Amoris Laetitia:
Anatomy of a Pontifical Debacle
By Christopher A. Ferrara
Introduction: Spreading Alarm
As Cardinal Burke has observed in an article appearing in the National Catholic Register, upon careful reading AMORIS LÆTITIA reveals itself to be "a personal, that is, non-magisterial" document, "a personal reflection of the Pope" that "is not confused with the binding faith owed to the exercise of the magisterium." This is true enough, but perhaps not for the reasons the Cardinal expresses, as I show at the conclusion of this essay. But that hardly eliminates the massive problem with this utterly unprecedented 256-page "apostolic exhortation." What motivates all the pages to follow here is that Pope Francis has promulgated Amoris Laetitia as if it were an authentic and binding act of the Magisterium, and that it will be treated as such by his collaborators and by ecclesial progressives throughout the Catholic world. Amoris Laetitia is, therefore, yet another addition to The
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Great Façade of pseudo-doctrines in the form of non-binding pastoral and disciplinary novelties and new attitudes and "approaches"—all emerging for the first time during that great epoch of enlightenment known as the Sixties.
These include the new liturgy (which the faithful were never actually required to attend), "ecumenism," "dialogue" and "interreligious dialogue." Their combined effects have been ruinous.
And now this. A commentary at the Rorate Caeli blog site said what had to be said for the sake of truth: "There’s no other way to put it: The pope’s Apostolic Exhortation Amoris laetitia is a catastrophe." Voice of the Family likewise recognized what was immediately apparent from a reading of the critical Chapter 8: "Our initial overview provides sufficient cause to regard this document as a threat to the integrity of the Catholic faith and the authentic good of the family."
Even normally middle-of-the-road commentators have not concealed their alarm: EWTN regular Robert Royal, writing in The Catholic Thing, dismisses the claim of the usual whitewashers that Francis has not authorized Holy Communion for public adulterers in "certain cases" (as shown below). That is exactly what he has just done, and Royal laments the inevitable consequences:
Amoris Laetitia hopes to resolve the situations of many in the modern world, but is far more likely only to add further fuel to the holocaust.
It doesn’t take a crystal ball to predict that once Communion can be taken by the divorced/remarried in some circumstances, it will soon be assumed licit by all. And— why not?—by people in gay relationships, who probably have an equally good claim to mitigating circumstances….
On one side of a border between two countries, Communion for the divorced and remarried would now become a sign of a new outpouring of God’s mercy and forgiveness. On the other side, giving Communion to someone in "irregular" circumstances remains infidelity to Christ’s words and, potentially, a sacrilege.
In concrete terms, around the globe, what looms ahead is chaos and conflict, not Catholicity.
Writing for LifeSiteNews, Philip Lawler states: Amoris Laetitia— "The Joy of Love"—is not a revolutionary document. It is a subversive one…. Unfortunately, the net effect of the Pope’s approach will very likely be an acceleration of an already powerful trend to dismiss the Church’s perennial teaching, and therefore a decline in respect for the pastoral ministry he hopes to encourage [emphasis added here and throughout].
Catholic World Report, published by Father Joseph Fessio, S.J., presents a symposium of articles on the document, nearly all of them strongly critical in some respect, particularly concerning Chapter 8, the focus of this commentary:
• Father Fessio’s fellow Jesuit, James V. Schall, S.J., agrees that the overall document has a subversive impact respecting the Church’s teaching on sexual immorality and grave sin in general: "But when we add it all up, it often seems that the effect of this approach is to lead us to conclude that no "sin" has ever occurred. Everything has an excusing cause…. One goes away from this approach not being sorry for his sins but relieved in realizing that he has never really sinned at all."
• Carl E. Olsen calls Amoris Laetitia "profound and muddled," noting that "Francis apparently plays a bit fast and loose with some of his arguments and sources." (Not apparently and not a bit, but actually and quite seriously, as we shall see.)
• The renowned canonist Edward Peters laments Amoris Laetitia’s "more-than-occasional resort to platitudes, caricatures of competing points of view, and self-quotation…" He notes a "serious misuse of a conciliar teaching [in] Gaudium et spes 51" (a veritable fraud to be discussed below) and marvels at Francis’s astonishing opinion that there can be "proven fidelity" and "Christian commitment" in "chronically adulterous relationships" following "the public and permanent abandonment of a previous spouse."
• Eduardo Echeverria, Professor of Philosophy and Systematic Theology as Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit, offers a series of polite but devastating criticisms: "Francis seems almost (not quite, but almost) incapable of acknowledging that an individual is sinfully responsible for rejecting the truth of marriage and family" … "So, with all due respect to Francis, I think that he does imply support for the "gradualness of the law" and hence by implication opens the door to a "situation ethics." (That is exactly what he has done, as I will show on the following pages.) Francis "does encourage the ‘dimming of the light’ because he downgrades the moral force of this normative [moral] order when he speaks of ‘rules’ here. He wants to create a moral space to regard a person as inculpable, resorting even to calling those who want to apply these norms unconditionally (in his mind, at this point " mere rules") as sporting a ‘cold bureaucratic morality.’… This conclusion appears to be a far cry from the Catechism of the Catholic Church…"
Must We Sift the Good from the Bad— Again?
Yet despite such damning (however muted) comments, the above-quoted "mainstream" commentators are at pains to stress the orthodox elements to be found in its meandering 256 pages of promiscuously verbose text. But why should any member of the faithful have to devote any effort to separating out the orthodox parts of a papal document that, as even these mainstream commentators observe, will lead to chaos and conflict in the Church, is subversive, conveys the overall impression that grave sins are all more or less excusable, resorts to misleading citations, dishonest arguments and caricatures of opposing views, and opens the door to the gross evil of situation ethics?
If a world-renowned head chef at a Michelin-starred restaurant served us a cake whose recipe included "1 tsp.
cyanide," we would hardly praise the other wholesome ingredients because of the chef’s prestige. We would throw the thing away and have him arrested.
Where an admittedly subversive "Apostolic Exhortation" is concerned, the faithful have no duty to parse it for acceptable Catholic teaching on marriage and family. Have we not had more than enough of this nonsense? It is not the responsibility of the faithful to "purify" defective papal teaching with defensive post-publication commentaries that "accentuate the positive" while ignoring the negative. It is the Pope’s responsibility to give the faithful teaching whose purity they can trust implicitly in the first place—on every page of every document.
After three years of this sort of thing, we have learned well that this pontificate is a continuing demonstration of the strict limits of papal infallibility, a charism that ends at the frontiers of novelty, where Francis fancies himself a bold pioneer. There is no more telling comment on this document than Father Zuhlsdorf’s initial declaration that "We have dodged a bullet, at least dodged a round to center mass." Nothing could be more revealing of the disaster of this whole pontificate than the inadvertent recognition that Francis is like some active shooter on a college campus, and that we should be glad he missed or only winged us. Whew. That was a close one!
As for those parts of Amoris Laetitia which affirm, however verbosely, aspects of traditional Catholic teaching on marriage and family, we already have that teaching in abundance from innumerable sources of the infallible Magisterium, including beautifully written landmark encyclicals, to which faithful Catholics have already given assent of mind and will. As for unfaithful Catholics, they will not even bother to read the thing, but will simply be content with the news, now being trumpeted throughout the world, that Francis has lightened up on all that "adultery" business. And if, at the end of the tumultuous "synodal journey" that Francis insisted upon and stagemanaged from start to finish, traditionminded Catholics are supposed to exult merely because he did not do what he had no power to do anyway— "change doctrine"—then what was the point of the whole "Synod on the Family"?
The answer to this question is now obvious to anyone in possession of his reason. The Synod was merely the delivery vehicle for Amoris Laetitia, wherein Francis, as I will demonstrate below, finally arrives at the destination he has arranged from the beginning: admission of "certain" (ultimately all) divorced and "remarried" Catholics, along with other habitual public sinners of the sexual variety, to Confession and Holy Communion without prior repentance and amendment of life. The bare doctrine on the indissolubility of marriage is left untouched—indeed paragraph after paragraph of flowery praise is heaped upon it—while Francis’s plan for ignoring it in practice is finally confirmed. Amoris Laetitia widens to commodious dimensions the opening for that outcome already created by the infamous paragraphs 84-86 of the final report of Synod 2015.
But there is more. Exceeding even the most pessimistic predictions, Francis goes beyond his sham of a Synod to proclaim what amounts to a practical amnesty on grave sexual immorality generally as an impediment to Holy Communion, if that were possible. As this essay will show, the big payoff is Chapter 8, whose bizarre title says it all: "Accompanying, Discerning and Integrating Weakness." Read that title again and ponder its implications before reading further.
As Francis would have it, the Church will now integrate unrepentant, habitual, public mortal sinners into ecclesial life, even though the Church has always taught, for their own salvation, that they are not living members of the Church
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until they repent, are absolved of their sins, and are restored to the life of sanctifying grace. This "integration" plan will include, but not be limited to, those living in adulterous second "marriages" or simply cohabitating with no intention of ending their immoral situations. This is to be done on the pretext that such people are just so helpless in their sins that they cannot be deemed culpable for them or be required to amend their lives at present, and that "mercy" requires that the Church accommodate their "weakness" until they "grow" spiritually at some point in the indefinite future. But what of God’s grace? In the usual postconciliar mode of Modernist doubletalk, Amoris Laetitia blatantly contradicts itself by declaring: "Through his Church, Christ bestows on marriage and the family the grace necessary to bear witness to the love of God and to live the life of communion (¶ 63)."
If only this were a joke. But Francis is deadly serious. Of course, what I say here requires a demonstration, which follows. It will be quite detailed and thus quite lengthy, but a matter this grave must be demonstrated entirely with the words at issue, and that requires extensive analysis, not general characterizations of the document.
PART I A Plate of Subversive Hors D’oeuvres While the focus of this commentary is Chapter 8 of Amoris Laetitia, the preceding chapters contain numerous intimations of the subversion to follow.
These rhetorical appetizers for the main course tend to undermine or disparage the Church’s traditional teaching on marriage and family and the modern threats to both expounded by a line of great Popes before Vatican II. (There are token citations to Pius XI and Pius XII, but nothing of their uncompromising "rigorism" finds its way into the text).
On this score, I highly recommend Chris Jackson’s brilliant dissection and discussion of these tendentious elements, sprinkled amidst pious praise of "God’s plan" for marriage. Among others, Jackson identifies these:
• praise for the supposedly more "equitable distribution of duties, responsibilities, and tasks" in the "modern" family versus the " older forms and models" (35);
• a laughably feeble protestation that the Church "can hardly stop advocating marriage" because this would be "depriving the world of values that we can and must offer" (35);
• the claim that "there is no sense in simply decrying present-day evils, as if this could change things"—when Francis never ceases decrying the "presentday evils" he considers most urgent, all of which happen to be politically correct targets (35);
• the false accusation that the Church’s teaching on marriage "is overshadowed by an almost exclusive insistence on the duty of procreation" versus the socalled "unitive" aspect, when exactly the opposite is true (36);
• the false accusation that the Church has presented an "excessive idealization" and an "artificial theological ideal" of marriage" (36);
• the false accusations that the Church has long been "stressing doctrinal, bioethical and moral issues, without encouraging openness to grace" and has unjustly neglected to "make room for the consciences of the faithful" (37)—an obvious setup for Chapter 8;
• the declaration that "[s]urely it is legitimate and right to reject older forms of the traditional family marked by authoritarianism and even violence," conspicuously failing to specify what is meant by "older forms of the traditional family" (32);
• a rather sly, matter-of-fact mention of "same-sex unions" as part of the "great variety of family situations that can offer a certain stability," even if they "may not simply be equated with marriage" (53)— thus implicitly abandoning the Church’s teaching on the moral duty to oppose legalization and resist implementation of any form of such "unions";
• subtle demotion of the "indissoluble union between a man and a woman" to merely the one "family situation" that has "a plenary role to play in society as a stable commitment"—meaning that "same-sex unions" can have a lesser role, which is quite in keeping with Francis’s refusal to offer any opposition to their legalization in Ireland, the United States and even Italy (52);
• "feminine emancipation" is praised and absolved of any blame for "today’s problems," while those who think otherwise are accused of "male chauvinism" (54);
• the astounding suggestion— from a Roman Pontiff, no less— that because it is "important to have the freedom to realize that pleasure can find different expressions at different times of life… we can appreciate the teachings of some Eastern masters who urge us to expand our consciousness, lest we be imprisoned by one limited experience that can blinker us" (149);
• a flat rejection of the Scriptural admonition "wives be subject to your husbands," here replaced by Saint Paul’s other admonition "be subject to one another," which has nothing to do with the order of authority in the family (156);
• the claim that Catholic priests lack pastoral knowledge of family problems and should learn from the "experience of the broad oriental tradition of a married clergy…"— a veiled indication of what is probably the destination of the next "synodal journey": the beginning of the abolition of priestly celibacy. (202) In short, by the time we reach Chapter 8, where nearly all of the damage is done, the reader is prepared for the Big Reveal.
PART II.
An Essay In Subversion With good reason does Phil Lawler call Amoris Laetitia a "subversive" document that will likely cause "an acceleration of an already powerful trend to dismiss the Church’s perennial teaching." To read Chapter 8, comprising paragraphs 291-312, is to understand that these pages, which explicitly advocate "accompanying, discerning and integrating weakness" in the Church, could not have been more cleverly written for subversive ends.
(1) "Moral ecumenism" and praise of "irregular" sexual relationships; Christian marriage reduced to an ideal (291-294).
Amoris Laetitia attempts to enshrine with the cloak of the Magisterium the preposterous "moral ecumenism" first floated at Synod 2015. According to this repellant novelty, the Church is now supposed to recognize the "constructive elements" in relationships she has traditionally condemned as mortally sinful, including second "marriages" and "even simple cohabitation," so long as they tick enough boxes on a new checklist of "constructive features" that supposedly confer nobility on illicit sexual unions: "stability," "deep affection," "responsibility for offspring" and "an ability to overcome trials in the midst of a storm." (293) Just as "ecumenism" harps incessantly on the "good elements" in false religions laden with heresy and superstition, leaving their practitioners undisturbed in their errors, the newly invented moral ecumenism of the Synod of Francis will now harp incessantly on the good elements in false relationships involving adultery and fornication, leaving their participants undisturbed in sin. In 2016, after the Synod, the concept of living in sin is suddenly abolished, just as the concept of being outside the one true Church was suddenly abolished after Vatican II.
Accordingly, also in line with ecumenism, Amoris Laetitia now informs us that "Christian marriage, as a reflection of the union between Christ and his Church, is fully realized in the union between a man and a woman who give themselves to each other in a free, faithful and exclusive love, who belong to each other until death and are open to the transmission of life, and are consecrated by the sacrament…" (292) The reader will readily guess what is coming next: "Some forms of union radically contradict this ideal, while others realize it in at least a partial and analogous way."
So, Christian marriage now becomes the "fullness" of marriage, while illicit sexual unions of various kinds are seriously described as "partially" realizing this "ideal." In like manner, the Catholic Church is "ecumenically" described as merely possessing the "fullness of truth" while other religions have a more or less acceptable quantum of it. Thus everyone is safe right where he is, although it would be better to have "fullness." The effects of this notion on conversions to Catholicism are obvious; the effect will be the same on conversions to Christian marriage.
The next element of subversion (quoting Synod 2015) is a moral justification of civil marriage and even cohabitation as alternatives to the "ideal" of Christian marriage: "The choice of a civil marriage or, in many cases, of simple cohabitation, is often not motivated by prejudice or resistance to a sacramental union, but by cultural or contingent situations…. celebrating marriage is considered too expensive in the social circumstance. As a result, material poverty drives people into de facto unions." (294) One can only laugh at the Synod’s claim that poverty makes a simple Catholic wedding ceremony impossible, or that "shacking up" is less expensive than living in Holy Matrimony under the same roof with the same person. One is reminded here of Montesquieu’s The Spirit of the Laws, which sought to undermine Christian marriage and promote divorce by cataloguing various "cultural alternatives" to the divine institution as dry anthropological facts.
(294) According to Francis, "de facto unions" are now to be viewed as "opportunities that can lead to the full reality of marriage and family in conformity with the Gospel." (294) Thus people living in sin are now said to have "part" of the reality of marriage—a proposition as nonsensical as the claim that heretics who reject the very existence of the Catholic Church and practice various forms of gravely sinful sexual immorality are somehow in "partial communion" with her.
What Romano Amerio has called the "loss of essences" in postconciliar thinking—a refusal to distinguish good from bad or even one thing from another with exactitude—now claims Christian marriage and even morality itself. The reduction of marriage to an "ideal" radically undermines respect for the divine institution Francis purports to defend, and the only licit conjugal relation between man and woman now becomes the mere end point on a scale of relational choices, all of which are to be viewed as more or less good. Mortally sinful sexual unions are no longer to be treated as threats to salvation, but only as stages in a "gradual" moral development. This truly monstrous notion of Kasper’s is now Francis’s theme in Amoris Laetitia.
(2) "Integrating weakness" of those in immoral sexual unions; objective conduct and consequent scandal and profanation of the Eucharist ignored (295-299).
As I have noted before on these pages in
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