What does Pope Francis think Our Lord Jesus Christ wills? Part 7 of a response to The Correctors.

ur Lord Jesus Christ wills”—I quote from The Correc­tors, who bold­ly claim to find this sev­enth and final heresy in Amor­is Laeti­tia—“that the Church aban­don her peren­ni­al dis­ci­pline of refus­ing the Eucharist to the divorced and remar­ried and of refus­ing abso­lu­tion to the divorced and remar­ried who do not express con­tri­tion for their state of life and a firm pur­pose of amend­ment with regard to it.”

Hmm. Now, I have refut­ed all the oth­er charges of heresy the fil­ial ones have made against the Holy Father. And you will recall, dear read­er, I often had the dif­fi­cul­ty in find­ing out exact­ly where in the text of Amor­is Laeti­tia they think they find those notions. This is because they do slop­py work. They nev­er say, “Well, heresy 3 is to be found in para­graph 297 in these words.” No. And thus I find the same trou­ble with Sup­posed Heresy 7. I find no pas­sage in Amor­is Laeti­tia—cer­tain­ly not the pas­sages quot­ed by the fil­ial ones as smok­ing guns of some sort—where Pope Fran­cis invokes the will of Christ or says any­thing about the Church “aban­don­ing its peren­ni­al dis­ci­pline” with regard to the Eucharist. Search for your­self. Report back to me if you see what I don’t.

Is it in §295? Here the pope dis­cuss­es the Law of Grad­u­al­ness, which in fact was taught by St. John Paul II in Famil­iaris Con­sor­tio 34. The fil­ial ones have no prob­lem with FC.

“Oh, but Alt!” you will say. “St. John Paul II denies that this is a ‘grad­u­al­ness of the law,’ as though there is a dif­fer­ent law for dif­fer­ent peo­ple!” Sure. And Pope Fran­cis says the wery same thing, and The Cor­rec­tors include that wery part: “This is not a ‘grad­u­al­ness of law,’ ” the pope says. So what’s the prob­lem?

Is it in §296? Here Pope Fran­cis says that the way of the Church has always been the way of rein­state­ment and not cast­ing off for­ev­er. And he’s right. That’s what the Sacra­ment of Penance is. You would have to do a very labored job of read­ing into in order to pre­sume that the pope some­how means that there are no con­di­tions for rein­state­ment and for­mer dis­ci­plines are defunct.

(On the oth­er hand, read­ing into, as opposed to read­ing, is a huge prob­lem, I find.)

Is it in §297? “No one can be con­demned for­ev­er,” the pope says. “That is not the log­ic of the Gospel.” Again, watch out for read­ing into.

Is it in §298? The pope begins by not­ing that the divorced and remar­ried find them­selves in a vari­ety of sit­u­a­tions, which can not all be rigid­ly clas­si­fied as though all such per­sons are in mor­tal sin.

Now, that seems to me to be self-evi­dent. Or at least, it ought to be. There are obsti­nate legal­ists in the Church these days, I know. Be that as it may, you have to do a good deal of read­ing into to con­clude that §298 tells us any­thing about what Christ wills, or about sacra­men­tal dis­ci­pline. That dis­cus­sion is not there. The pope only goes as far as say­ing that pas­tors must “care­ful­ly dis­cern sit­u­a­tions.”

Well, what about §299? There, the pope says that he agrees with many of the Syn­od fathers, who believed that the bap­tized who are in irreg­u­lar unions ought to par­tic­i­pate in the Church “in the vari­ety of ways pos­si­ble.” They are not “excom­mu­ni­cat­ed,” says the pope.

Well, now, “excom­mu­ni­cat­ed” and “barred from the Eucharist” are not in fact the same thing. Dr. Ed Peters tells us as much when he points out that there has nev­er been an excom­mu­ni­ca­tion against the divorced and remar­ried. That’s “fake canon law,” says Dr. Peters. So we are talk­ing about two sep­a­rate things here; and when Pope Fran­cis says, “They are not excom­mu­ni­cat­ed,” he is point­ing out what has always been the case. He changes noth­ing about Eucharis­tic dis­ci­pline.

A sec­ond point here is that the pope says that the divorced and remar­ried should take part in the life of the Church “in the vari­eties of ways pos­si­ble.” By point­ing that out, isn’t he imply­ing that some ways are not pos­si­ble?

Do the fil­ial ones find this heresy in §300? The pope says here that, through dis­cern­ment, one could real­ize no grave fault exists, and foot­note 336 adds: “This is also the case with regard to sacra­men­tal dis­ci­pline, since dis­cern­ment can rec­og­nize that in a par­tic­u­lar sit­u­a­tion no grave fault exists.”

It’s very dif­fi­cult to know what can be read into this. (This is one rea­son I have said the pope should answer the dubia, but I hard­ly go so far as to iden­ti­fy here­sies in Amor­is Laeti­tia.) For one thing, the pope does not invoke “the will of Our Lord Jesus Christ” or any such words, and accord­ing to the word­ing from the fil­ial ones, the heresy is that the pope claims sacra­men­tal changes to be Christ’s will. So that’s one prob­lem.

Sec­ond, the pope is talk­ing about “par­tic­u­lar sit­u­a­tions” in a con­text that would imply excep­tions, not a change in nor­ma­tive prac­tice. Nor is a change in prac­tice being man­dat­ed here. Odd indeed would it be for a pope to do any such thing in a foot­note in an exhor­ta­tion.

Third, to find this par­tic­u­lar heresy here, the fil­ial ones would have to assume that the “par­tic­u­lar sit­u­a­tions” the pope has in mind involve peo­ple who express no con­tri­tion or pur­pose of amend­ment. But here the “read­ing into” prob­lem aris­es again. Pope Fran­cis does not say that. In fact, let’s go back again to §297 and recall to our minds a pas­sage the fil­ial ones do not men­tion:

Nat­u­ral­ly, if some­one flaunts an objec­tive sin as if it were part of the Chris­t­ian ide­al, or wants to impose some­thing oth­er than what the Church teach­es, he or she can in no way pre­sume to teach or preach to oth­ers; this is a case of some­thing which sep­a­rates from the com­mu­ni­ty (cf. Mt 18:17). Such a per­son needs to lis­ten once more to the Gospel mes­sage and its call to con­ver­sion.

This is where the pope seems to be address­ing peo­ple who show no con­tri­tion or pur­pose of amend­ment, and in their case, he says they are “sep­a­rat­ed from the com­mu­ni­ty” and need to “lis­ten … to the Gospel” and its “call to con­ver­sion.” It sure does not sound like the pope is sug­gest­ing hand­ing out the Eucharist to the obsti­nate and unre­pen­tant. But that’s what the fil­ial ones claim the pope is advo­cat­ing.

Or is the heresy in §301? The pope notes here that not every­one in an irreg­u­lar union is nec­es­sar­i­ly in a state of mor­tal sin. And we’ve vis­it­ed this before. It’s a reit­er­a­tion of §298. Been there, refut­ed that. This is just an obser­va­tion, a premise. You can’t con­clude from it that the pope believes some wild thing unless the pope, you know, says that wild thing. Read­ing into, remem­ber?

Is it in §303? Prob­a­bly not, since The Cor­rec­tors already seem to have tak­en up this pas­sage with one of their ear­li­er charges of heresy, and I addressed it here.

Is it in §304? No. I sure can’t find it there. In this para­graph, the pope is exeget­ing St. Thomas Aquinas’s view that there are always excep­tions to gen­er­al prin­ci­ples the more one “descends to mat­ters of detail.” And unless you are a legal­ist, this is com­mon sense. If your sheep fell into a pit on the Sab­bath, you would get it out. Noth­ing here­in about chang­ing Church dis­ci­plines, noth­ing about peo­ple who have no con­tri­tion, noth­ing about what Christ wills.

Is it in §305? Again, no. This is of a piece with §303, in which the pope observes that not every­one who is in an objec­tive­ly sin­ful state is guilty of mor­tal sin—Catechism 101, dear read­er; it’s in CCC 1857—and those who are not may indeed grow in grace and in char­i­ty.

Now, here of course we have foot­note 351, which the PFDS-besot­ted Ray­mond P.W. Arroyo once called the “smok­ing foot­note” per­mit­ting com­mu­nion for the divorced and remar­ried: “In some cas­es this can include the help of the sacra­ments.”

“In some cas­es”; but which? It “can include”; but must it? The pope does not say. It’s nat­ur­al to say, “Your Holi­ness, can you clar­i­fy?” It’s imper­ti­nent, indeed sin­ful, to say, “THOU SCURVY HERETIC!!!!!!” And the pope does not say here, “The will of Christ is,” which the fil­ial ones claim. The pope does not say, “I even mean for those who are not con­trite,” which the fil­ial ones claim. The pope does not say, “I even mean those who express no pur­pose of amend­ment,” which the fil­ial ones claim. The pope sim­ply does not give us enough infor­ma­tion to make those judg­ments. That may be cause to ask for clar­i­ty, but it is not cause to make a charge of heresy.

But is it in §308? Here the pope does make a claim about what he thinks Jesus wants. But note that he does not say that Jesus wants the Church to aban­don for­mer dis­ci­plines for those who express no con­tri­tion. What does the pope say Jesus wants? He “wants a Church atten­tive to the good­ness which the Holy Spir­it sows in the midst of human weak­ness, a Moth­er who, while clear­ly express­ing her objec­tive teach­ing, “always does what good she can, even if in the process, her shoes get soiled by the mud of the street.”

Well, of course the Holy Spir­it “sows good in the midst of human weak­ness.” That’s what grace is. And note that the pope affirms that the Church must always “express her objec­tive teach­ing.” And that the Church “does what good she can.” To say that at all implies the Church can’t do all things. The pope speaks gen­er­al­ly here and one can’t say (for again it would be read­ing into, not read­ing) that Christ’s desire for the Church to be atten­tive to good in the midst of weak­ness implies aban­don­ing “peren­ni­al dis­ci­plines,” as the fil­ial ones claim. It’s just not there.

So where does the pope say that it is the will of Christ that the Church “aban­don her peren­ni­al dis­ci­pline of refus­ing the Eucharist to the divorced and remar­ried and of refus­ing abso­lu­tion to the divorced and remar­ried who do not express con­tri­tion for their state of life and a firm pur­pose of amend­ment with regard to it.”

He does­n’t. The fil­ial ones read it into the text. Their whole “cor­rec­tion,” in fact, is one mas­sive exer­cise in read­ing into. But it’s not there.

And then there were none.