Courtney McGrailDear Editor, Bishop Kevin Doran’s intervention in support of Pope Francis over Amoris Laetitia (IC 15/12/2016) is encouraging, and surely to be welcomed by all parties, especially given how it would take particular effort to claim the bishop lacks either intelligence or orthodoxy.
Ever since the synod process began in 2014, a vociferous online fringe of reactionary Catholics have claimed time and again that Pope Francis is determined to overturn the Church’s understanding of marriage. At best, they say, he is confusing the matter, and their determined repetition of this claim has clearly taken root among many Catholics online, with significant numbers saying they no longer understand the Pope.
Neither the eventually published September intervention by Cardinals Burke, Caffara, Meisner and Brandmüller nor Cardinal Burke’s threat to issue a “formal act of correction” if the Pope does not clarify his teaching has helped this matter.
As Bishop Kevin says, however, the Pope’s teaching on marriage has always been clear. It only appears otherwise when a couple of passages of Amoris Laetitia are looked at out of context.
The controversial footnote 351, for instance, is frequently criticised as opening a door to Communion for couples where at least one person is in a second union to receive Communion and who are living together as man and wife. However, the text at no point mentions couples in this context and seems to be wholly about the circumstances of individual people who are in second unions. The text, indeed, notes that individuals are not always fully culpable for sinful acts, and as we should all know, sins cannot be mortal unless we are culpable for them.
The four cardinals who wrote to Pope Francis demanding explanations are supposedly intelligent men. It is hard to see why they call confusing something which others find utterly clear.
Yours etc.,
Gabriel Kelly, Drogheda, Co. Louth.