Filial Affection in the Age of Pope Francis

"Some, as with certain responses to Amoris Laetitia, persist in seeing only white or black, when rather one ought to discern in the flow of life." ~ Pope Francis, in an interview published in Avvenire on Nov. 16.   

"You get the idea? Keep his mind off the plain antithesis between True and False. Nice shadowy expressions --- 'It was a phase' --- 'I've been through all that' --- don't forget the blessed word 'Adolescent.'" ~ Screwtape to his nephew in C.S. Lewis' Screwtape Letters

This is a troubling pair of statements. Troubling in their juxtaposition because the first comes from the reigning sovereign pontiff, to whom all Catholics, myself included, owe a deep filial affection. Troubling because the second is from a diabolical uncle--albeit fictional--who writes to his fiendish nephew with advice about how to win the human being entrusted to him to the side of eternal hellfire and damnation..

Let me repeat: We Catholics owe the pope a deep filial affection: not just the petrine office (those who make that distinction are flat-out wrong), but the person who holds that office too. I love how the Italians call the pope by his former name--Papa Ratzinger, Papa Bergoglio, etc.--because this highlights their love for the man who holds the petrine office, with all his personality but all his foibles and all his shortcomings too. We are obliged to look to the Holy Father, a human person just like we are, for guidance and correction because he is our father in faith, the successor of St. Peter, who had plenty of shortcomings of his own. 

But there is nothing in Catholicism that leads me to consider every word the Holy Father utters a divine oracle, and while Pope Francis is most certainly not Screwtape (again, that is the farthest thing from my mind), his words in the Avvenire interview, which I happened to read shortly after reading the relevant portion of Lewis' book, bear a striking resemblance. To say otherwise--to hasten to smooth things over just because the speaker was the pope--would be intellectually dishonest.

This post is therefore the type of honest serious soul-searching that any responsible Catholic intellectual needs to carry out. I am convinced of the need to discuss these things openly and charitably rather than each of us worrying individually and alone. Indeed, anybody who has been following the fall-out from Pope Francis' Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia should be worried because the incongruities really are there, and they've been there longer than this week-old interview.

The context of all this, of course, is the recent news about the four cardinals who submitted a series of dubia--Latin for questions--to the Holy Father in order to elicit his response, in order that the Vicar of Christ confirm his brethren in the faith (cf. Luke 22:32, Lumen Gentium 25, etc., etc.). These four cardinals included two Germans, an Italian, and Cardinal Raymond Burke, for whom I have had a deep and abiding affection ever since I was a seminarian and he was my bishop in La Crosse, Wisconsin.

Dubia are a traditional way of eliciting a 'yes' or 'no' answer from the Vatican in regard to questions of faith and morals, and these specific dubia sought clarity in the aftermath of wildly varying interpretations of a single chapter Amoris Laetitia. To some interpreters, Chapter 8, and in particular Footnote 351, implied that Catholics who have civilly remarried without obtaining an annulment may be eligible to receive Holy Communion. The Church must be a source of help for couples in these "irregular unions," Pope Francis writes in the relevant portion of his post-synodal apostolic exhortation, adding in the aforementioned footnote that "in certain cases this can include the help of the sacraments" (my emphasis).

Surely it would be incongruous and troubling if the Holy Father's statement really meant that Catholics in adulterous unions could become eligible to present themselves for Holy Communion without living as "brother and sister," as the magisterial tradition has taught that they must do. Surely. So of course, there have been many faithful bishops, priests, and lay Catholics who have insisted that the passage couldn't be interpreted except in light of the perennial teaching of the Church. 

The Holy Father's statement couldn't be taken any other way, they say, because then it would contradict not only the magisterial teaching of Pope St. John Paul II, not only the entire Catholic tradition, but even the very words of Christ: "Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery" (Mark 10:11-12); and of St. Paul in regard to the reception of the Holy Eucharist: "Therefore whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord unworthily will have to answer for the body and blood of the Lord" (1 Corinthians 11:27). 

That's certainly the way Archbishop Chaput, for example, interpreted matters this summer when he published guidelines for the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, echoing John Paul II's Familiaris Consortio: "Undertaking to live as brother and sister is necessary for the divorced and civilly-remarried to receive reconciliation in the Sacrament of Penance, which could then open the way to the Eucharist."

And that's certainly the way that I had been telling myself for months that the Holy Father's words must to be interpreted. Because it couldn't be otherwise.

And yet, there is Cardinal Walter Kasper, the original promoter of what has become known as the "Kasperite thesis,"who wrote in an essay earlier this month that Amoris Laetitia marks a "paradigm shift" that "leaves open the concrete question of admittance to absolution and Communion." Then there is the instruction put forward by the bishops of Argentina, who say that "in the first place we recall that it is not convenient to speak of 'permission' to receive the sacraments, but rather a process of discernment accompanied by a pastor."  

I'd say Cardinal Kasper is in the wrong, except that the Holy Father has praised him repeatedly. And I'd say that the Argentinian bishops are surely in the wrong, except that Pope Francis himself wrote to them praising their "pastoral charity" and stating that there are "no other interpretations" of his apostolic exhortation.

How does this not put Archbishop Chaput in the wrong, at least in the eyes of the Holy Father, despite the fact that the Philadelphia archbishop's own pastoral statement echoes the constant teaching of the Church?

Hence the dubia of Cardinal Burke et alii. In particular, the first dubium pointedly asks:

[W]hether, following the affirmations of Amoris Laetitia (300-305), it has now become possible to grant absolution in the sacrament of penance and thus to admit to holy Communion a person who, while bound by a valid marital bond, lives together with a different person more uxorio without fulfilling the conditions provided for by Familiaris Consortio, 84, and subsequently reaffirmed by Reconciliatio et Paenitentia, 34, and Sacramentum Caritatis, 29. Can the expression “in certain cases” found in Note 351 (305) of the exhortation Amoris Laetitia be applied to divorced persons who are in a new union and who continue to live more uxorio?

That's the first dubium of five, and surely the pope must answer this first one in the negative. Surely? We will never know, as Pope Francis let it be known that he would not be answering the dubia, leading the cardinals to release them publicly, and leading to his commentary on those who "persist in seeing only in black or white." The Holy Father doesn't say so explicitly, but the assumption is that seeing things in black-and-white lacks pastoral nuance; it's spiritually immature to speak of truth and falsity as if they were antithetical; it's even--and here's that damning word of Screwtape's--adolescent. Blessed, he says, not damning; but that's the problem.

Only the most papolatrous and thoroughly biblically illiterate among us would argue that the formal "Act of Correction" that Cardinal Burke has floated is not on the table. (Think Galations 2: "When Cephas came to Antioch, I [Paul] opposed him openly" if you are tempted to disagree.) Unprecedented in the modern Church, yes; impossible, no.

But one ought to pray that it doesn't come to that. I do, regularly and seriously.

If it does come to something formal, then it's for the good cardinals to take care of, and Cardinal Burke is specifically in my prayers every day in that regard, too. 

What of us lowly laypeople? We too get asked--even lectured--about how the Church is getting with the times and modernizing, and finally updating her moribund, medieval teachings. 

Which is the reason for this post.

And the reason that I say things like this:

I love and respect Pope Francis, and I look to him for spiritual guidance and correction, as he is the true successor to St. Peter. But he is a human being just like you and I, and the Holy Spirit does not perfect his human character, or even his human judgement and intellect. Some of Pope Francis' statements have displayed an undeniable intemperateness. And some of his pastorally-oriented strategies for bringing people back into the fold, while well intentioned, are instead bringing about a great deal of turmoil and confusion, in the present instance because many people are beginning to think that the Church has changed her teaching on the indissolubility of marriage. She hasn't, and she can't. If “even an angel should preach unto you any Gospel other than that which we preached unto you, let him be anathema” (Galatians 1:8). Please pray for Pope Francis. I do every day.