Here is an excellent analysis of what I would call the technical magisterial flaws of AL which necessarily concern its major flaws of content. It also answers Cardinal Schoenborn's shameless (yes, I will be using this adjective quite often for the smarmy cardinal's increasingly daring offenses against the very Catechism whose drafting he chaired) - and completely unpersuasive - defense of AL as a major act of papal magisterium...
The Apostolic Exhortation
Amoris Laetitia, issued by Pope Francis at the close of two recent synods on the family, has stirred up more controversy than any other papal document of recent memory.
Commentators — both scholarly and popular — who favor a change in the Church’s view of the sacramental and spiritual status of Catholics living in illicit second marriages have hailed the document. Those seeking to uphold traditional Church discipline concerning the indissolubility of marriage have criticized the exhortation as ambiguous or worse.
Beyond the disputes over its substance (what does the document actually mean?) its supporters and detractors argue over its nature (what level of authority does the document command?). Because of the neuralgic issues at the heart of the document, neither controversy is likely to dissipate soon.
The seeming doctrinal difficulties presented by Al have been explored thoroughly in other articles, some of which have appeared in
First Things. Such criticisms of a papal pronouncement inevitably spawn questions about its authoritative character. What sort of a document is this, and how are we to understand its authority? This itself is a contentious question.
In a recent interview, Cardinal Christof Schönborn, whom Pope Francis called “the most competent interpreter” of Al, made the case for the binding character of the document. When asked:
Some have spoken of AL as a minor document, a personal opinion of the Pope (so to speak) without full magisterial value. What value does this Exhortation possess? Is it an act of the magisterium?
The Cardinal responded:
It is obvious that this is an act of the magisterium: it is an Apostolic Exhortation. It is clear that the Pope is exercising here his role of pastor, of master and teacher of the faith, after having benefited from the consultation of the two Synods. I have no doubt that it must be said that this is a pontifical document of great quality, an authentic teaching of sacra doctrina.
… There is no lack of passages in the Exhortation that affirm their doctrinal value strongly and decisively. This can be recognized from the tone and the content of what is said, when we relate these to the intention of the text – for example, when the Pope writes: “I urgently ask ...”, “It is no longer possible to say ...”, “I have wanted to present to the entire Church ...”, and so on.
AL is an act of the magisterium that makes the teaching of the Church present and relevant today. Just as we read the Council of Nicaea in the light of the Council of Constantinople, and Vatican I in the light of Vatican II, so now we must read the previous statements of the magisterium about the family in the light of the contribution made by AL.[The chairman of the bishops' commission that drafted the 1992 Catechism of the Catholic Church has it egregiously and shamelessly backwards? (But then Schoenborn has been consistently shameless in his most outre deviations from orthodoxy!) When has the Church ever used a new document as the 'standard' by which to read previous documents? It isn't even logical.]
The Cardinal’s statement does not equivocate. It can be translated into four propositions.
First, AL is a binding document of the ordinary magisterium.
Second, it is meant to be universal in scope.
Third, it bears a doctrinal character.
Fourth, it is to be understood as an authentic interpretation of the deposit of the faith.
These assertions, if correct, are extremely consequential. Under settled doctrine, Catholics would be required to assent intellectually and submit their minds and wills to the pronouncements in the Exhortation.
The Cardinal’s conclusions, however, do not withstand scrutiny in light of principles governing the interpretation of magisterial documents.
One does not need a Ph.D. in theology to discern areas in AL that are ambiguous and that have already led to multiple interpretations. Paragraph 299, for example, states that
the divorced and remarried “need to feel not as excommunicated members of the Church, but instead as living members, able to live and grow in the Church.” [To begin with the Code of Canon Law in force since 1983 has done away with excommunication as a penalty for RCDs - which is leniency more than enough! Besides, has any Catholic RCD ever presented any complaint, formal or anecdotal, that the local church has made him/her/them unwelcome in any way, shape or form? I do not recall reading any such complaint - and there probably is none, because since 'the world' started to treat divorce as routine, so have most of the ministers of the Church, not to mention the community itself - and anything routine does not raise any eyebrows or invite discrimination at all.]
Does this statement merely admonish censorious pew-sitters concerning the divorced and remarried, criticizing those who may treat them with judgment or disdain? Or does it suggest that one can be spiritually alive while in a state of continued objective mortal sin? Obviously, the latter interpretation, which has been expressly drawn by many, is more than problematic.
Another example of ambiguity in the document appears in Footnote 329:
“In such situations, many people, knowing and accepting the possibility of living as brothers and sisters which the Church offers them, point out that if certain expressions of intimacy are lacking, ‘it often happens that faithfulness is endangered and the good of the children suffers.’”
Does the document maintain that the virtue of sexual continence leads to sin and to the endangerment of children, or does it merely underscore the difficulty of living in conformity to the Gospel in difficult situations? The correct interpretation of statements such as these is not clear.
[The interpretations are not mutually exclusive and both were probably intended.]
Some positions in AL that are not ambiguous appear to imply the validity of positions that are contrary to the Church’s perennial teaching. In Paragraph 297, one finds:
“No one is condemned forever, because that is not the logic of the Gospel!” Such a statement implies the non-existence of hell and even suggests dissimulation on the part of Christ, who preached about hell almost as much as heaven. [It's a direct expression of JMB's personal opinion, since although he mentions Hell once in a while, his cumulative statements about the eventual fate of unrepentant sinners is expressed in that line "No one is condemned forever, because that is not the logic of the Gospel!" It took a lot of chutzpah for him and his ghosts to put in the statement as starkly as that, considering everything Jesus said about eternal damnation. See, it is in seemingly 'minor' statements like this that JMB is caught with his doctrinal pants down, because he obviously is careful to avoid such stark expressions of any of his other near-heretical statements impacting directly on whatever topic is on hand.]
Another example of implied error appears under the heading of “Accompanying, Discerning, Integrating Weakness” in paragraphs 296-299, where the document implies that sexual sins can admit a parvity of matter. One cannot overlook in this regard the much discussed Footnote 351, which many — including the Bishops of Argentina — have cited to support the reception of communion by divorced and remarried couples who have not accepted sexual continence.
Finally,
some statements at least appear to contradict longstanding Church doctrine, whether formally defined teaching, the constant Tradition of the Church, or Scripture itself.
- Paragraph 159, for example, rejects the privileged status of perpetual continence.
- Paragraph 295 seems to doubt the sufficiency of grace to overcome human weakness.
- And Paragraph 301 suggests that those who act with full knowledge of grave matter are not necessarily in a state of mortal sin.
Given these difficulties, what is to be made of Cardinal Schönborn’s assertion that AL is a binding document of magisterial authority? His analysis is unpersuasive, for three principal reasons.
First, the document lacks language of formal definition. A clear example of language of formal definition appears in
Ordinatio Sacradotalis, wherein Pope John Paul II uses words such as “We teach and declare” to define the Church’s teaching on the priesthood.
Contrast this with the language of AL highlighted by Cardinal Schönborn: “I urgently ask”; “It is no longer possible to say”; and “I have wanted to present to the entire Church.”
Second, AL lacks the theological and juridical precision of binding ecclesial documents, instead relying upon metaphors, imagery, and thick description, rather than clear statements.
And third, if, in fact, the document does contradict either natural or divine positive law, then it simply cannot bind the faithful to the obsequium religiosum, that is, the assent of mind and will, specified by
Lumen Gentium 25.
The basic principles of the Church’s doctrine of infallibility provide substantive guidance here.
First and foremost,
the Petrine ministry participates in the infallibility of the deposit of Revelation. This is crucial to hold in view, because Revelation is ultimately the criterion of truth.
The special, divine assistance of infallibility is a privilege attached to the Holy Father as the center of unity of the Church, yet this privilege is always given for the entire Church.
Besides the infallibility attached to the Pope’s pronouncements taught with the fullness of his supreme authority (the “extraordinary magisterium”), the “ordinary magisterium” can also be a source of infallible teaching
- when it concerns de fide doctrine (concerning faith and morals),
- when it is marked by unity and unanimity, and
- when it is proposed to be definitive and absolute teaching.
Not every teaching of the ordinary magisterium, however, fulfills these criteria. Some teachings of the ordinary magisterium can be fallible, and do not command interior assent of mind and will, if such teachings are clearly contrary to reason, or to the natural law, or to the divine positive law.
And in all of this one must keep ever in mind that
the charism of infallibility is one of assistance and not of inspiration. In other words, the Holy Father cannot create doctrine, but can only explain the deposit of the faith more clearly.
This consideration of assistance versus inspiration raises another question, namely,
what is to be done when a direct contradiction appears between one pontificate and another, or between pontifical documents? Cardinal Schönborn suggests that in such cases the older pronouncements must yield to the newer. The Cardinal said that we read Nicaea in light of Constantinople I, and Vatican I in light of Vatican II.
But the Church’s longstanding practice is precisely the contrary. It emphasizes that which is prior, that is, the Church’s tradition, over and against that which is posterior and, therefore, untested. Thus, the typical hermeneutic of the Church is to read Vatican II in light of Vatican I, Vatican I in light of Trent, Trent in light of what has preceded it and so on. In other words, tradition is always privileged as the remote rule of faith.
Responding faithfully to the trans-temporal magisterium of the Church (and not simply to the magisterium of one’s own times) requires holding in view two other principles of interpretation:
First, “the minor must give way to the major.”
Second, the “one must give way to the many.”
Taking the first principle:
If there is question of conflict between two pontifical documents, the privilege must be given to the document that bears higher magisterial authority. For example, an apostolic exhortation of one pontificate does not possess more authority than an encyclical of a prior papacy. Thus,
AL cannot supersede the encyclical Veritatis Splendor.
Now, when the documents are of the same authoritative rank, the second principle comes into play: One must privilege the harmony of the many pontificates in union with each other, and their unanimity with the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, over the one seemingly dissonant voice.
This concept was famously expressed over 1,500 years ago in the Canon of St. Vincent of Lerins:
“Now in the Catholic Church itself we take the greatest care to hold that which has been believed everywhere, always and by all.”
Although AL and St. John Paul II’s
Familiaris Consortio are both apostolic exhortations,
this principle would justify privileging John Paul’s document, because it seems to be more harmonious with prior magisterial teaching, both extraordinary and ordinary.
Ultimately, however, this level of discernment cannot be a matter of private judgment, but of magisterial decision.
In case of real conflict between the teaching of various popes or between the teaching of one pontificate and natural or divine positive law, only the magisterium bears the obligation and authority to clarify any errors publicly. [But what if, in this case, the supreme Magisterium, i.e., the teaching authority of the pope, is the very source of grave error???]
The interpretive key that may provide the most utility here is that Church doctrine proceeds by way of the principle of organic development.
This contrasts with the perspective adopted by Schönborn when he says:
The Holy Father has fundamentally renewed the discourse of the Church — certainly along the lines of Evangelii gaudium, but also of Gaudium et spes, which presents doctrinal principles and reflections on human beings today that are in a continuous evolution.
And again:
There is an evolution, clearly expressed by Pope Francis, in the Church’s perception of the elements that condition and that mitigate, elements that are specific to our own epoch.
And yet again:
To a greater degree than in the past, the objective situation of a person does not tell us everything about that person in relation to God and in relation to the Church. This evolution compels us urgently to rethink what we meant when we spoke of objective situations of sin. And this implicitly entails a homogeneous evolution in the understanding and in the expression of the doctrine.
This insistence on the evolution of doctrine is a problematic view, as was recognized most cogently by Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman in the nineteenth century.
Cardinal Newman articulated seven “notes” that constitute true development of doctrine, a development that stands in contradistinction to the evolution of doctrine. Newman’s exposition of this concept took up an entire book.
For present purposes, I offer Newman’s own summary. He says that true doctrinal development must be
...one in type, one in its system of principles, one in its unitive power towards externals, one in its logical consecutiveness, one in the witness of its early phases to its later, one in the protection which its later extend to its earlier, and one in its vigor with continuance, that is, in its tenacity.
One could sum this up by noting that
a true development of doctrine — a development that requires full assent of mind and will from the faithful — gives life and vitality to the soul. By contrast, doctrinal evolution in which a new teaching sublates and eliminates the earlier teaching in a quasi-Hegelian fashion breeds dissolution, confusion, and death.
In his first encyclical,
Lumen Fidei, Pope Francis
[Benedict XVI!] wrote: “The transmission of the faith not only brings light to men and women in every place; it travels through time, passing from one generation to another. Because faith is born of an encounter which takes place in history and lights up our journey through time, it must be passed on in every age.”
The Church, and the chair of Peter in particular, has been endowed by her divine founder with the gift of infallibility so that all may know with clarity what they must do to gain eternal life. For this reason, the Church has, in every age, proposed that doctrine which is to be definitively held.
Yet, as
Lumen Gentium reminds us,
“this infallibility with which the Divine Redeemer willed His Church to be endowed in defining doctrine of faith and morals, extends as far as the deposit of Revelation extends” and no farther.
Thus, the Holy Father and the Bishops in union with him cannot accept “a new public revelation … as pertaining to the divine deposit of faith.” True development of doctrine, therefore, always operates within the analogy of faith; it operates, as Cardinal Ratzinger has noted, in a diachronic and not simply a synchronic sense.
Furthermore,
the Church must continually distinguish between what is necessary for salvation — the “wheat” that truly constitutes the deposit of the faith, and the “chaff” of the age that must be cleared away. [The magisterial 'teaching' of this pontificate so far appears to be concerned only with the chaff. (NB: With the exception of Lumen fidei, which was not Bergoglio's but Benedict's.)]
Distinctions are necessary. And for this reason
any sort of “creeping infallibility” that would attach the same level of authority to every papal utterance or document must be avoided.
To fail to draw appropriate distinctions — whether between binding and non-binding documents of the ordinary magisterium, or between the development and the evolution of doctrine — is to dim the light of the Petrine ministry and impoverish the faithful.
Jessica M. Murdoch is associate professor of fundamental and dogmatic theology at Villanova University.
To better provide a context for the following item, let me cite from Fr. Z's account of his homily on the Gospel for the 19th Sunday of Pentecost, Sept. 25, in Traditional Mass:
...On this 19th Sunday after Pentecost - taking my cue from the Epistle and from the Lord’s parable about the king’s wedding banquet - I spoke about the gift garment. Paul tells us to put on the “new man”. Our Lord describes how the king who gives the banquet has the man without the wedding garment bound hand and foot and then has him thrown outside to weep and grind his teeth in the darkness of night.
A bit of an over-reaction on the king’s part, no? Why the stern punishment?
As per ancient Eastern custom, kings clothed guests in beautiful gift garments as they entered in order to honor them and to make the occasion more beautiful and decorous.
The man without the garment had no excuse: he was given a garment and he refused to put on the king’s gift, thus insulting the king, the other guests, and the occasion itself. That’s what we do when we sin and are “bad Catholics”, we dishonor God and other members of the Church.
We are in the banquet on the KING’s terms, not on our terms. We are in the Church on the Church’s terms, not on our terms...
This pope is opening the Lord's banquet
even to those who refuse to put on
the wedding garment that He provides
Translated from
Sept. 27, 2016
I receive and I publish. The author of the first letter is a woman consecrated to a heremitic life. The author of the second is a famous criminal lawyer in Naples.
Both comment on communion for remarried divorcees. The lawyer reacts particularly to the interpretation of AL recently made by the pope's Vicar for Rome, Cardinal Agostino Vallini, who delivered a 17-page interpretation for the clergy of Rome.
Both letter writers are among those 'faithful sheep' referred to by Cardinal Camillo Ruini in an interview published Sept. 22 in
Corriere della Sera, when he said [
B]he prays to the Lord "that the indispensable search for lost sheep will not place the consciences of the faithful sheep in difficulty".
Dear Mr.Magister,
I am consecrated to a heremitic life and I have been following attentively - and without prejudice, as far as is humanly possible - the debate on communion for remarried divorcees, to understand whether an eventual decision of the pope on this issue truly comes within his prerogatives - the power of the keys - or whether, in fact, he wants to duplicate these keys, so to speak, to use against the Master of the house, in order to be able to introduce by deceit those who do not wear the nuptial garment (Mt 22, 1-14), ]b]thus betraying the trust given to the Successor of Peter.
I wish to apply a very simple argument regarding form which is essential for the content in order to get to the heart of the problem.
If the Church gives the possibility of communion to those who, without annulling their Church marriage, had remarried in a civil ceremony or cohabitate with another woman while still being sacramentally bound to the first wife ('one flesh', says the Master of the house), then it means that the Church says it is possible to receive the sacrament of God's infinite holiness and make him dwell together in the same house - the body and soul of the recipient - as sin, because adultery remains a sin, unless doctrine is changed.
Do you think that is possible? I would say No, if we know, even remotely, what sin is. God himself reminded us of this with the immaculate conception of Mary whom he saved from original sin precisely because she would be receiving the Lord himself into her womb. Why? Because God cannot co-exist with sin.
I think that, by carping on the juridical and sentimental aspects, that is, the strictly human aspects, of the question, we are losing sight of the supernatural dimension of our life - the face of the holy and eternal God, the mysterious power of his commandments, that is, his will which we don't have to understand but to accept because it comes from him.
To receive the Eucharist in a state of mortal sin means not just transgressing a commandment of God but - and here is the blasphemy - to 'force' the Lord to cohabit with evil. That is committing an abomination, to use a word which sounds terrible to modern ears, but this is the missing link in the infinite discussion on this topic: the holiness of God.
Why would one wish persons who are in this 'irregular' situation to fall into a greater sin? Does the Church really wish to tell her children that God and the ultimate Divider (evil) can be together?
This is the heart of the problem: that sin is being dismissed by not recognizing it as such, because it is an annoyance and constitutes a stumbling block to our plans. But this dismissal, displacing sin from where it ought to be, ends up situating it, paradoxically, in the same 'place' as God.
Do we realize what such a dismissal and displacement mean?
"The attempt is horribly devoid of sense but nonetheless fundamentally exciting to take God off a pedestal, to downgrade God, to destroy God even... Man should recognize the depth of sin... and must lay down his pride in shaping his own destiny, his obstinacy to do things as he wants and life his own life, and learn humility which always seeks grace" (Romano Guardini, Il Signore, p. 175)
Many will object - that this is Old Testament mentality, before Jesus 'brought mercy'. But they are wrong, and by far.
The "It is said..." and "But I tell you..." statements of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount (Mt 5-7) introduce us to the new life in which the old laws and moralisms give way to faith and grace, but they ask and demand much more than did the laws of the Old Testament, because Jesus was not interested in making us comfortable in this life, but in our eternal salvation.] [A basic and obvious fact that one Jorge Mario Bergoglio chooses to ignore consistently.]
Redemption has the absolute necessity of making sin disappear completely, so that we may never to sin again. In the 'fullness of time', we are asked what was not asked of man in the Old Testament: the totality of obedience because now, with redemption, we are made able to put it into practice.
In saying “You have heard that it was said: Do not commit adultery... But I tell you that whoever looks at a woman with desire has already committed adultery", Guardini points out that Jesus was saying the meaning of the commandment goes deeper, it goes even to the intention, because action arises from intention. (Guardini, p. 116)
In Jesus's lengthy discourse, we do not find any cheap mercy as we understand it today, but a very fine sense of sin, not a gross concept, in a crescendo of tone and tension such that at the end, the evangelist notes that "the people were astonished at his teaching" (Mt 7,28).
Jesus was not interested in a doctrine about moral customs but in a full and totally redeemed existence for man. Then let us try to understand that it is not about conceding a right to anyone (legalist thinking) but to acknowledge the holiness of God. But now we have become accustomed to touching the Untouchable [receiving the host in one's hand) and to 'force' the cohabitation of evil with the Lord.
Not to receive communion, in the cases we are speaking of, does not preclude eternal salvation, it does not forever deprive the sinner of the wedding garment he ought to wear for the Lord's banquet, but receiving it unworthily takes away everything (1Cor 11). We cannot wish to push down our brothers into a state infinitely worse than that in which they already are. This is to play the game of the Enemy.
If the Church wishes to grant this possibility it means that she already considers these sinners dead and is leaving it to God to take his own measures.
But who are we to judge these brothers in advance and seeming to dictate to God? Our ways are not his (cfr Is 55,8).
A heartfelt greeting and thanks for your work,
Giovanna Riccobaldi
Dear Magister,
Cardinal Vallini's commentary on Amoris laetitia has all the elements of a heroic clinging at straws, of twisting around a sticky pole to try and climb it.
Yet it lacks that which, rather incredibly, is lacking almost everywhere else - from the exhortation itself and all the comments about it, favorable or critical.
It is devoid of grace. The grace which made St. Paul say - and this is the Word of God - "Omnia possum in eo qui me confortat" (I am able to do everything through him who empowers me)(Phil 4,13).
The grace that prevents a Catholic from saying that it is impossible to practice sexual continence. Of course, it is difficult, very difficult - to avoid the occasion of sin by not sharing the same bed or the same room - but never impossible.
Moreover, even on the level of elementary logic, if God commanded us to do the impossible, then worse than being a tyrant, he would be a sadist. Yet it is an immutable doctrine of the Church, reaffirmed and clarified at the Council of Trent, that with the aid of God's grace, everyone can practice virtue according to his own state of life.
To me, this seems to be the real problem with Amoris laetitia: its horizontal viewpoint that takes into account only man's depraved human nature and the habits he develops because of that, completely excluding the horizon of the supernatural. Completely.
Psychologisms, sociologisms, borrowed philosophisms - there is room for all sorts of nonsense but nothing on grace. Grace which alone allows us - because whatever is possible is not impossible, and if it is not impossible, it is mandatory - to respect the Ten Commandments and the duties that pertain to our own status, including celibacy or sexual continence, whether priestly, matrimonial or extra-matrimonial.
With regard to the latter, what do we do - and I include Cardinal Vallini - with the fact that, admitting but never conceding that the nullity of a Church marriage can be deliberated on in the internal forum [between confessor and confessee], the couple still are unmarried as far as the Church is concerned, and are therefore not even able to have conjugal relations licitly, in the eyes of the Church?
Thank you for all that you are doing, and a fond greeting in Jesu et Maria.
Giovanni Formicola
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 01/10/2016 02:21]