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incorporated

into the Church’s praxis in certain situations which do not objectively embody our understanding of marriage."

Apparently, Francis seriously believes that all the Popes, saints, great theologians and doctors of the Church somehow overlooked this important task during the 2,000 years that preceded his arrival from Buenos Aires.

Leaving no doubt of the magnitude of his theological coup attempt, Francis even declares that a

well-formed

conscience, which

knows

what the "general rule" requires, can

still

claim an exemption from the "rule" if it "honestly" decides God does not require full compliance at the moment. Believe it or not, the following is the opinion of a Roman Pontiff: Naturally, every effort should be made to encourage the development of an enlightened conscience, formed and guided by the responsible and serious discernment of one’s pastor, and to encourage an evergreater trust in God’s grace.

Yet conscience can do more than recognize that a given situation does not correspond objectively to the overall demands of the Gospel. It can also recognize with sincerity and honesty what for now is the most generous response which can be given to God, and come to see with a certain moral security that it is what God himself is asking amid the concrete complexity of one’s limits, while yet not fully

the objective ideal.

It seems impossible to believe that a Roman Pontiff could promulgate a document declaring that a well-formed conscience is excused even from obedience to the moral law it knows if less than obedience is what the actor deems sufficient "for now," and that God will approve of this departure from "the ideal." How is this passage alone anything other than a sign of an apocalyptic turn of events in the Church?

(5) Natural Law attacked; Saint Thomas abused again (304-305).

In paragraph 304 Francis expands his idea that moral precepts are "general rules" not always applicable to particular situations: "It is reductive simply to consider whether or not an individual’s actions correspond to a general law or rule, because that is not enough to discern and ensure full fidelity to God in the concrete life of a human being."

This echoes the previous paragraph’s incredible assertion that even a wellformed conscience may inform an actor that, "for now," God does not wish him to comply with the "general rule," which now joins marriage in a kind of Platonic realm of the "ideal."

Here Francis perpetrates another shameful abuse of the teaching of Saint Thomas in the Summa, deceptively quoted out of context (like the teaching of John Paul II in Familiaris consortio) in order to attack the natural law itself: Although there is necessity in the general principles, the more we descend to matters of detail, the more frequently we encounter defects… In matters of action, truth or practical rectitude is not the same for all, as to matters of detail, but only as to the general principles; and where there is the same rectitude in matters of detail, it is not equally known to all… The principle will be found to fail, according as we descend further into

detail. (ST, I-II, Q. 94, art. 4).

Based on this cropped quotation, Francis dares to enlist the Angelic Doctor in support of his claim that "It is true that general rules set forth a good which can never be disregarded or neglected, but in their formulation they cannot provide absolutely for all particular situations."

This is simply outrageous. Saint Thomas is not discussing "formulation" of "rules" at all, as God inscribes the basic precepts of the natural law in human nature as "the first principles of human actions." Rather, he is addressing the human failure to draw the right conclusions from application of universally applicable, always valid, natural law principles to more complicated factual scenarios. An example Thomas gives is whether goods in trust must always be restored to their owner even if the owner intends to use them for an immoral purpose.

Other examples would be what exactly constitutes usury or what forms of taking constitute theft. These detailed applications are often the subject of written law (such as the laws against usury). And if the morally wrong conclusions are reached in these cases, which Thomas describes as "some few," it is only because "reason is perverted by passion, or evil habit, or an evil disposition…" (I-II, Q. 94, Art.

4).

Thus, in context, when Saint Thomas says that a principle of the natural law "will be found to fail according as we descend further into detail" he means only that it fails in application to more complex matters because of defects in reason, not that the principle itself is some sort of inadequate "formulation" that cannot cover the situation if rightly applied. The failure lies with the actor, not with the underlying natural law principle. Moreover, the Church’s teaching authority is divinely commissioned to rectify just such failures by way of her moral theology.

In any case, the universal moral precept forbidding adultery does not involve any complex application to divorce and "remarriage." As noted above, the Catechism that Francis ignores states simply that "divorce is a grave offense against the natural law." It was Our Lord himself who declared to all of humanity that whoever puts away his wife and marries another commits adultery. There are no "details" that permit "hardship exceptions" to this divinely expressed application of the natural law binding all men. Neither, therefore, can there be any "exceptions" to the Church’s intrinsically connected sacramental discipline down through the centuries, as Cardinal Brandmüller observes. That discipline is "based on Sacred Scripture" as John Paul II teaches in the same apostolic exhortation from which Francis misleadingly quotes out of context. And it is Francis himself who has a divinely imposed duty to affirm this, rather than pretending that a life of continuing public adultery involves the kind of obscure matter Saint Thomas had in view.

This is the umpteenth instance of Francis "playing fast and loose" with sources over the past three years. A team of Spanish diocesan priests has demonstrated meticulously that this tendency pervades the entire pontificate.

Even Nicole Winfield of the Associated Press is constrained to note that in Amoris Laetitia Francis is "selectively citing his predecessors" and that while he frequently cited John Paul, whose papacy was characterized by a hardline insistence on doctrine and sexual morals, he did so selectively. Francis referenced certain parts of John Paul’s 1981 ‘Familius [sic] Consortio,’ the guiding Vatican document on family life until Friday, but he omitted any reference to its most divisive paragraph 84, which explicitly forbids the sacraments for the divorced and civilly remarried.

It is actually worse than that: Francis does cite part of paragraph 84, while leaving out the key phrases that extinguish his position.

Saint Thomas would be horrified at the abuse to which Francis is subjecting his teaching, twisting it into something that more closely resembles John Locke’s confused and incoherent attempt at a natural law philosophy, which I explore in my book on the rise and rapid fall of political modernity. Locke denied that the precepts of the natural law are inscribed in man’s rational soul and innately incline him to act rightly in the exercise of his reason despite the effects of Original Sin (which Locke also essentially denied). And what do we see in Amoris Laetetia but a kind of Lockean attack on the traditional Catholic understanding of the natural law as Saint Thomas expounds it. In paragraph 305 we read the following: Along these same lines, the International Theological Commission has noted that " natural law could not be presented as an already established set of rules that impose themselves a priori on the moral subject; rather, it is a source of objective inspiration for the deeply personal process of making decisions.

In essence, Francis declares—contrary to all of Tradition and divine revelation itself (cf. Rom. 2:14-15)—that the natural law is no law at all, engraved in human nature and inclining reason toward the good, but merely a sort of externalized guideline to "inspire" our "deeply personal" decisions! For this astounding proposition Francis cites, at footnote 350, nothing more than a document of the International Theological Commission, which has no teaching authority whatsoever. The document is entitled "In Search of a Universal Ethic: A New Look at Natural Law."

The audacity at work here is breathtaking. According to Francis’s "new look at natural law," a moral precept disobeyed is now to be viewed, not only as a "general rule," but merely an inspiring goal that may

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Amoris Laetitia:

Anatomy of a Pontifical Debacle

C. Ferrara/ Continued from Page 17

not be reachable "amid the concrete complexity" (303) of each individual’s situation. In short, a form of situation ethics Catholics cannot possibly accept as an authentic teaching of the Magisterium.

(6) The Poison Pill Footnote; admission of public adulterers and other habitual sexual sinners to the sacraments (305-312).

Finally, in paragraph 305 we encounter the poison pill the entire document and the entire "Synodal process" were clearly designed to administer to the Church: authorization for the admission of public adulterers, and by implication any sort of habitual public sinner, to Confession and Holy Communion in "certain cases." This means, in short order, every case. For as Francis revealed last November to his trusted friend, the militant atheist Eugenio Scalfari, in another interview whose contents neither Francis nor the Vatican denied: "This is the bottom line result, the de facto appraisals are entrusted to the confessors, but at the end of faster or slower paths, all the divorced who ask will be admitted."

Reaching the crescendo of his threeyear- long demagogic assault on the Church’s imaginary pharisaical "rigorism," including that of John Paul II, Francis now announces: "a pastor cannot feel that it is enough simply to apply moral laws to those living in ‘irregular’ situations, as if they were stones to throw at people’s lives."

Quoting his own previous eruption of ire at the conservative prelates who dared to stand up to him during Synod 2015, Francis opines that merely to apply moral laws would "bespeak the closed heart of one used to hiding behind the Church’s teachings, ‘sitting on the chair of Moses and judging at times with superiority and superficiality difficult cases and wounded families’."

What a strange accusation to hurl at the very prelates who opposed Francis’s relentless drive for a neo-Mosaic return to the Old Testament dispensation respecting divorce, but rather defended its perpetual abolition by Christ, whose vicar Francis is supposed to be. But then Francis has spent much of the past three years doing exactly what he accuses others of doing—above all, deriding observant Catholics he deems inadequate, almost every day.

Francis will have none of this "hiding behind the Church’s teachings," for by "thinking that everything is black and white, we sometimes close off the way of grace and of growth, and discourage paths of sanctification which give glory to God." Yes, the Roman Pontiff has actually published a document whose very theme is the slogan of the empty modern mind: "Well, you see, not everything is black and white." No, there are so many shades of grey— probably at least fifty.

And then outcome the faithful have been dreading since the "synodal journey" began. With little fanfare and a buried footnote, the synod train at least reaches its destination. Paragraph 305 declares: "Because of forms of conditioning and mitigating factors, it is possible that in an objective situation of sin… a person can be living in God’s grace, can love and can also grow in the life of grace and charity, while receiving the Church’s help to this end." And what does Francis mean by the "Church’s help"? He means Confession and Holy Communion, as fateful footnote 351 states: In certain cases, this can include the help of the sacraments. Hence, "I want to remind priests that the confessional must not be a torture chamber, but rather an encounter with the Lord’s mercy" (Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium [24 November 2013], 44: AAS 105 [2013], 1038). I would also point out that the Eucharist "is not a prize for the perfect, but a powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak" (ibid., 47: 1039).

The phrase "prize for the perfect" is taken directly from the intervention by Cardinal Kasper with which Francis began the whole charade of a "Synod on the Family": Kasper’s speech to the consistory of February 2015 in which he unveiled the "Kasper proposal"— the only address Francis permitted, which he later hailed as "beautiful and profound." The circle of manipulation is completed as Francis finally reveals that the "Kasper proposal" was his proposal all along.

Leaving no doubt of the matter, Cardinal Lorenzo ("the book thief") Baldisseri made this clear even to the most obtuse observer at the press conference where he and the other Modernist subversive Francis tapped for the occasion presented Amoris Laetitia to the public: Pope Francis reiterates the need to discern carefully the situation in keeping with St.

John Paul II’s Familiaris consortio. "Discernment must help to find possible ways of responding to God and growing in the midst of limits.

By thinking that everything is black and white, we sometimes close off the way of grace and of growth, and discourage paths of sanctification which give glory to God."

[T]he Pope affirms, in a humble and simple manner, in a note that the help of the sacraments may also be given in " certain cases." But for this purpose he does not offer us case studies or recipes, but instead simply reminds us of two of his famous phrases: "I want to remind priests that the confessional should not be a torture chamber but rather an encounter with the Lord’s mercy" and the Eucharist "is not a prize for the perfect but a powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak."

So, the confessional is a "torture chamber" unless some—meaning ultimately all—unrepentant public adulterers are, at least eventually, allowed to enter without repentance, avoid any commitment to amendment of life, and leave with a declaration of absolution for a continual mortal sin they will simply continue committing because their "weakness" is now being "integrated". Otherwise, everything would be "black and white."

Is this for real? Indeed it is. Consider the moral catastrophe Francis has just unleashed: A public adulterer in a second "marriage" is admitted to Holy Communion as part of a process of "discernment" that allows "integration" while he "gradually" moves toward an acceptance of Church teaching. Yet once he is made aware by the priest conducting this "discernment" that the Church teaches that his condition constitutes adultery—as if he didn’t know before!—how can he continue to claim inculpable ignorance of the moral law? Of course he cannot. But, as we saw above, Francis has the answer: even those who know the law are now to be excused from compliance by way of pastoral "discernment" because they find it "very difficult to act differently (302)" on account of "mitigating factors (301302)."

This logic obviously would lead to the practical elimination of mortal sin as an impediment to Holy Communion on the part of any and all habitual sinners who find it "very difficult" to change. In which case, as Fr. Schall wonders, why would anyone need to go to Confession at all? "If this conclusion is correct," he writes, "we really have no need for mercy, which has no meaning apart from actual sin and its free recognition….

Therefore, there is no pressing need to concern oneself too much with these situations."

As we shall see below, however, Francis apparently thinks he can limit the damage to a kind of amnesty on mortal sins of a sexual variety only.

Some neo-Catholic first responders to the scene of this disaster argue desperately that footnote 351 means only that people living in sin can go to Confession, be absolved, and receive Communion so long as they have a firm purpose of living chastely. But this time not even the usually indefatigable Jimmy Akin is willing to labor in denial of the obvious. He simply admits the truth—at least in part. In answer to the question "Does the document foresee any possibility for sacramentally absolving and giving Communion to people who are civilly remarried if they are not living as brother and sister?" Akin writes: It does…. The document thus envisions administering sacramental absolution and holy [sic] Communion to those living in objectively sinful situations who are not mortally culpable for their actions due to various cognitive or psychological conditions.

Since they are not mortally culpable, they could be validly absolved in confession and, being in the state of grace, they could in principle receive Communion. Nothing in this is new.

Nothing in this is new? Akin certainly knows better. He knows that Francis has just overthrown—or rather attempted to overthrow, as this document cannot possibly bind the Church—the teaching of Benedict XVI, John Paul II, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the Code of Canon Law and all of Tradition on the impossibility of public adulterers being admitted to the sacraments on account of their objective state in life. Yet Akin blithely pretends nothing of the sort has happened.

But even worse than this, Akin joins Francis in pronouncing the practical elimination of mortal sin itself as an impediment to Holy Communion, for what mortal sinner could not claim to be subjectively inculpable based on "various cognitive or psychological conditions" which (to quote paragraph 302) make it "very difficult to act differently…" And if some habitual mortal sinners are granted admission to the sacraments under that nebulous criterion, on what ground besides a purely arbitrary "pastoral discretion" could the Church’s pastors stand to deny the sacraments to anyone at all, no matter what his "objective" sin?

Here we see the most dramatic confirmation yet of what this newspaper has contended all long: In order to maintain their niche and a modicum of prestige, there is absolutely nothing certain neo-Catholic opinion leaders are not prepared to swallow in defense of the ever-expanding postconciliar regime of novelty.

Moreover, to admit that Amoris Laetitia is indeed "a subversive document," as Philip Lawler says, would be to admit the entire traditionalist critique of the regime to which they themselves belong, this document being the lowest point yet reached on a continuous downward trajectory traditionalists have accurately tracked and rightly opposed for decades while the neo-Catholic establishment did nothing but applaud the latest novelty.

Having been so wrong for so long, they would rather go down with their sinking ship, which is not to be confused with the unsinkable Barque of Peter. Their vessel is the ghost ship that came out of the fog of Vatican II and will inevitably disappear beneath the waves of history as the ephemeral thing it is. But what calamities the Church must endure until then!

Mission accomplished, Francis brings Chapter 8 to an end with the same rhetorical devices he has been employing incessantly over the past three years: caricature, demagoguery and selfquotation: It is true that at times "we act as arbiters of grace rather than its facilitators. But the Church is not a tollhouse; it is the house of the Father, where there is a place for everyone, with all their problems." (310) We put so many conditions on mercy that we empty it of its concrete meaning and real significance. (311)

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