Letter #44, 2016: The Three Positions

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Letter #44, 2016: The Three Positions

[2016-05-16]

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May 16, 2016, Monday -- The Three Positions (And Now Four) On Amoris Laetitia

The text below is the Editorial in the May edition of Inside the Vatican, which is just out. (To obtain a copy of the issue or to subscribe for one or more years, click here. We welcome new subscribers, of course. If you do not want to subscribe but would like a sample issue for free, please call in the US 1-800-789-9494.)

The cover of this May issue (left) deals with the struggle of Cardinal George Pell to reform the finances of the Church and the Vatican, under the title "Mission Impossible?"

The Editorial argues that three main positions on the teaching in the Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia have emerged since the text was made public in Rome on April 8, and lists the three positions:

(1) those who see no rupture, and praise the document;

(2) those who see a rupture (and who for this reason call for the revision or withdrawal of the document);

(3) those who believe a rupture might have occurred, but did not (and who therefore do not call for the revision or withdrawal of the document, and praise the good things in it).

The Editorial ends with a call for Catholics to remain united even as they praise or blame the Pope's text, since the unity of the Church is critical for her mission, and the opponents of the Church are only pleased if the Church suffers from internal divisions.

Following the Editorial is a new article, just out today, which offers a 4th category of interpretation that is worth considering. It come in an article by Italian Vaticanist Sandro Magister, picking up on a text by French Dominican Fr. Thomas Michelet, who teaches at the Angelicum in Rome.

Fr. Michelet's 4th position is:

4) "In reality, both positions are right. On the one hand the document has not changed doctrine and discipline in that which is founded on the Word of God, because it could not do so. It is needless to affirm that it has done so, because it did not have the power. On the other hand, something has indeed changed, but only in that which could be, without touching doctrine and the discipline that results from it. At the least there is a pastoral change, in acceptance and long-term accompaniment. But there is more, according to the Pope..."

For the rest of his argument, see below...

Following the text of Fr. Michelet, I send for the second time an invitation to join us on our pilgrimage at the end of June "In the Footsteps of Pope Benedict XVI." (If you would like more information, send an email to pilgrimages@insidethevatican.com or click here.)

First, then, is the text of the editorial....

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Editorial, Inside the Vatican, May 2016

The Debate Intensifies

Throughout the Church, there is intense debate over the new Apostolic Exhortation of Pope Francis, Amoris Laetitia (“The Joy of Love”). Some see it as a “rupture” with the Church’s doctrinal tradition, while others say that isn’t true...

By Robert Moynihan

“My great joy as a result of this document resides in the fact that it coherently overcomes that artificial, superficial, clear division between ‘regular’ and ‘irregular’ (marital relationships).” —Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, presenting Amoris Laetitia in Rome on April 8

“If we analyze certain statements of AL with intellectual honesty within their proper context, we find ourselves faced with difficulties when trying to interpret them in accordance with the traditional doctrine of the Church... All members of the Church... have a duty to report this and respectfully request an authentic interpretation.” —Bishop Athanasius Schneider of Astana, Kazakhstan, in mid-April

“Paragraph 305 together with footnote 351 – in which it is stated that believers can be allowed to the sacraments ‘in an objective situation of sin’ ‘because of mitigating factors’ – directly contradicts article 84 of Pope John Paul II’s exhortation Familiaris consortio... That this represents a rupture (with the doctrinal tradition of the Church) emerges without any doubt for every thinking person who knows the respective texts... Every single cardinal, but also every bishop and priest, is called upon to preserve uprightly the Catholic discipline of the sacraments.” —Prof. Robert Spaeman, German Catholic philosopher and friend of Pope Benedict XVI, in an April interview

“What has been taught by John Paul II in Familiaris Consortio and by Benedict XVI in Sacramentum Caritatis is still valid in an unchanged way... If Amoris Laetitia intended to rescind such a deeply rooted and such a weighty discipline, it would have expressed itself in a clear manner and it would have given the reasons for it. However, such a statement with such a meaning is not to be found in it.” —Cardinal Gerhard Mueller, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, in a talk in Spain in early May

“Anyone who thinks there is an opportunity to receive absolution and communion in Amoris laetitia, they would have to seek it in the footnote 351 in Chapter 8... But it must be asked whether a footnote of about three lines is sufficient to overthrow the entire teachings of Popes and Councils on this subject. Certainly not!” —Cardinal Walter Brandmueller, interview with the German news agency KNA, also in early May

Francis in The Joy of Love has stirred up a hornet’s nest.

The Pope clearly wrote this document for two purposes:

(1) to remind Catholics, and the whole world, that marriage and family are beautiful, precious gifts, in an age when fewer and fewer people are marrying; and

(2) to reach out to men and women in “irregular” situations (in particular, men and women who have married, divorced, then “remarried” without annulments), in order to “integrate” these men and women more fully into the life of the Church, up to and including access to the sacrament of the Eucharist.

The reaction to this text has fallen into three main categories:

(1) Those who see no rupture. These have praised the Pope for his eloquence on behalf of marriage and family life, and for his opening to those in “irregular” situations in order to “reintegrate” them into the life of the Church; they find no break with the Church’s doctrinal tradition; Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, whom the Pope chose to present the text on April 8, is the principal exponent of this interpretation;

(2) Those who see a rupture. These have criticized the Pope sharply for an alleged “rupture” allowing divorced and “remarried” Catholics to receive communion without ceasing to live together; a leader of this group, Prof. Robert de Mattei, a conservative Italian Catholic scholar, writes: “Nothing changes in doctrine but everything is changed in praxis.... The circumstances and the situation, according to the new morality, dissolve the concept of intrinsic evil and public and permanent sin... The rule of the Church was ‘the divorced, remarried civilly, who live together, cannot receive the Eucharist.’ Amoris laetitia in contrast, establishes: ‘the divorced and remarried, in some cases, can receive Holy Communion’”;

(3) Those who believe a rupture has not yet occurred; this might be called “the party of the footnote,” in the sense that those holding this position believe Pope Francis, if he had intended to change doctrine (which in any case, according to Catholic belief, is something he cannot validly do), he would have done so in the body of his text, not in a footnote (referring to footnote #351); men like Cardinals Gerhard Mueller, Walter Brandmueller, Raymond Burke and Bishop Athanasius Schneider, each in differing ways, seem to hold this third position.

The position of Bishop Bernard Fellay, head of the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX), the traditionalist group which has been separated from Rome since 1988, but still hopes to return to union with Rome in the near future, is especially complex, but also especially relevant.

“This is an apostolic exhortation entitled The Joy of Love,”â€?Fellay said on April 10, “but it makes us weep.”

On May 2 (Feast of St. Athanasius), Fellay’s official statement said:â€?“Objective rules are replaced, in Protestant fashion, by the individual’s conscience. This poison is in part attributable to personalism, which, in the matter of pastoral care of families, no longer places the gift of life and the good of the family first and foremost, but rather the personal fulfillment and spiritual development of the spouses... We humbly but firmly implore the Holy Father to revise the exhortation Amoris Laetitia, and most especially Chapter 8.”

And yet, despite this fierce criticism, Fellay on May 1 gave a homily where he stressed the need to remain... united with Pope Francis.

“Despite all human misery, despite the fact that even a Pope is now saying unbelievable things on morality and trying to tell us that sin is the state of grace — what we are hearing today is unbelievable, unheard of! — well, despite that, this Pope can still accomplish actions that sanctify and save,”â€?Fellay said. “God has not taken from him his power to bind and to loosen (see Mt. 16:19). He can do good and he still does...

“It does not mean that we approve the evil that is done; far from it, we reject it and guard ourselves from it. But at the same time we recognize that in the Church there is something stronger and greater than the things we see: there is God, the infinite God, infinitely holy, infinitely good.

“There is one path that has been given to us for our salvation, for there is no other. If we wish to go to heaven, we have to go through the Church, the Roman Catholic Church; there is no other path. We can try to invent whatever we want: it is all to no avail. It is the only path. So we must not leave the Church...”

Even as he criticizes Francis, Fellay clings to the Church. “There is no other path,” he says. Words all of us can well keep in mind.

[End Editorial]

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Sandro Magister Today, Citing Fr. Michelet

And here is an important piece circulated today by Vaticanist Sandro Magister (link).

Francis: “I Can Say: Yes. Period”

This is how the Pope responded to the question of whether something has changed with respect to the previous discipline on communion for the divorced and remarried. A Dominican theologian explains what this innovation is. But how will it be put into practice?

by Sandro Magister

ROME, May 16, 2016 – At a distance of almost two weeks, not a single line has appeared yet in L'Osservatore Romano concerning the monumental discourse delivered by Cardinal Gerhard L. Müller on May 4 in Oviedo for a correct interpretation of the post-synodal exhortation (link).

While on the other hand almost every day the newspaper of the Holy See devotes useless space to the empty plaudits of this or that cardinal in praise of the papal document.

And yet Müller is the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. And in that discourse of his he does nothing other than exercise the best he can his role of “theological organization” of the magisterium of Francis, meaning “active collaboration with the ministry proper to the Pope,” for the benefit of the whole “people of God.”

What follows is another contribution that moves in the same direction of interpretation, accurate and constructive, of Amoris Laetitia, in particular of its little footnote that has become its interpretive cross.

It is footnote 351, hailed by progressives as the “open sesame” of communion for the divorced and remarried, but in reality not as affirmative as they claim.

The footnote follows this passage of paragraph 305 of the exhortation:

“Because of forms of conditioning and mitigating factors, it is possible that in an objective situation of sin – which may not be subjectively culpable, or fully such – 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 this is what it says:

“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).”

How is this key point of Amoris Laetitia to be understood? Responding to this question, further below, is Fr. Thomas Michelet, a French Dominican who studied in Fribourg, Switzerland, professor at the pontifical university of Saint Thomas Aquinas in Rome, known as the “Angelicum.”

This commentary first appeared in French in Riposte Catholique.

One key element of Fr. Michelet’s analysis is the credit that he gives to the response of Pope Francis -- at the press conference on the flight back from the island of Lesbos -- to the question of where there are truly new possibilities now that did not exist before, in support of access to the sacraments for the divorced and remarried.

Francis responded, and Michelet points it out: “I can say: Yes. Period.” And it does not matter that shortly afterward, when asked specifically about footnote 351, the Pope said: “I do not remember that footnote.”

Because the unassailable matter of fact remains: in the judgment of Francis, there is something new. And so one may not maintain that what is said in Familiaris Consortio continues to apply unchanged, and that’s it.

Fr. Michelet identifies precisely what is new that Francis is supposed to have introduced into pastoral care for the divorced and remarried, without explicitly breaking with the perennial doctrine on the Eucharist and marriage.

But how this process -- vaguely hinted at by the Pope -- will be understood and put into practice in the Church remains to be seen. The beginnings are those of a Babel.

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Sursa: www.InsideTheVatican.com

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