✣ Papal exhortation avoids clear statement on Communion
What happened? Pope Francis released the most anticipated statement of his pontificate last Friday morning. Amoris Laetitia draws on the family synods of the past two years, and was greeted with intense interest, partly because of speculation that Francis would take a position on the question of Communion for the remarried. The Pope avoided making a direct statement on the issue, writing that “It can no longer simply be said that all those in any ‘irregular’ situation are living in a state of mortal sin ... A subject may know full well the rule, yet have great difficulty in understanding ‘its inherent values’.” A later footnote adds that pastoral help “can include the help of the sacraments.” It does not expand on this statement, which has led to considerable debate and discussion. Elsewhere, the document praises the family, saying: “The joy of love experienced by families is also the joy of the Church,” and offers much practical advice about family life and pastoral work. What the blogosphere said The exhortation provoked a remarkable diversity of reactions. On his Patheos blog, Fr Dwight Longenecker praised the document’s attempts to grapple with the “complex and heartbreaking” realities of relationships in the modern world. “The Pope has made a good effort to help us sort through the wreckage, salvage what we can and build a raft to sail on.” At Catholic World Report, Carl Olson found sections of the document “powerful and poetic”: “In its best moments, Amoris Laetitia presents the bracing vocation and beautiful vision of marriage and family life.” Olson added – in a reservation expressed by others – “It is in the pastoral details that matters become muddled at times, regardless of good intentions.” RR Reno of First Things went further, arguing that the document treated the Eucharist as something “useful” rather than sacred. For the Pope, Reno said, “What’s helpful – Eucharistic reception – must be made more available. It’s as if Christ instituted nothing permanent on earth, but only gave us a goal, sent us on mission.” However, the canon lawyer Edward Peters said on his blog In the Light of the Law that the document did nothing to affect Church law. “Canon 915 does not require Catholic ministers to read the souls of would-be communicants, but rather, directs ministers to withhold Holy Communion from those who, as an external and observable matter, obstinately persevere in manifest grave sin” – including civil remarriage after divorce. Those who think the document has changed the rules “are hearing words that the Pope (whatever might be his personal inclinations) simply did not say”. What the media said In the judgment of CNN’s Richard Allen Greene, Pope Francis had “put his shoulder to the doors of the Catholic Church and shoved them open a little wider, calling for the Church to be more tolerant in practice while not changing any official doctrines”. Greene observed that Amoris Laetitia “has much to please both liberals and conservatives, though it is unlikely to go far enough for either group within the Church”. The Guardian called it “a more compassionate vision for the Church on family issues, urging priests to respond to their communities without rigidly enforcing Church rules”. But the paper’s Joanna Moorehead thought it didn’t go far enough. “The world has changed, the Catholic population has changed, and what we need are proper, nailed-down markers of that to drag the Church at least into the 20th century on issues such as same-sex relationships, divorce and children born outside marriage.” Moorehead added: “Whatever Francis wants to change, the reality for him is that he is surrounded by a deeply conservative institution run largely by self-serving bureaucratic men.” Writing in the New York Times, Ross Douthat said the exhortation marked a new era in the Catholic “truce” between conservatives and liberals. By seeming to approve a split between doctrine and practice, the document “is an encouragement for innovation on the ground, for the de facto changes that more sophisticated liberal Catholics believe will eventually render certain uncomfortable doctrines as dead letters”. So it “promises to heighten the Church’s contradictions rather than contain them”.
