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JMJ
There has been a lot (read onslaught) of commentary on the latest issuance of Pope Francis - Amoris Laetitia.
First, I am not going to waste my precious time reading it - because time is precious and reading ambiguous phrases that are merely the result / repeat of a subservience the human respect the emerged fully during the Second Vatican Council is wasted.
Second, there are other far better minds (see below) who have been chewing on this tidbit for a while.
What I will observe is that we have a classic case of cognitive dissonance occurring in a variety of people.
- Action: Pope Francis issues a document that implicitly states that people in an objective state of mortal sin can approach the Sacrament of the Eucharist.
- Belief: Popes can do no wrong.
- Dissonance Increases (head going to explode): Pope Francis continually performs an admixture of actions that are objectively wrong - causing mental and spiritual anguish.
- Options:
- Change Belief: Pope can (and has) done wrong.
- This would lead (ultimately) to the theological conclusions of the SSPX and potentially (if not schooled in Chruch Teaching) sedevacantism.
- Change Action: Pope really didn't write this etc.
- A little difficult to rewrite the commonly known actions, unless one has access to a primary record like this here.
- Change Perception of Action: The Pope didn't Change Doctrine so all is ok! :-)
- Yep Pope didn't change doctrine, full points for noticing that.
- This little detail is an attempt to escape what IS in the document - that the conscience is king (or queen) and who are we to try and inform these poor souls of the truth of their situation in the eyes of God.
- Dissonance Decreases (just a dull pain behind the eyes): Pope didn't mean 'that'.
- The only problem is that the dull pain behind the eyes is a symptom of a bigger problem: brain cancer.
-OR-
People who will try to bend the spoon usually end up being bent themselves.
I look forward to reading the SSPX commentary as well.
Two items that struck me:
Fr. Hunwicke: Indeed and indeedio, so it does. That is precisely why, over the years, this blog has been hammering away, in season and out of season, at the truth that such development must be eodem sensu eademque sententia. Readers will recall that this principle, enunciated repeatedly by modern pontiffs down to Benedict XVI, goes back through S Vincent of Lerins to an immensely Magisterial writer, S Paul of Tarsus, who was not an Austrian.
Joseph Shaw: Note again, as I pointed out in previous posts, the possibility of moral ignorance isexplicitly ruled out: Amoris laetitia has no interest in suggesting that the sins of a couple in an illicit union are not mortal because of ignorance of the rules. This was a common strategy among liberal priests in relation to contraception in the 1970s. No, we have moved on from that option. Rather, the question is raised: will it not do harm, to follow the rules? It asks the question; it does not provide the answer.
P^3
What we have now is not the final melt-down of the Church. We have, perhaps, a negative step, but if so it is one of many. We may perhaps say that the teaching of the Church is not as clear as it was, but this obscuring of the teaching has been a long, slow process. More serious, I think, by far, than Amoris laetitia, was the deliberate removal of dozens and dozens of references to sin, God's anger, damnation, repentance, penance, and grace, from the prayers of the liturgy, which happened with the promulgation of the 1970 Missal. That was a disaster for the Church, and the consequences continue to make themselves felt. It wasn't the proclamation of heresy: no, and that makes the whole sorry business harder to combat, in some ways. But in another way it means that there is something we can each and every one of us do, to reinforce the threatened truth: and that is, to pray the ancient liturgy, and to promote it.
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