In April 2016, Pope Francis issued his apostolic exhortation summarizing the Synod’s message. Comprising 325 numbered paragraphs and filling more than 250 pages, Amoris Laetitia (“The Joy of Love”) is the lengthiest papal document on record. Attributing this length to the “rich fruits of the two-year Synod process” and the “wide variety of questions” raised, the pope advises against “a rushed reading of the text” (7)1—advice that the media necessarily ignored in their hurry to announce the papal verdict on the matters that had conspicuously vexed the world’s bishops.
Despite its prolixity, Amoris Laetitia provides no clear answer to the question that everyone was asking: whether the pope would open the door for divorced-and-remarried Catholics to receive Communion. Some commentators announced that the pope had upheld traditional Church teaching; others declared that he had made a dramatic innovation. Neither interpretation of this puzzling document is demonstrably wrong.
In fact, Francis deliberately avoids a categorical answer to the question, insisting that “not all discussions of doctrinal, moral, or pastoral issues need to be settled by interventions of the magisterium” (3). He argues that “what is part of a practical discernment in particular circumstances cannot be elevated to the level of a rule” (304), urging pastors to guide couples through a discernment of their situation, helping them to “grow in the life of grace and charity, while receiving the Church’s help to this end” (305).
In the passage that comes closest to an endorsement of the Kasper proposal, paragraph 305, Francis teaches that “a pastor cannot feel that it is enough simply to apply moral laws to those living in ‘irregular’ situations, as if they were stones to throw at people’s lives.” Pressing further, he writes that “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.” In the accompanying footnote, number 351, he adds, “In certain cases, this can include the help of the sacraments.”
That passage—and especially that footnote—could be read, and indeed was read by many interpreters, as adopting the Kasper proposal. Is the pope saying that some Catholics who are living in irregular marital unions may receive the sacraments? Is he suggesting that a second marital union, which the Church has always regarded as adulterous, might be justifiable under special circumstances? If so, he is making a radical change in the teachings of the Church. Yet his actual language leaves these crucial questions unanswered. Apparently that was his intent.
“By thinking that everything is black and white,” paragraph 305 continues, “we sometimes close off the way of grace and of growth, and discourage paths of sanctification which give glory to God.” Later Francis adds, “I understand those who prefer a more rigorous pastoral care which leaves no room for confusion. But I sincerely believe that Jesus wants a Church attentive to the goodness which the Holy Spirit sows in the midst of human weakness . . .” (308). Amoris Laetitia offers little guidance to the pastors who must provide “the Church’s help” to persons in irregular marriages. Emphasizing flexibility, the pope leaves the details to others: “Different communities will have to devise more practical and effective initiatives that respect both the Church’s teaching and local problems and needs” (199).
Francis devotes only a small portion of his apostolic exhortation to the question of Communion for divorced-and-remarried Catholics, which he does not take up until paragraph 291. The most important theme of the document, he has declared, is the beauty of marital love, the subject of its “central chapters” (four and five of nine). In a long and deep meditation on St. Paul’s ode to love in 1 Corinthians 13 (“Love is patient and kind . . .”), the pope offers the sort of spiritual wisdom and practical advice that he encourages priests to provide for their people, followed by an explanation of how the family, based on marriage and nourished by the Sacraments, should provide material and moral support not only for its own members, but for its neighbors and society at large.
A proper understanding of marriage and human sexuality, writes Francis, is crucial to restoring health to our troubled society. In the Western world especially, where secular society is often hostile to the Christian ideal of marriage, the Church must uphold that ideal even against public pressure.
Nevertheless, despite this strong reaffirmation of traditional Catholic teaching, Amoris Laetitia was introduced to the world as a harbinger of change in the Church’s pastoral ministry. At the press conference introducing the apostolic exhortation, Cardinal Christoph Schönborn of Vienna declared, “Something has changed in ecclesial discourse,” emphasizing the pope’s call for pastoral flexibility.
The focus of public attention on the Church’s handling of “irregular” marital unions has itself been a sign of the need for a different approach, Schönborn said, arguing that the division of couples into “regular” and “irregular” overlooks the reality that all Christians should be striving for daily conversion and growth in holiness.
Though Schönborn had been counted as a supporter of the Kasper proposal in the Synod meetings, he did not initially depict Amoris Laetitia as an endorsement of that position. (Later he would state that the papal document called for a change in the Church’s practice.) He told Vatican Radio that in the critical footnote 351—“In certain cases, this can include the help of the sacraments”—the pope was referring primarily to the sacrament of confession. “I think it is very clear,” the cardinal said, “there are circumstances in which people in irregular situations may really need sacramental absolution, even if their general situation cannot be clarified.”
The final verdict of the apostolic exhortation on the issue that has been most heavily debated thus remains imprecise. Evidently the pope wishes it so, explaining that “what is part of a practical discernment in particular circumstances cannot be elevated to the level of a rule. That would not only lead to an intolerable casuistry, but would endanger the very values which must be preserved with special care.”
Amoris Laetitia is not a revolutionary document. It is a subversive one. Francis has not overthrown the traditional teachings of the Church, as many Catholics hoped or feared that he would. Instead he has carved out ample room for a flexible pastoral interpretation of those teachings, encouraging pastors to help couples apply general moral principles to their specific circumstances. Unfortunately, this approach has accelerated an already powerful trend to dismiss the Church’s perennial teaching, eroding respect for the pastoral ministry he hopes to encourage.
In his landmark 1993 encyclical Veritatis Splendor, written to counter the influence of moral relativism, St. John Paul II laments the widespread dissent from the Church’s moral teachings: “It is no longer a matter of limited and occasional dissent, but of an overall and systematic calling into question of traditional moral doctrines, on the basis of certain anthropological and ethical presuppositions.” Dissident Catholics, he explains, are not merely making erroneous statements about the truth; they are suggesting that objective truth cannot be known. Amoris Laetitia, focusing on the subjective pursuit of an unreachable ideal and suggesting a process by which Catholic couples could set aside the Lord’s commandment against adultery, contributes to the centrifugal forces that are straining the authority of the Church.
In a 250-Page Document, the Focus on a Footnote
There is sound spiritual guidance in Amoris Laetitia. Particularly in the two central chapters that the pope himself identifies as its core, he shows his true character as a pastor: encouraging, guiding, questioning, cajoling, sympathizing, instructing, helping readers to gain a deeper appreciation for the Church’s understanding of sacramental marriage. He upholds the ideal of Christian marriage, recognizes that no human being lives up to that ideal, and offers the support of the Church to all who are willing to engage in the lifelong struggle to grow in love.
Still, it is noteworthy that Francis emphasizes that the Christian teaching on marriage is an ideal that ordinary couples cannot expect to attain. The Church’s teaching is an “ideal,” certainly, insofar as it calls husband and wife to live in a perfect harmony of love, in imitation of Christ and his Church. But the demand for marital fidelity is not an unattainable ideal. Most couples meet that demand, and those who do not—those who cheat on their spouses—should recognize that their failure is a serious transgression, not just a reminder that they are human. It is true that Jesus declined to condemn the woman caught in adultery, but he also warned her, “Go, and sin no more” (John 8:11).
In Amoris Laetitia the pope recognizes, and clearly states, that the Christian understanding of marriage is the only reliable antidote to a host of ills that plague contemporary society, especially in the West. In the second chapter, he insists that in an epidemic of marital breakdown, Catholics must not be deterred from delivering the message that our society needs to hear, even though that message is unpopular and those who proclaim it face mounting hostility. There are even a few echoes of the “culture wars” in this apostolic exhortation, as Francis unequivocally confirms the Church’s stands on abortion, contraception, divorce, homosexuality, and same-sex marriage.
Unfortunately, those sections of the document—its strongest—are not what have commanded public attention. The news coverage has focused on a single question. Although it is unfortunate that a complex message would be reduced to one issue, the single-minded coverage has not been entirely the fault of the mass media. Francis has himself to blame.
First, Amoris Laetitia is much too long. By publishing such a prolix document, the Holy Father increased the power of the intermediaries who, boiling it down for their readers, focus on that single issue.
Second, Francis himself encouraged the discussion of Communion for divorced-and-remarried Catholics, a discussion that was certain to become inflamed. To this day we do not know exactly what the Kasper proposal entails. The German cardinal proposed a “penitential path” by which divorced-and-remarried Catholics might be guided back to full communion, but he did not specify what that path would be. Nor do we know, even after the release of Amoris Laetitia, exactly what the pope has in mind for these couples, aside from a flexible and sympathetic pastoral approach.
The pope writes that in providing spiritual care for couples in irregular unions, pastors should adapt the general principles of Church teaching to particular circumstances: “It is a matter of reaching out to everyone, of needing to help each person find his or her proper way of participating in the ecclesial community and thus to experience being touched by an ‘unmerited, unconditional and gratuitous’ mercy” (297). Thus far his advice is unassailable. But in what cases would the pastor be justified in telling a couple that they should not feel bound by the laws of the Church—laws that reflect not mere arbitrary rules but divine commands? What sort of concrete circumstances would justify a break from the teaching—enunciated by Jesus Christ—that someone who leaves one spouse to live with another is engaged in an adulterous union?
There are, certainly, some circumstances in which the Church condones a second marital union. If a first marriage is annulled, the parties are free to remarry; and Francis has already streamlined the procedures for annulments, making it less likely that anyone who ought to receive an annulment will be denied. It is also possible, as St. John Paul II taught in Familiaris Consortio, for a divorced and remarried couple to be admitted to Communion if they agree to live as brother and sister. It is revealing that in the text of his lengthy apostolic exhortation, Francis never mentions the possibility of a couple’s demonstrating their commitment to the Faith by abstaining from sexual relations. (The possibility is mentioned in a footnote, but the reader is left with the distinct impression that such discipline is to be discouraged.) Is that particular “penitential path,” the one traditionally offered to Catholic couples in irregular unions, no longer worth discussing?
It is no secret that in some parts of the Catholic world, priests and pastors have already begun quietly to encourage divorced-and-remarried couples to receive Communion. In some places, particularly in the German-speaking world, lax pastoral practices are becoming the norm. Insofar as Amoris Laetitia encourages this practice, the vagueness of the pope’s guidance undercuts the universality of Catholic teaching and discipline. After the publication of the apostolic exhortation, the German bishops quickly announced that they were ready to offer Communion to divorced-and-remarried couples, while the bishops of neighboring Poland were adamant that they would not. Robert Royal remarked:
On one side of a border between two countries, Communion for the divorced and remarried would now become a sign of a new outpouring of God’s mercy and forgiveness. On the other side, giving Communion to someone in “irregular” circumstances remains infidelity to Christ’s words and, potentially, a sacrilege. In concrete terms, around the globe, what looms ahead is chaos and conflict, not Catholicity.
Francis downplays the importance of such conflicts in his apostolic exhortation—“not all discussions of doctrinal, moral, or pastoral issues need to be settled by interventions of the magisterium.” True enough. But when the Magisterium does intervene, it is vitally important that that intervention be clear. The pope is a pastor, to be sure. But he is also a teacher—particularly when he is issuing an apostolic exhortation—and a teacher should be clear on matters of principle.
When, during another in-flight press conference, Francis was pressed about the meaning of footnote 351, surely the most contentious footnote in the recent history of the Church, he replied that he did not recall it. That answer strained credulity. Was the pope asking us to believe that he was unaware of the controversy? That he had forgotten the only words in his apostolic exhortation that directly addressed the most hotly contested question of the past two years? Had the fateful footnote been slipped in by an aide when Francis was not paying attention? Or was the pontiff struggling to preserve what American politicians call “plausible deniability,” leaving it to others to draw out the implications of his work? Any one of those possibilities would reflect poorly on the pope.
That Francis was unaware of the contentious footnote is the least plausible explanation of his unwillingness to discuss it. His resort to such a transparent evasion suggested that he was not prepared to defend the argument that he had advanced in his own document. Had he expected the footnote to pass unnoticed? Or had he hoped that he could avoid any comment on the controversy and let others apply their own interpretations to his ambiguous teaching?
Unofficial Interpretations, Contradictory Readings
Father Antonio Spadaro, one of the pope’s closest associates, issued his own pronouncement on the meaning of Amoris Laetitia in April 2016 in La Civiltà Cattolica. The pope, he declared, had removed restrictions on the access of divorced-and-remarried Catholics to the Sacraments. That interpretation, which directly contradicts the assertion that the pope had made no major changes, was notable because of its source. La Civiltà Cattolica is regarded as semi-authoritative because its contents are approved in advance by the Holy See’s Secretariat of State. Spadaro, moreover, works closely with Francis as adviser and translator and reportedly helped to draft the apostolic exhortation.
The Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, also weighed in, giving front-page placement to an essay by Rocco Buttiglione—a widely respected Italian philosopher, politician, and adviser to St. John Paul II—in support of the argument that Catholics who are divorced and remarried might, under some circumstances, receive Communion. Reasoning that the Catholic Church has always recognized the possibility that individual circumstances determine whether or not someone is in a state of sin, Buttiglione writes:
The path that the Pope proposes to divorced and remarried is exactly the same that the Church proposes to all sinners: Go to confession, and your confessor, after evaluating all the circumstances, will decide whether to absolve you and admit you to the Eucharist or not.
Buttiglione posits a case in which, he says, a confessor might justifiably instruct a divorced and remarried person to receive the Eucharist. A woman, abandoned by her first husband, marries again, has children, and then returns to the practice of the Faith. She herself might be willing to abstain from sexual activity, but her new partner, insisting on his marital rights, threatens to leave her—and their children—if she does not share his bed. The risk of breaking up the family, which would seriously harm the children, is unacceptable, Buttiglione argues, so the woman is not at fault for consenting to intercourse and should be admitted to Communion. But there are three glaring problems with this scenario.
First, Christ himself taught that if a woman “divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery” (Mark 10:12). If the confessor admitted this woman to Communion, wouldn’t he be saying that adultery can be justified in some circumstances? It is a fundamental moral principle that certain acts (adultery among them), judged by the objective norms of morality, are intrinsically evil. Such acts are never justified by one’s intention or circumstances. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church (paragraph 1756) explains,
It is therefore an error to judge the morality of human acts by considering only the intention that inspires them or the circumstances (environment, social pressure, duress or emergency, etc.) which supply their context. There are acts which, in and of themselves, independently of circumstances and intentions, are always gravely illicit by reason of their object; such as blasphemy and perjury, murder and adultery. One may not do evil so that good may result from it.
Second, if a confessor counseled this woman to submit to her new partner’s demands—sleep with me or your children go hungry—would he be enabling an abusive relationship? What other demands, physical or emotional, might the second husband be making of which the confessor was unaware? Imagine the storm of (justified) criticism if it were known, or even suspected, that priests were instructing meek women to endure spousal abuse.
Third, Buttiglione assumes that a couple should remain together, even in an illicit marriage, for the sake of their children. But that assumption contradicts the understanding of marriage set forth by a previous pontiff. In his 1930 encyclical Casti Connubii, Pius XI, quoting St. Augustine, wrote that the marriage bond is so sacred that “a husband or wife, if separated, should not be joined to another even for the sake of offspring.”
Buttiglione at least attempted to come up with a case in which the Kasper proposal could be reconciled with Church teaching. One frustrating aspect of the debate was the refusal of Kasper and his many supporters to explain under what circumstances divorced and remarried Catholics might be allowed to receive Communion or to elaborate on the process by which couples might reach that decision. Acknowledging that the decision should not be taken lightly, they stipulated that remarried couples should go through a “process of reconciliation” before approaching the Eucharist. But what was that process, and who should determine whether, at last, they were ready for Communion? Those simple and obvious questions were never answered.
Many of Kasper’s supporters hinted at something like Buttiglione’s scenario, discussing circumstances in which it might be a hardship for a remarried couple to abstain from sexual activity. Yes, it could certainly be a hardship. But sometimes moral decisions require hard choices. Many married couples are forced to abstain from intercourse for other reasons—a medical condition, perhaps, or a physical separation. It is a hardship but not an impossibility.
The absence of any details about the proposed “process of reconciliation” opens a wide door for abuse of any new policy. Advocates of the Kasper proposal invariably say that the Church’s age-old rules should be applied in most cases, that the new dispensation would be offered only to a few. But the proposal’s reliance on the “internal forum” leaves the final determination in each case up to the individual confessor, practically inviting couples to “forum shop” for a priest with an expansive view of the new policy’s applicability. Priests who are inclined to be more rigorous will soon realize that they are fighting a losing battle as disappointed penitents drive across town to a more compliant confessor. A policy that was introduced as an exception could quickly become the new norm.
The prospect of introducing teachings or disciplines that could undermine the sanctity of marriage is unacceptable to Catholic bishops in some parts of the world. The South African cardinal Wilfrid Napier, employing a quintessentially First-World means of communication to question the logic of Amoris Laetitia, tweeted, “If Westerners in irregular situations can receive Communion, are we to tell our polygamists & other ‘misfits’ that they too are allowed?”
A Silence that Undermined the Law
Other parts of the world, however, have welcomed a more open-ended reading of Amoris Laetitia. The bishops in the pope’s hometown of Buenos Aires, preparing instructions for their pastors on the implementation of Amoris Laetitia, embraced the Kasper proposal, encouraging the “pastoral accompaniment” of couples in irregular unions, with the understanding that even if they persist in such relationships “a path of discernment” that could lead them to the Eucharist “is possible.”
In a private letter sent to these bishops in early September 2016, Francis congratulated his countrymen on their interpretation of his apostolic exhortation, writing that it “fully captures the meaning” of his work. “There are no other interpretations,” he added.
When this letter was leaked to the press (and confirmed as authentic by the Holy See several days later), the world’s Catholics were subjected to an absurd spectacle. After more than two years of highly contentious debate—first about the Kasper proposal and then about the meaning of a single footnote in the longest papal document in history—without any clear guidance from the pope, the first seemingly authoritative interpretation finally emerged, not in a formal public statement but in a private letter in which the pontiff was commenting on someone else’s interpretation.
Wouldn’t it have been more sensible to resolve such a question with a formal statement from the Vatican press office? Yet once again, Francis deliberately avoided putting any such statement on the record. Just a few months earlier, responding to the same old question from reporters during an in-flight interview, he had declined to give a direct answer. Andrea Tornielli of La Stampa recalled:
He was asked whether there were any real new possibilities for access to the sacraments that did not exist prior to the publication of the “Amoris Laetitia” encyclical [sic]. “I could say ‘yes’ and leave it at that,” Francis had replied. “But that would be too brief a response. I recommend that all of you read the presentation made by Cardinal Schönborn, a great theologian.”
If Francis were to declare clearly and formally that divorced and remarried Catholics might receive Communion, he would have to ignore the strong resistance that he encountered in the Synod, undermining his claim to be speaking on behalf of the world’s bishops. He would also have to contradict the teaching of John Paul II, who stated in Familiaris Consortio that divorced-and-remarried Catholics must live as brothers and sisters if they wish to approach the Eucharist. If they were otherwise admitted to Communion, John Paul wrote, “the faithful would be led into error and confusion regarding the Church’s teaching about the indissolubility of marriage” (84). The logic of that magisterial statement is compelling. And if Francis reversed the policy set by John Paul II, it would seem clear that a future pontiff could reverse the policy set by Francis, and no papal statement on this question could be regarded as conclusive.
Despite his studied ambiguity, Francis has unquestionably opened a door for the divorced and remarried to receive Communion. As a practical matter, virtually every divorced and remarried Catholic can argue that his case falls into that special category—whatever it is—of those allowed to receive the Eucharist. If his pastor disagrees, he will probably move on to another parish, until he finds a pastor who accepts his argument.
Was that the pope’s intent: to leave every parish priest free to make his own interpretations of Church teaching? Having spoken frequently about decentralization of Church authority, did the pope really mean to go that far? He has playfully encouraged young Catholics to “make a mess”; was he trying to set an example by deconstructing the teaching office?
The Code of Canon Law puts priests under a solemn obligation to avoid scandal by withholding the Eucharist from those who persist in manifest grave sin (canon 915). An adulterous relationship is a manifest grave sin. The Argentine bishops appear to say—with papal approval—that in some circumstances priests should administer Communion to people who are living in objectively adulterous relationships. Has canon 915 been amended or abrogated, then? The pope is the supreme legislator of the Church, with the unquestioned power to modify canon law. But he has not done so. In fact, he has deliberately avoided the exercise of his authority, giving the impression that formal Church teachings and laws do not really matter and can safely be ignored.
The Four Cardinals and the Dubia
The confusion generated by Amoris Laetitia and the resulting threat to Catholic unity prompted four cardinals—Walter Brandmüller, Raymond Burke, Carlo Caffarra, and Joachim Meisner2—to write to the pontiff in September 2016 pleading for clarification, observing that “divergent” and even “conflicting” interpretations of Chapter 8 of the exhortation had provoked “uncertainty, confusion and disorientation among many of the faithful” regarding the Church’s teaching on marriage. “[C]ompelled in conscience by [their] pastoral responsibility,” the cardinals submitted to the pope “as supreme teacher of the faith” the following five questions—dubia—about the exhortation, asking him “to resolve the uncertainties and bring clarity”:
1. Is it now “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 [as man and wife]”? And “[c]an the expression ‘in certain cases’ found in Note 351 . . . be applied to divorced persons who are in a new union and who continue to live more uxorio?”
2. “[D]oes one still need to regard as valid the teaching of St. John Paul II’s encyclical Veritatis splendor, 79, based on sacred Scripture and on the Tradition of the Church, on the existence of absolute moral norms that prohibit intrinsically evil acts and that are binding without exceptions?”
3. “[I]s it still possible to affirm that a person who habitually lives in contradiction to a commandment of God’s law, as for instance the one that prohibits adultery (Matthew 19:3–9), finds him or herself in an objective situation of grave habitual sin . . . ?”
4. “[D]oes one still need to regard as valid the teaching of St. John Paul II’s encyclical Veritatis splendor, 81, . . . according to which ‘circumstances or intentions can never transform an act intrinsically evil by virtue of its object into an act “subjectively” good or defensible as a choice’”?
5. “[D]oes one still need to regard as valid the teaching of St. John Paul II’s encyclical Veritatis Splendor, 56, . . . that conscience can never be authorized to legitimate exceptions to absolute moral norms that prohibit intrinsically evil acts by virtue of their object?”
After waiting patiently for several weeks without a reply, the four cardinals presented their questions—each of which can be answered simply “yes” or “no”—to the universal Church for discussion, explaining that they interpreted the pontiff’s silence as “an invitation to continue the reflection, and the discussion, calmly and with respect.”
The staunchest defenders of Francis professed shock at the public appeal, calling it an act of disrespect for the supreme pontiff, but Cardinal George Pell rejected that criticism. The four cardinals, he observed, were merely raising questions, and significant questions at that, not fomenting dissent: “How can you disagree with a question?”
Msgr. Pio Vito Pinto, the dean of the Roman Rota, took a very different line. Outraged by the cardinals’ letter, he said that the pope could remove the four prelates from the College of Cardinals as punishment for their effrontery. Cardinals Burke, Brandmüller, Caffarra, and Meisner could be charged with causing “grave scandal,” Pinto declared, for their questions about the interpretation of an apostolic exhortation that reflects the work of the Synod of Bishops—begging the question whether the apostolic exhortation does reflect the work of the Synod of Bishops. “The action of the Holy Spirit cannot be doubted,” Pinto insisted.
Still the pope was silent, offering no public response to the dubia. In November 2016 he convened a consistory to confer red hats on seventeen new cardinals. Before his previous two consistories, Francis had held days of discussion with the members of the College. This time, however, he did not bring the cardinals together apart from the formal ceremony, prompting the Vatican journalist Marco Tosatti to speculate that he feared some “cardinals, eager for a decisive word from the Pope,” might seize the occasion to re-submit the dubia.
Cardinal Gerhard Müller, the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, said that his office could respond to the dubia if the pope authorized him to do so. Since his congregation issues judgments “with the authority of the Pope,” he noted, it would be inappropriate to intervene without the pope’s approval.
Reports of a battle inside the Vatican over the interpretation of Amoris Laetitia were overblown, said Cardinal Müller, and reflected the tendency of reporters to interpret Church affairs in terms of power politics. At the same time, he said, it is important for the faithful to “remain objective and not be drawn into polarization.” To the most controversial question about Amoris Laetitia—whether divorced and remarried Catholics can be admitted to Communion—Müller declined to give a direct answer.
While Müller expressed confidence that Amoris Laetitia is fully compatible with previous Church teachings, the Italian cardinal who had signed the dubia disagreed. Carlo Caffarra remarked that “only a blind man could deny that there’s great confusion, uncertainty, and insecurity in the Church.” In an interview with the Italian daily Il Foglio, Caffarra said that the confusion involves “extremely serious questions for the life of the Church and the eternal salvation of the faithful.”
“In recent months,” Caffarra said, “on some very fundamental questions regarding the sacraments, such as marriage, confession and the Eucharist, and the Christian life in general,” diocesan bishops have issued contradictory interpretations of the pope’s words and announced radically different policies. “There is only one way to get to the bottom” of the confusion, he reasoned: “to ask the author of the text.” He decried as “false and calumnious” the charge that the dubia have caused divisions within the Church. “The division that already exists in the Church is the cause, not the effect,” of the plea for papal clarification, he said.
But the desire for clarity is itself the problem, suggested Archbishop Mark Coleridge of Brisbane, Australia. In an interview published in America, he warned that the prelates seeking clarification were pursuing a “false clarity that comes because you don’t address reality.” In the Synod sessions, Coleridge “heard voices that sounded very clear and certain but only because they never grappled with the real question or never dealt with the real facts.” While some people prefer to see things in black and white, he said, pastors are “very often dealing in a world of grays and you have to accompany people, listen to them before you speak to them, give them time and give them space, and then speak your word perhaps.” The archbishop did not explain how moral clarity might be incompatible with “real facts,” but it is often incompatible with what we desire.
Coleridge conceded that many Catholics have been “unnerved” by the papal document, as his countryman Cardinal Pell had suggested. “Some people expect from the Pope clarity and certainty on every question and every issue,” said Coleridge, “but a pastor can’t provide that necessarily.”
The Ambiguity Is Intentional
As weeks turned into months and the dubia remained unanswered, it became increasingly clear that the pope’s silence was strategic. The confusion in Amoris Laetitia is not a bug; it is a feature.
The defenders of the apostolic exhortation insisted that its notorious eighth chapter was clear enough and that the four cardinals who raised questions about its meaning were merely being argumentative. But if that were the case, the pontiff could have avoided this public embarrassment by answering the cardinals’ questions. He has chosen not to do so.
There are only three possible ways to interpret the pope’s silence. Either he was being remarkably rude to his closest counselors, flatly refusing to answer their honest questions, or he did not want to give a straight answer. Or both.
The one possibility that can be quickly excluded from discussion is that the pope believed the meaning of Amoris Laetitia was already clear to the faithful. It was not. After two years of intense debate on the most controversial question involved, intelligent and informed Catholics were still unsure as to what exactly Francis had taught.
If the papal teaching were clear, how could it mean one thing in Poland and another in Germany, one thing in Philadelphia and Portland and another in Chicago and San Diego? If some bishops were interpreting the papal document incorrectly, why had they not been corrected?
As the four conscientious cardinals continued to press the pope for clarification, some Catholic reporters tried to determine how long it ordinarily takes for a pope to respond to dubia of this sort. There is no good answer to that question, because there is no precedent for this query. Ordinarily, papal documents are clear. If any confusion arises from papal statements, a clarification usually follows quickly—long before any formal dubium can be raised—because the very point of papal teaching is to provide clarity. Usually. But this was a different case.
John Allen, writing at Crux, offered a plausible reading of the pope’s intentions: “Maybe this is his version of Catholic R&D, letting things play out for a while on the ground before he says anything irreversible.” In other words, maybe the pope is deliberately making room for pastoral experimentation, to see what works. Archbishop Coleridge seemed comfortable with that approach. “Pastoral care moves within ambiguity,” he wrote on his Twitter account, adding a dig at the four cardinals: “We now need a pastoral patience not the quick-fix anxiety voiced here.”
If Allen and Coleridge believed that the pope was encouraging experimentation by leaving matters unsettled, another observer—one much closer to the pope—insisted that the meaning of Amoris Laetitia had been settled. Father Antonio Spadaro reacted to the four cardinals’ public letter with a furious tweet-storm. “The Pope has ‘clarified,’” the Jesuit began. “Those who don’t like what they hear pretend not to hear it!” He included a link to the pope’s letter to the Argentine bishops, as if a leaked private letter bore any authority. And, of course, the Argentine bishops’ policy did not address the dubia. Taunting the four cardinals, Spadaro later tweeted, “Amoris Laetitia is an act of the Magisterium (card. Schönborn) so don’t keep asking the same question until you get the answer *you* want . . . .”
Credited with a major role in drafting Amoris Laetitia, Spadaro may have revealed more on Twitter than just a splenetic temper. If he wanted the cardinals to stop asking difficult questions, it is not unreasonable to suspect that the pope himself wants to bury those questions. And the pope’s continued silence reinforces that suspicion.
Defending the Pope, Avoiding the Issue
“All I know is that the doubts that are there, that are expressed, aren’t my doubts, and I think they’re not the doubts of the universal Church,” Cardinal Blase Cupich reassured Edward Pentin of the National Catholic Register in answer to a question about the dubia. Unperturbed by any ambiguities, the archbishop of Chicago continued:
The document that they’re having doubts about is the fruit of two synods, and the fruit of propositions that were voted on by two-thirds of the bishops who were there. It is a post-synodal apostolic exhortation and so it stands on the same level as all the other post-synodal apostolic exhortations as a magisterial document. I think that if you begin to question the legitimacy of what is being said in such a document, do you then throw into question then [sic] all of the other documents that have been issued before by the other popes?
Actually, as Pentin observed, the propositions in question were not approved by the Synod of Bishops. But that was almost beside the point, because the four cardinals were not expressing doubts about what the Synod said. They were not even directly questioning the pope’s summary of the Synod’s deliberations. They were questioning some persons’ interpretation of the pope’s document summarizing the Synod.
To raise questions about Amoris Laetitia, Cupich suggests, even questions about how it should be understood, is to call into question all previous papal statements. A more nuanced approach to the Magisterium, however, may be necessary. In raising their dubia, the four cardinals observed that some interpretations of Amoris Laetitia appear to conflict directly with Veritatis Splendor, the magisterial work of St. John Paul II. If one papal pronouncement appears to contradict another, the conflict cannot be resolved by saying that all good Catholics should accept the authority of papal documents.
Another of Francis’s new American cardinals, Joseph Tobin of Newark, also tried to sidestep the issues raised in the dubia. “[W]hat would really be helpful is that rather than each individual bishop or cardinal demanding that the pope pronounce on every concrete application of the magisterium, that we as bishops suck it up and do what we’re supposed to do.” That might make sense if the bishops knew what they were supposed to do. But the dubia address the point that many bishops do not know what they are supposed to do. For that matter, some bishops who are quite confident that they know what to do are at odds with others equally confident that they know what to do.
The confusion surrounding the papal document is evident. There are two ways to address it. One is by answering the cardinals’ questions. The other is by imitating Rex Mottram, a comical dunce in Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited. The Jesuit priest who has undertaken the task of instructing the insincere Mottram in the Catholic Faith reports with exasperation,
Yesterday I asked him whether Our Lord had more than one nature. He said: “Just as many as you say, Father.” Then again I asked him: “Supposing the Pope looked up and saw a cloud and said “It’s going to rain,” would that be bound to happen?” “Oh, yes, Father.” “But supposing it didn’t?” He thought a moment and said, “I suppose it would be sort of raining spiritually, only we were too sinful to see it.”
Cardinal Marx of Munich opted for the Mottram approach, telling the National Catholic Register that the German bishops’ conference had no difficulty in reaching agreement on the proper interpretation of Amoris Laetitia. They issued guidelines, reflecting “a clear position,” for the admission of divorced and remarried Catholics to Communion in some cases.
Father Spadaro of La Civiltà Cattolica took the same line, insisting that the four cardinals’ questions had already been answered. Conceding that the dubia involved “interesting” questions, he said that they “were already raised during the Synod,” where “all of the necessary responses were given, and more than once.” In another obvious slap at the cardinals who had raised the dubia, the combative Spadaro said that “a doubtful conscience can easily find all of the answers it seeks, if it seeks them with sincerity.” Lest anyone miss his point, he went on to say that the discussion of Amoris Laetitia should exclude “those who use criticism for other purposes or ask questions in order to create difficulty or division.”
Spadaro outdid himself in January 2017 when he posted a cryptic comment on his Twitter account ridiculing those who sought certainty about the papal teaching:
Theology is no #Mathematics. 2 + 2 in #Theology can make 5. Because it has to do with #God and real #life of #people . . .
Was Spadaro suggesting that when we speak about “real life,” the rules of logic don’t apply? If someone tells you, “You can talk all you want about the law of gravity, but in real life . . . ,” you won’t know what is coming next, but you know it will be nonsense. The law of gravity is a law of real life, which applies to real people.
So how is it possible that “2 + 2 in #Theology can make 5”? Spadaro tells us that theology “has to do with God.” Does he mean, then, that God might violate the laws of logic? If so, he has plunged into the error that Benedict XVI critiqued in his famous Regensburg address: the notion that faith cannot be subject to rational analysis. Benedict saw this disparagement of reason as a weakness of Islamic thought. He probably never anticipated that the problem would crop up in the editorial offices of La Civiltà Cattolica.
If Spadaro can suspend the ordinary rule of logic with vague references to “real life” and “people,” then he can sew up the debate on Amoris Laetitia very neatly. Every case is different—so the argument goes—and therefore no general laws can apply. By that logic, since every stone you toss up in the air is different, you can never be sure that the stone will come down.
Another possible interpretation of Spadaro’s curious tweet is no more reassuring. He may have been suggesting that you and I and millions of other ordinary Catholics cannot be expected to follow the intricate logic of theologians—just as we are flummoxed by the abstruse calculations of quantum mechanics. We should therefore leave this important business to the professionals. In other words, we should accept what we’re told. We are not expected to understand; we are only expected to fall in line. Spadaro’s approach to faith is not based on reason. It may, however, be based on power.
As far as I can discern it, Spadaro’s argument against the dubia runs like this: We cannot lay down black-and-white rules for marriage and divorce cases because the circumstances of every case are different. That’s perfectly true. But isn’t the purpose of marriage tribunals to examine the circumstances of individual cases and to apply the general rules to those circumstances? If there are no general rules to be applied, then the tribunals (or the pastors, in the Amoris Laetitia dispensation) will be operating in a vacuum.
If we apply the same logic to another, less controversial field, we immediately recognize the absurdity:
Experienced tennis umpires know that there are many marginal calls. Whether the ball is called “in” or “out” is influenced by a number of different factors: the angle of the shot, the position of the line judge, the condition of the court. No two shots are alike. Therefore, only abstract theorists of the game would want the lines drawn on the tennis court before the match.
The Same “Talking Points”
It has become obvious that close associates of Francis, the defenders of Amoris Laetitia, and the critics of the four cardinals are all reading from the same script. The similarity in the arguments presented—even the phrases used—points to someone somewhere at the Vatican who has put together “talking points” for those who want to debunk the dubia. It is possible to discern at least seven:
1. Don’t talk about the dubia. The goal is not to answer the dubia but to sweep them off the table. The pope’s allies do not mention the questions that the four cardinals have actually asked, for they might sound too reasonable. They try to give the impression that the cardinals are asking trick questions or probing into arcana. Above all, they do not admit that the dubia would allow for a simple yes-or-no answer.
2. Insist that Amoris Laetitia is perfectly clear. The papal defenders cite each other’s remarks about the document’s alleged clarity but do not acknowledge that authoritative commentators have said the opposite. In the alternative, they say that the document is intentionally unclear, because ambiguity is necessary to preserve the pastor’s room for discretion in handling difficult cases.
3. Poke fun at the traditional Church teaching and at the old-fashioned pastors who uphold it. In speaking to the secular media, the allies play upon popular prejudices and sympathies.
4. Say that the dubia reflect a simplistic approach. The document is perfectly clear, its advocates say, but the recommendations call for a more nuanced understanding. The archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, has lamented that some people “are unsettled by the ability of the Pope to place himself in the midst of the uncertainties of people’s lives.”
5. Come down hard on papal authority. Never mind that the four cardinals are only asking questions. Never mind that Amoris Laetitia seems directly to contradict previous papal teachings, so some papal teaching must be questioned. Never mind that Francis himself has called for free debate and encouraged people to “make a mess.” Hammer away on papal authority. Suggest that those who question the papal document are undermining the principle of infallibility (when in fact the questions are intended to preserve the constancy of Church teaching).
6. Don’t be afraid to impugn the integrity of people who disagree. The British journalist Austen Ivereigh writes of an “anti-Francis revolt” that had taken on “a newly vicious tone”—before proceeding with his own vicious attack on critics of Amoris Laetitia.
7. Paint a rosy picture of relationships between Catholics and their pastors. The Kasper proposal presumes that a divorced and remarried Catholic has engaged in a deep and lengthy examination of conscience, aided by a discerning pastor. Such a penitent-confessor relationship is taken as the norm, although in reality it is surely the rare exception.
These “talking points” are not consistent with each other. It makes no sense, for instance, to insist on papal authority, piously invoking the principle “Rome has spoken,” in defense of Rome’s failure to speak. But this rhetorical strategy is intended not to win the argument but to squelch it—to silence the pope’s critics or, failing that, to persuade others to ignore them.
It should come as no surprise that the self-contradiction on which the defense of Amoris Laetitia is based—the apostolic exhortation changes no doctrine, yet some divorced and remarried Catholics may now receive Communion—leads to occasional tactical confusion. In February 2017, the Vatican press published a booklet by Cardinal Francesco Coccopalmerio, The Eighth Chapter of the Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia, whose forty pages are devoted to that very self-contradiction. Coccopalmerio declares that Amoris Laetitia expresses “with absolute clarity all the elements of the doctrine on marriage in full consistency and fidelity to the traditional teachings of the Church.” He goes on to maintain that insisting on sexual continence in a second union can threaten that union and therefore the welfare of children. In such a case, a person may “be in a concrete situation which does not allow him or her to act differently and decide otherwise without further sin.” Catholics in such a union may receive the Eucharist if they “wish to change this situation, but cannot realize their desire.” This interpretation of Amoris Laetitia conflicts directly with what Cardinal Müller said when he was the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
Coccopalmerio’s position as the Vatican’s top canon lawyer and his booklet’s publication by the Vatican press gave the impression that the work was a semi-official response to questions about the proper interpretation of Amoris Laetitia—that is, an answer to the dubia. That impression was strengthened by the announcement of a press conference at the Vatican on February 14 to introduce the booklet. Then to everyone’s surprise, Coccopalmerio failed to appear at that press conference, leaving a theology professor and an Italian journalist to introduce his work. And though the booklet had been touted in advance as the final answer to the much-discussed questions about Amoris Laetitia, the director of the Vatican press—Coccopalmerio’s publisher—conceded that “the debate is still open.”
The excuse later offered for Coccopalmerio’s absence, a scheduling conflict, was implausible—as if the publisher hadn’t thought of confirming the author’s availability before scheduling the press conference. If the cardinal’s booklet and the publicity surrounding its release were designed to quiet rumors of discord and intrigue within the Vatican over Amoris Laetitia, they had the opposite effect.
The rumors of discord and intrigue had grown when Edward Pentin reported in the National Catholic Register that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith had recommended a number of changes to Amoris Laetitia at the draft stage, but “not one of the corrections was accepted.” Pentin’s report appeared to corroborate an earlier story by Jean-Marie Guénois in Le Figaro that the Vatican’s doctrinal office had submitted twenty pages of suggested modifications before the apostolic exhortation was made public—apparently all to no avail.
Another sort of intrigue was exposed by Michael Pakaluk, a professor of ethics at the Catholic University of America, who discovered that one passage of Amoris Laetitia was copied from an essay written more than twenty years earlier by a close associate of the pontiff. Writing in Crux, Pakaluk shows that an important sentence in the controversial Chapter 8 and other passages were drawn almost verbatim from an article published in 1995 by Archbishop Victor Manuel Fernández, now the rector of the Catholic University of Argentina and an adviser to the pope. Fernández is believed to have been the ghostwriter of the encyclical Laudato Si’ and to have had a major role in drafting Amoris Laetitia.
The unacknowledged use of material from an earlier essay raises new questions about the papal document. Ordinarily, Pakaluk writes, “an explicit quotation [in a papal document] of a theological journal article would be received as having its own distinctive force and weight. To say about it, then, in an unqualified way, ‘it is the magisterium,’ would be a kind of spiritual bullying.”
Moreover, Pakaluk points out that the sentence appropriated in Chapter 8, concerning St. Thomas Aquinas’s teaching about the consequences of difficulties in exercising particular virtues, distorts St. Thomas and was put to theologically troubling use in Fernández’s 1995 article. Did Fernández exploit his position as papal adviser (and perhaps ghostwriter) to give his own controversial ideas the stamp of papal approval? And did he needlessly embarrass the pontiff by appropriating his own words without attribution? As Pakaluk observes, “In secular contexts, a ghostwriter who exposed the author he was serving to charges of plagiarism would be dismissed as reckless.” But with Amoris Laetitia, that sort of confusion has been the norm.
The Limits of Papal Authority
Within the Catholic Church, the authority of the Roman pontiff is considerable. But even papal authority—and especially papal infallibility—has its limits. The pope speaks with authority when he sets forth the Deposit of Faith, explaining, in union with the College of Bishops, what the Church has always and everywhere believed. In the case of Amoris Laetitia, the two meetings of the Synod of Bishops made it clear that the pope was not in union with all the world’s bishops on the Kasper proposal. But leaving that disagreement aside, anyone who understands the nature of the Petrine power should recognize that, even when he speaks on questions of faith and morals, there are some things the pope cannot say. For instance:
The Pope cannot say that 2+2=5. Nor can he repeal the laws of logic. So if the pope makes two contradictory statements, they cannot both be right. And since every pontiff enjoys the same teaching authority, if one pope contradicts another pope, something is wrong. Thus if Amoris Laetitia contradicts Veritatis Splendor and Casti Connubii—earlier papal encyclicals, which carry a higher level of teaching authority—the faithful cannot be obliged to swallow the contradiction.
The pope cannot tell Catholics what they think. He can, within certain limitations, tell them what they should think. But he cannot, simply by the force of his authority, change minds. The pope’s supporters insist that Amoris Laetitia is perfectly clear. “The Pope leaves no room for doubt about the teaching of the Church,” asserts Father Spadaro. Even if that statement came directly from the pope himself (which it did not, obviously), it could not be authoritative. If someone has doubts, then evidently there is room for doubt; not even the pope can gainsay that fact. Ideally the pope and those speaking for him would help Catholics to resolve those doubts, rather than suggesting that doubt implies disloyalty.
The pope cannot teach authoritatively by dropping hints. On the most controversial issue discussed at the two meetings of the Synod of Bishops devoted to marriage and the family, Amoris Laetitia is vague, allowing for radically different interpretations. Father Spadaro and Cardinal Schönborn and the Argentine bishops can all make a compelling argument that they know what Francis had in mind—especially because the Holy Father himself has endorsed their interpretations. But what the pope had in mind does not carry the same weight as what the pope actually wrote. And that is especially true when there is such abundant evidence that he deliberately left the question unresolved:
• The pope avoided addressing the question directly in his apostolic exhortation, left the clearest evidence of his intention in an obscure footnote, and then later told reporters that he didn’t remember that footnote.
• Francis endorsed the Argentine bishops’ interpretation in a private letter and Schönborn’s interpretation in an interview with the press. Obviously neither was a formal statement of the Magisterium.
• He declined to answer the dubia submitted by four cardinals.
• According to Archbishop Bruno Forte—a noted theologian, whose sympathies are generally with Pope Francis and who played a key role in drafting the first report of the Synod on the Family—the pontiff told him during the Synod session, “If we speak explicitly about communion for the 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.”
By now it should be clear that in Amoris Laetitia, Francis carefully avoids making the sort of authoritative statement that would command the assent of the faithful. Catholics cannot be expected—much less commanded—to accept a new "teaching" that the pope has chosen, for his own reasons, not to make.
A Test of Orthodoxy—or Something Else?
In July 2017, Cardinal Christoph Schönborn—routinely identified as the “authoritative interpreter” of Amoris Laetitia—addressed an Irish audience about the document. Earlier, he had said that the notorious footnote 351, indicating that pastoral outreach to divorced and remarried Catholics “can include the help of the sacraments,” refers primarily to the Sacrament of Penance. Now the cardinal said that questions about the reception of Communion were a “trap,” because the real emphasis should be on an examination of conscience. Pastors, he said, should help couples evaluate their individual circumstances with an eye to answering the critical question, “What is the possible good that a person or a couple can achieve in difficult circumstances?”
“If we consider the immense variety of situations it is understandable that neither the synod nor this exhortation could be expected to provide a new set of general rules, canonical in nature, and applicable to all cases,” Schönborn reasoned. But prior to Amoris Laetitia, the clear teaching of the Church had provided a rule that applied to all cases: Catholics involved in a second marital union when their previous spouse was alive could not receive Communion unless they undertook to live as brother and sister. So even as he professed that Church teaching had not changed, he indicated that pastoral practice should change, indicating a willingness to compromise on that teaching.
Schönborn took a dim view of his fellow cardinals who were still pleading for a clarification. Conceding that cardinals have a right to speak with the pontiff about a contentious issue, he nevertheless criticized those who had made their request a matter of public record:
That cardinals, who should be the closest collaborators of the pope, try to force him, to put pressure on him to give a public response to their publicized, personal letter to the pope—this is absolutely inconvenient behavior, I’m sorry to say. If they want to have an audience with the pope, they ask for an audience; but they do not publish that they asked for an audience.
Something was lost in translation here. When Schönborn said the public questioning of the pope was “inconvenient,” he surely meant “inappropriate.” For his part, the cardinal believes that the pope has made significant changes in Church teaching. Yet he also insists that Amoris Laetitia is fully in line with previous Church teaching. According to Austen Ivereigh’s sympathetic account of the address in Ireland,
Schönborn revealed that when he met the Pope shortly after the presentation of Amoris, Francis thanked him, and asked him if the document was orthodox.
“I said, ‘Holy Father, it is fully orthodox’,” Schönborn told us he told the pope, adding that a few days later he received from Francis a little note that said: “Thank you for that word. That gave me comfort.”
Assuming its accuracy (which we have no reason to doubt), Schönborn’s anecdote presents us with an astonishing picture: The successor to St. Peter—the man whose solemn duty it is to guard the Deposit of Faith—is asking another prelate whether his own teaching is orthodox. And he is comforted to hear an affirmative answer.
It is to be expected that Francis consults with Schönborn, one of his close advisers and a respected theologian. But he apparently sought assurance of his writing’s orthodoxy after the document had been issued. Publishing the document first and soliciting opinions about its doctrinal soundness later bespeaks a dangerously insouciant approach to the integrity of the Faith.
Is it possible that Francis was not entirely sure about the orthodoxy of Amoris Laetitia even after he released it? At the very least, his taking “comfort” in Schönborn’s reassurance indicates that the pope knew some influential prelates would find the document unsound.
But is there, perhaps, another way to look at the pope’s request for Schönborn’s opinion? Maybe Francis was not so much curious about the orthodoxy of his apostolic exhortation as he was interested in gauging the reliability of Cardinal Schönborn. The Austrian was respected by his colleagues as a serious theologian and known as a student and confidant of the retired Benedict XVI. If he could count on Schönborn’s support in the campaign for acceptance of Amoris Laetitia, the pope would indeed be comforted. Schönborn would be an important ally, and the pope knew that he faced a major battle.
1 Numbers in parentheses refer to the numbered paragraphs in the quoted document.
2 The German Brandmüller, a Church historian, was appointed a cardinal by Benedict XVI at the age of eighty-one and thus was never eligible to vote in a papal conclave. Burke, an American, was the prefect of the Apostolic Signatura until Francis removed him in 2014 in a striking gesture of disfavor. Caffarra, the founder of the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family, retired as archbishop of Bologna in 2015 and died in September 2017. Meisner, who was close to John Paul II and Benedict XVI, retired as archbishop of Cologne in 2014 and died in July 2017.