This is an unusual blog from a blogger who describes himself as, among other things, being 'an abject papologist' (papal apologist), and how he has stopped being that, because of the pope's refusal to answer the DUBIA. His self-description on his blog site begins with:
Former teacher of writing and literature; freelance writer; convert from Protestantism; abject papologist; sacristan; Benedictine oblate; 3rd degree Knight of Columbus;...
The title of his blog, which he dedicates chiefly to apologetics, comes from 1Peter 3:15, “Always be ready to give a defense to any one who calls you to account for the hope that is in you..."... I do have to remark on some of his statements
One might imagine - and pray for - a similar process of reappraisal, both of themselves and of the pope, by many other Bergoglio-apologists and staunch 'normalists' whom AL and the glaringly evident DUBIA it raises may have finally shocked into their right mind. Because 'to give a defense' of our faith does not mean defending a pope, any pope, when objectING to his anti-Catholic positions, especially when the objections have become so widespread and frequent.
How I've changed my mind
about Pope Francis
by Scott Eric Alt
November 30, 2016
I mean, I do like Pope Francis. I’ve defended Pope Francis. I want to believe — I really want to believe — that footnote 351 of Amoris Laetitia can (and should) be read consistently with Familiaris Consortio 84. I have argued as much multiple times on this wery blog.
Footnote 351 of Amoris Laetitia says that “in some cases” couples who are in an irregular marital union but unable to separate for the sake of children can “receive the help of the sacraments.” The main text (par. 305) refers to such a couple as being in “an objective situation of sin,” even if “not subjectively culpable.”
Now, it is standard Catholic teaching that, if grave matter is present, mortal sin nevertheless may not be. If a person is addicted to cocaine, for example, the presence of addiction impairs freedom of the will sufficiently that there is no “subjective culpability.”
Of course, once such a person acknowledges this problem, he needs to get help to break the addiction.
Similarly, a couple who contracted an irregular marriage (divorce and remarriage without annulment, for example) may not be “subjectively culpable” if their conscience had not been fully formed at the time of the wedding.
[Does anyone really think that a remarried divorcee - who claims he/she now wants nothing more urgently than to be able to receive communion - did not have a fully formed conscience at the time he/she decided to divorce after a Catholic sacramental marriage and then remarry civilly? Because ostensibly these are the persons, who are far from constituting any significant minority in the Church, in behalf of whom this pope called two synodal assemblies and wrote the most equivocal formal document ever to come from a pope.] Or perhaps they were not Catholic at the time, and their church permitted such a marriage.
[OK, Mr Alt, even allowing for these circumstances you would find to be not 'subjectively culpable', how many such exceptions do you really think there could be?]
Again, once the couple become aware of the “objective situation of sin,” it is their responsibility to correct it. They can no longer appeal to their lack of “subjective culpability.”
That said, Pope St. John Paul II recognized the possibility that some couples in such a situation may be unable to separate for the good of their children. In
Familiaris Consortio, he said that, were such couples to agree to abstain from sexual union, there would no longer be an “objective situation of sin,” and they would then be free to receive the Eucharist at Mass.
So the question becomes: Are the “some cases” to which Pope Francis refers in footnote 351 the same that John Paul II mentions in Familiaris Consortio. Or are there other cases, unspecified in the text, in which couples can return to the sacrament?
In one public address, Cardinal Schonborn seemed to say that 351 was merely an allusion to FC 84. I wrote about that earlier.
According to Schonborn, a couple who cannot separate, for the good of the kids, must be “careful not to give scandal.”
Nonetheless they live a married life — not with sexual union, but they live together; they share their life; and publicly they are a couple. So I see the careful discernment requires, from the pastors and from the people concerned, a very delicate conscience. [More importantly, an honest conscience.]
Well and good. Pope Francis even said that any questions about footnote 351 should make note of what Schonborn has to say, because Schonborn is a good theologian, and he gives great detail, so find what Schonborn says, what do I know, I can’t even remember footnote 351.
Problem is, it turns out that His Eminence Cardinal Schonborn has been a tad inconsistent about this footnote. His words above were in April. Three months later, in July, he gave an interview to Fr. Antonio Spadaro. In that interview,
Schonborn says there has been “an evolution” — a “clear” one — in our understanding of factors that mitigate culpability for sin.
Okay, maybe so. But what are these new mitigating factors? Schonborn goes on to quote from Amoris, but that does not answer the question. The closest the text comes is this:
A subject may know full well the rule, yet have great difficulty in understanding ‘its inherent values,’ or be in a concrete situation which does not allow him or her to decide differently and act otherwise without further sin.
That lacks — how shall I say? — precision.
And Fr. Spadaro presses Schonborn.
But this orientation was already contained in some way in the famous paragraph 84 of Familiaris Consortio, to which Francis has recourse several times, as when he writes: “Pastors must know that, for the sake of truth, they are obliged to exercise careful discernment of situations.
Schoenborn: Yes. John Paul II already presupposes implicitly that one cannot simply say that every situation of a divorced and remarried person is the equivalent of a life in mortal sin that is separated from the communion of love between Christ and the Church. [The author of Veritatis splendor, for which "Let your Yes be Yes and your No mean No", as Jesus exhorted, would never suggest any such thing implicitly. He would have articulated exactly what he meant to say.]
Yes. But under which conditions may such a couple return to the sacrament? The pope says the Eucharist is not a prize for the perfect but nourishment for the weak. How can this affirmation be integrated into the classical doctrine of the Church? Is there a rupture here with what was affirmed in the past?
Well, what those “some cases” are, that has to be left to “individual discernment.” There is no “general discourse” that can answer that. We now have a “different hermeneutic.” [The hermeneutic of Bergoglio being different and distinct from the hermeneutic that the Apostles, St. Paul, the Fathers and Doctors, saints and popes of the Church, have used in the past two millennia until March 13, 2013.]
Spadaro will not let it go.
What does ‘some cases’ mean? Can we be given an “inventory”?
No! There is no “inventory.” An “inventory” would be tantamount to “abstract casuistry.” But one thing is for sure, and that is that the pope does not stop short at the kind of cases mentioned by Familiaris.
Oh. So it’s not just those who agree to live together without sexual union who can return to the Eucharist; there are other cases in which one may do so, but we don’t say what those cases are, because that would be casuistry. We can’t have an inventory, but we must have discernment and conscience. Got it.
***
This is why there is a problem with
Amoris Laetitia – because there are sections of it, important sections, that are vague, and which scream out for clarification; but attempts to clarify have led to further vagueness (as in Schonborn’s interview with Spadaro) and inconsistent opinions about what it was that the pope wants pastors to do, and not do, with couples in an irregular union seeking to return to the Eucharist. We have had assurances that Amoris is utterly consistent with
Familiaris and yet there are two problems:
- Schonborn’s words have been inconsistent and themselves not at all precise;
- None of these clarifications carry Magisterial weight.
[No! AL is not at all 'utterly consistent' with AC, because it omits the 3 sentences in Par 84 of Familiaris consortio in which John Paul II reaffirmed what had been clear and unequivocal Church teaching till then and, at least, until AL was issued.]
And because they do not carry Magisterial weight, different bishops are interpreting Pope Francis to pretty much be saying what they want him to say, and doing what they want to do, and there is no uniformity or correction where there has been folly.
[A flagrant illustration of the folly of this pope's headlong intention announced in Evangelii gaudium to decentralize the papacy to the point of allowing doctrinal autonomy to diocesan bishops! Don't tell me he did not think this would result in a whole spectrum of episcopal dicta that may have nothing to do with the legitimate accepted Magisterium of the universal Church, nor even with his own magisterium, such as it is! Don't tell me he did not think that on remarried divorcees - on which the Church has already wasted more than two years of inordinate, totally unwarranted and wildly disproportionate attention compared to the urgency of strengthening the faith (to which this issue is most counter-productive) - two geographically adjoining dioceses could have diametrically opposite teachings on this point! ]
So four cardinals intervene with a series of questions asking the pope for clarification on footnote 351. The full text is here.
These strike me as fair questions.
The cardinals are seeking a definitive, Magisterial answer to some people’s doubts — not answers in interviews, not private lectures, not “go listen to so-and-so.”
The reason a definitive answer is needed is precisely to prevent bishops in some places from running wild and doing whatever they want to the potential harm of souls. If someone in a state of mortal sin, not disposed to receive the Eucharist, receives the Eucharist anyway, that compounds the problem. It is a harm to both the individual who receives and the priest who knowingly distributes. A definitive clarification would, potentially, forestall this.
Moreover, if there has been genuine and legitimate doctrinal development, then that development needs to be spelled out in fairly precise terms. What is this development? How are we to understand it?
Only the pope has the authority to answer such questions. This is why the Church has a pope.
That Pope Francis has refused to answer these questions is a problem. It is tantamount to the pope saying, “I know there is confusion, I know people want it cleared up, but too bad. Figure it out yourself.”
Perhaps that is not an accurate representation of the pope’s thinking, but that’s what comes across. Confusion? Pshaw! Confusion upon your confusion!
And then, when the pope gives an interview attributing concerns to “legalism,” he comes across as condescending.
[Mr. Alt was obviously too invested in being a Bergoglio apologist before this that he did not take note of the pope's repeated use of this word and related ones like rigidity and strictness to disparage Catholics who have always tried to keep both the letter and spirit of the Church's teachings.]
And now Fr. Spadaro has written another reminder that the questions have already been answered. Really? By whom? The pope? In what context? Are these answers definitive? Are they magisterial?
[Spadaro was quoted to have said "The pope has already answered these questions in depth", to which the immediate logical retort is not just "Really? When?" but "Forget 'in depth' if that means simply all the casuistic circumlocutions and circumventions employed so far by Bergoglio and his attorneys for the defense. The DUBIA are only asking for one word (YES or NO) to answer each of the questions". It is the most abject situation when the pope cannot even do that because he has boxed himself in by his own equivocations which are nothing less than an evasion of the truth.]
Only the pope can speak with authority in answering these questions —not cardinals in interviews, not cardinals in private lectures, not theologians writing in journals, not bloggers on Patheos or One Vader Five.
And also, the Dean of the Rota gives a warning that the pope could strip Cardinal Burke and the other three of the cardinalate for their impertinence in making all this public and causing scandal.
Well, okay, perhaps the cardinals should not have made it public. Perhaps that was ill-advised. But stripping them of their red hats would be “most childish and unbecoming a successor of St. Peter,” to quote one individual commenting on the story on my Facebook page.
And because of all this, the impression many people have is that the pope wants confusion, likes confusion, does not wish to clear up confusion, and if there is confusion he must scoff at confusion. [And don't we all know it by now. That was implicit in his two-word exhortation to the faithful, "Haga lio!" Make a mess. Yet when he first said this four months into his papacy - and he has said it many times since then - no one seemed alarmed about it and many even praised it. As if it was not the primary duty of a pope, any pope, to prevent confusion in his flock but rather to provide clarity about the teachings of the Church. ]
No, the reason we have a pope is so that the pope can provide answers to questions that arise in the Church. Questions have arisen. For the good of the body, for the unity of the Church, the pope must answer the questions. Only the pope can do so with authority. That is why we have a pope.
I want to believe Amoris Laetitia is consistent with Church teaching, but if it is, why does the pope have such a difficult time clarifying that consistency?
Roma, loquere.
[Even if his Latin may not be gramatically correct, I think Alt means, "Rome, speak!" as in the saying "Roma locustus est, causa finitas est" (Rome has spoken, the cause is closed).]
A MOST RELEVANT P.S.
With all due respect to Our Beloved Pope, has he ever really stopped to look at the traditional Seven Spiritual Works of Mercy? (No one could seriously consider his addition of an eighth work, spiritual as well as corporal, that has to do with caring for the environment), of which the first three are these:
ADMONISH THE SINNER.
INSTRUCT THE UNINFORMED.
COUNSEL THE DOUBTFUL. -
all of which he generally fails to do as popes ought to do and deliberately neglects specifically in refusing to answer the DUBIA.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 02/12/2016 22:50]