Rocco Buttiglione responds to Robert Gahl
Unconvincing, but worth reading.
mauroleonardi.it/2016/08/04/amoris-laetitia-rocco-buttiglione-risponde-a-robe...
I've read the response, thank you, but it concentrates on some extremely casuistic hairsplitting revolving around, in effect, when is sin not sin in the eyes of Jorge Bergoglio. But no argument can get around the simple fact that mortal sin is mortal sin, no ifs or buts, and adultery is one such sin defined by Jesus himself.
But the futile back-and-forth is because both Robert Gahl and Rodrigo Lopez Guerra, the two laymen who first responded directly to Buttiglione's defense of AL in the Vatican newspaper, went directly into the specifics about the 'when sin is not always sin' arguments of AL as presented by Buttiglione that
they missed the single most objectionable paragraph in Buttiglione's OR essay, namely:
Some claim that for the pope to say such things contradicts the great battle waged by John Paul II against moral subjectivism. The battle lines were drawn in the encyclical Veritatis Splendor.
Moral subjectivism means that the goodness or evil of human action depends on the intention of the agent. According to moral subjectivism, the only per se good is a good will. Therefore, in order to judge the action, we must look at the consequences desired by the person performing the act. According to this subjective view, any action can be good or bad depending on the circumstances that accompany the action.
Pope Francis, in perfect harmony with his great predecessor, tells us that some actions are bad in themselves (adultery, for example), regardless of the circumstances that accompany them and the intentions of the one performing them. [He most certainly never says that in AL, just as he has never in all the past three years referred to the sin RCDs are committing in a chronic continuing situation, namely, adultery, as being a sin!]
Saint John Paul II never doubted, however, that circumstances influence the moral evaluation of the one performing the action, rendering the agent more or less culpable of the objectively evil act he or she commits. There is no circumstance that can render an intrinsically evil act good, but the circumstances can increase or diminish the moral responsibility of the one who performs the act. [An outright distortion of what VS says.]
This is precisely what Pope Francis is talking about in Amoris Laetitia. Thus there is no “ethics of circumstance” in Amoris Laetitia, but rather the classic Thomistic balance that distinguishes between the judgment of the act and the judgment of the one performing the act, in which case attenuating or exonerating circumstances need to be considered. [This is a measure of how brazenly untruthful Buttiglione is in his defense of AL.]
For those who would like to read Buttiglione's OR article in English translation, here it is (thank God I did not have to spend any time translating him):
www.catholicnewworld.com/rbonal
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 14/08/2016 21:41]