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A Return to Amoris Laetitia:The Vain Attempt to Accommodate Christianity to the Modern World and Its Distorted Values**.
At the presentation of Amoris Laetitia (AL)*, Christoph Cardinal Schoenborn famously said: “For me Amoris Laetitia is, first and foremost, a “linguistic event”, as was Evangelii gaudium. Something has changed in ecclesial discourse.” (emphasis mine)
A linguistic event? Boy howdy. Progressives love to manipulate (or is butcher the right word?) language for their cause:
- support for abortion becomes known as being “pro-choice”
- supporting banning guns and ammunition becomes known as “sensible gun control”
- supporting increased taxation becomes known as “investing”
- tolerance becomes known as “acceptance”
- you get the idea
It is becoming so in the Church as well.
- adulterous relationships become known as “irregular unions”
- orthodox Catholics become known as “rigid and Pharisaical”
- not holding to doctrine and Tradition becomes known as “pastoral care and personal discernment”
- emphasis on mercy and attention to concrete situations becomes known as “if you follow your conscience you can do whatever you like”
- a Church without orthodox leadership based on Scripture, Tradition, and the Magisterium becomes
Protestant“an inclusive and decentralized Church”
These are the fruits of AL. And they are rotten.
Dioceses around the world are split on what was once settled practice following from the constant teaching of the Church: those not in a state of grace (i.e., in a state of mortal sin) are not to present themselves for Communion. But that has cratered under AL. The dioceses of Rome, Malta, and some in Argentina and Germany have now broken from what the universal Church holds to be the Truth. Doctrinal anarchy is resulting from this mess.
Building on Pope Francis’s celebrated maxim that the Eucharist “is not a prize for the perfect but a powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak,” Cardinal archbishop Joseph Tobin of Newark, NJ held a “pilgrimage” for so-called LGBT Catholics at his Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart and had no qualms about his priests offering Holy Communion to those living outside of the Church’s call to chastity. When asked whether he might talk about sin during this pilgrimage he said that “That sounds a little backhanded to me.”
Not to be outdone, Jesuit Fr. James Martin, who has become a progressive media darling and a vocal advocate for LGBT Catholics said that “Pretty much everyone’s lifestyle is sinful.” Umm, no. Phil Lawler sets him straight:
That statement is outrageous. In a sane world, Father Martin’s Jesuit superiors would order him to apologize. We are all sinners; we are all sinful. But we are not all engaged in sinful ways of life.
Not to be outdone by his brother Jesuit, Fr. Arturo Sosa Abascal, (the man known as the Black Pope as the head of the Jesuit order) has said that all Church doctrine must be open to discernment, even the words of Christ; and that the devil is just a social construct to help us understand evil.
But of course, these men have learned from Pope Francis who famously plays fast and loose with words. For instance:
No one can be condemned for ever, because that is not the logic of the Gospel! AL297.
And now, there are rumors circulating for a “reinterpretation” of Humanae Vitae. Buckle up.
As with all of the “linguistic events” of this papacy, the AL secret decoder ring will be required. We will certainly hear that “the object is not to change the doctrine” because, as with communion for the adulterous, “we don’t need to change the doctrine when we can do an end-run around it.”
The jargon and gibberish of these linguistic events of the Pope Francis era certainly do seem to be a vain attempt to accommodate Christianity to the modern world and its distorted values. And they remind me of something I recently read (modified to fit this essay):
There is a lesson (here). Perhaps the dumbest man in the room is not the man who cannot understand gibberish, but the man who cannot see gibberish for what it is. And perhaps the most dangerous people (in the Church) are those who understand this human weakness and take full, cynical advantage of it. Our (spiritual) problems have deep educational roots. Until the matters of jargon and gibberish are addressed, I suspect that things are unlikely to improve.
*Amoris laetitia (The Joy of Love, also known as AL) is the post-synodal apostolic exhortation written by Pope Francis. Dated 19 March 2016, it was released on 8 April 2016. It followed the Synods on the Family held in 2014 and 2015. One can go to my blog to find critique of this document (here, here, here, here, and here)
**I stole the second part of the title from Peter Kwasniewski, at NLM. He writes on liturgy.
Published in Religion & Philosophy
Initial thoughts …
Discernment is the cornerstone, to be sure. But we live in a church that’s filled with all kinds of different people, with all kinds of different styles and spiritual disciplines. My criticism of Francis is that while discernment is wonderful, it requires a little more preparation than just launching into it and seeing what comes out. That being said, a church is in business to seek out and find God’s will, and to come up with immediate and practical ways to carry it out. That’s what discernment is.
If you gave a Marine (think Mattis) an order to go do something, Mattis isn’t going to just start marching directly at the target and start shooting. He’s going to examine the terrain, examine supply lines, etc. He’s going to plan and prepare. And just like The Art of War, he’s going to be brutally honest about himself; what can he accomplish? Where does he need to improve so that he can succeed? That’s what discernment is about. It’s more about self-reconnaissance than anything else. If you read the exhortations, a lot of space is given to describing the spiritual “terrain.” Francis isn’t discerning about whether to obey the order, he’s discerning about how to carry it out.
We know the command about God’s love in the form of family, but we’re trying to carry it out in an increasingly secular and sexually unconstrained world. And if I were a commander in the field, and my recent efforts weren’t working, I’d be honor-bound to examine whether we should change tactics. If you take a look at ideas about marriage being pushed by secular society, you may consider them wrong, but you can’t deny that they’re succeeding – so we’d better adjust.
At that point, too many conservatives assume that by “adjust” I mean “surrender.” Not so at all. But we simply have to do something more than re-repeating doctrinal tropes when the message isn’t getting through. The writer in this piece is correct about discernment; you don’t discern about things that have already been decided. But you do discern about how to carry them out.
This is certainly what Fr. Reedy is talking about when he explains the rules of Ignatian discernment:
Holy Father Francis is certainly a man who keeps the first bullet point as a priority (at least to my understanding of him – he is the man of the margins). It is the next 3 bullet points that I and his critics have trouble with.
I agree with this paragraph:
And yet the following one doesn’t seem to square:
I’ll finish with this as Fr. Reedy agrees with the four cardinals:
Fr. Z links to an informative EWTN video: Raymond Arroyo interviews Edward Pentin and Fr. Gerald Murray.
Yikes, wow, it’s hard to “Like” that video, even though it is edifying.
“In this supreme moment of need for the Church, the one who should speak will fall silent.” — Sister Lucia
and
“The work of the devil will infiltrate even into the Church in such a way that one will see cardinals opposing cardinals, bishops against bishops. The priests who venerate me will be scorned and opposed by their confreres…churches and altars sacked; the Church will be full of those who accept compromises and the demon will press many priests and consecrated souls to leave the service of the Lord.” — Our Lady of Akita
Just for the record, Ignatius lays out 22 rules in the Spiritual Exercises. The Exercises are the foundation of a Jesuit’s spiritual life, and the whole task of the Exercises is to discern God’s will – and make a choice (Jesuits call it an “election”). The four bullets above don’t really capture what the rules for discernment actually are, of course.
Besides, I maintain that to understand Francis, it’s more useful to put the Jesuit angle to one side, and to focus just as much on the fact that he was a “working” bishop for many years of a huge diocese. By a working bishop, I mean a bishop in a diocese, rather than an institutional bishop who works in a Vatican Department or bureaucracy. His perspective is shaped by his Ignatian heritage, of course, but I’d argue that Francis is now much more a bishop than a Jesuit. His biggest theme is personal contact, and as a bishop, that’s the tool of the trade. Here was a bishop who spent many years fixing local problems – as someone said of him, he just spent the last twenty years begging the electric company to keep the power on.
That’s what I see in Francis. Most of all, he respects fellow bishops and the job they have to do. He’s not as concerned with the subtleties of theology, and so being criticized for theory just isn’t going to bother him. He doesn’t like bureaucracy, and he’s famous for simply going around the established power brokers.
Being a Jesuit is only one part of his make-up. I think his being a bishop was more formative.
Pope Francis wanted a de-centralized Church and by ignoring established powers (I will include the Tradition and the Magisterium here) he has taken de-centralization to a bad place where different dioceses now behave like separate ecclesial communities.
He’s the Pope, he needs to accept that and act like it. Put aside the agendas, put aside the personality, and defend the faith.
Fr. Gerald Murray tells it like it is:
No. That isn’t at all what I suggested, and I reject the implication. I was referring to bypassing officials who are entrenched in bureaucratic fiefdoms, not Tradition or Magisterium. Please don’t misuse my words to make those kinds of accusations.
I know full well what you meant and you are certainly free to disagree with my point (you’ll note that I wrote “I will include”) but it is obvious to many that the Pope is ignoring Tradition and the teaching Magisterium in this crisis that he created and that refuses to address.
I can’t believe I’m going to wade into this conversation, but…here goes.
The problem with the Pope’s comments is that most Catholics are like me. I haven’t been well educated in doctrine or church history or theology, I have no scholarly background, and I don’t have the high intelligence needed to follow theological discussions. I need to hear the truth taught in plain, clear language.
When the Pope states or hints that it is now permissible for divorced and re-married Catholics to receive communion, and a number of Bishops allow this, my common sense tells me that regarding divorce and remarriage, the Church has, either now or in the past, taught error.
I don’t see this as a subtle point of theology that the Pope can put aside to attend to more important pastoral duties. Either the Church is protected by Christ from teaching error, or it is not. If the Church can teach error in one serious matter, it can teach error in all matters.
This isn’t about being judgmental or harsh or narrow, this is about thirsting for the Truth.
Amen, AQ! Amen!
You are not alone. The lay faithful were specifically mentioned in the latest letter to the Pope from the Four Cardinals:
+ + +
As Cardinal Caffara says, it is because of your love for the Church, loyalty to the Pope, and the search for Truth, that you seek clarity.
You are not alone.
Pray for the Pope.
Yeah – that’s why it’s important to realize that this isn’t what the Pope stated or “hinted.” Ever.
This might help:
The rantings of the critics will assure you that the Pope is personally trying to overturn marriage laws. Ridiculous. Everyone agrees that divorce and remarriage are against Catholic teaching. The difference is what to do about it. Standard Catholic theology says that you cannot receive communion while you’re in a state of mortal sin – and that remains true. The key point is whether a remarried person is fully in the state of mortal sin; and whether you like it or not (and the critics hate it) the Catholic church leaves that determination to the pastor, not to critics.
A lot of people want things simple … but we’re Catholic. We don’t do simple.
Your humility is refreshing actually. Peace.
Really? Let a critic rant again. When replying to a directive of the Argentinian bishops that allows for communion for some in “complex circumstances” Pope Francis famously said:
That opened the floodgates to this:
Fr. Murray continues:
Rant of critic to continue.
Continuation of critics rant.
Fr. Murray finishes:
The papal apologists love to use the new buzz words of pastoral and inclusion and mercy to defend the teaching by practice whereas truth and fidelity and discipleship are of little interest.
Tracy Rowland writes that a common thread running through his principles for building a people is the priority of praxis over theory. Which, as Fr. Z states, “now more than ever, “pastoral” is used as a weapon against “doctrine”, “intellect”, “academics”, even “magisterium”, and certainly “law”.”
It’s not a matter of wanting simple, it’s a matter of wanting clarity and truth.
Breaking news from Rorate Caeli:
Catholic World Report (Catherine Harmon) and National Catholic Register (Edward Pentin) are also reporting that Cardinal Muller is on the way out.
From Mr. Pentin:
I know nothing of Archbishop Ladaria Ferrer S.J., but the S.J. raises a flag in my book. Cardinal Christoph Schönborn is of course “Mr. Linguistic Event” as I state in the OP and also the one whom Pope Francis said had the answers to our questions on AL. And Archbishop Bruno Forte, who was Special Secretary of the Synod of Bishops, reportedly said the Pope confided in him that “If we speak explicitly about communion for divorced and remarried, you do not know what a terrible mess we will make. So we won’t speak plainly, do it in a way that the premises are there, then I will draw out the conclusions.”
It now appears that the top two spots at the Holy See will be held by Jesuits.
Fr. Z writes:
We’ll see if he is correct.
And as Fr. Z writes in a separate post, some of the reactions have been predictably tasteless.
This is quite astonishing:
According to Cardinal Christoph Schönborn of Vienna (Pope Francis’s “official interpreter of AL), Pope Francis asked Cardinal Schönborn if the document was orthodox.
Austin Ivereigh, a
sycophantbiographer of Pope Francis, writes here about the fascinating immersion into the deep thinking behind the document” (that quote is almost more astonishing – such deep thinking” that the Pope had to ask if it was orthodox):Struggle through the rest of Ivereigh’s mush if you can. That is your homework assignment. For extra credit I’d like someone to point out to me where St. Gregory the Great said: “the art of pastoral accompaniment is the art of discernment”.
Oh, and perhaps Schönborn needs a few lessons on orthodoxy. OneVaderFive reports this:
All the Dubia can be answered YES
Greg Daly of the Irish Catholic tweeted out:
On the Dubia, Cardinal Schoenborn says all the questions can be answered ‘yes’. Indeed, he says he’s told one of the Dubia cardinals so.
From Skojec:
Will this never end?