, the pope says noth­ing of the sort. What he does say is that each case is its own and local pas­tors must dis­cern the best way to bring this cou­ple or that cou­ple into fuller par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Church.

But the pope, in his exhor­ta­tion, is at pains to point out that it would be a “grave mis­un­der­stand­ing” (AL 300) to think that priests can just go around “mak­ing excep­tions” to Church law. He says this. §300. Seek and ye shall find.

So what, then, are these “pos­si­bil­i­ties,” which did not exist before but do now, for access to “the sacra­ments”? The pope said pos­si­bil­i­ties exist. Here a pos­si­bil­i­ty, there a pos­si­bil­i­ty, every­where a pos­si­bil­i­ty pos­si­bil­i­ty. (Do you notice, by the way, how in the minds of some the word “pos­si­bil­i­ty” gets trans­mo­gri­fied into “absolute imme­di­ate cer­tain­ty”?)

The pope does not say. I can think of one: The annul­ment process has been made eas­i­er now, ever since the motu pro­prio he issued last year. Remem­ber Mitis Iudex? The pope reformed the process. Annul­ments are now eas­i­er and quick­er to grant. So there’s one “pos­si­bil­i­ty.”

In truth, the pope can not answer the ques­tion any more specif­i­cal­ly than he does, because the whole point is that each case is its own. There is no such thing as a flow­chart into which you can plug all the data and watch it come back “com­mu­nion” or “damna­tion.” So a cou­ple in an irreg­u­lar union needs to get into that dirty busi­ness of talk­ing to their priest, explain­ing their sit­u­a­tion, and dis­cern­ing what hin­ders them from the Eucharist and what they need to do if they want to return. At no point, not one, does the pope say that Church law can just be dis­re­gard­ed as part of this dis­cern­ment. In fact, the pope says that any such notion is—I will say it again—“a grave mis­un­der­stand­ing.” (§300. Check it out.)

Pas­tors who deal with cou­ples in irreg­u­lar unions all the time know that each case is its own and requires its own indi­vid­ual response and dis­cern­ment. Abso­lutists like Mr. Sko­jec are scan­dal­ized by the real world.