Courtney McGrailDespite well-observed concerns in recent times about the effects of social media bubbles, the internet remains an incredibly empowering phenomenon.
In particular, it allows us access to documents hitherto reserved to the few: anyone nowadays can in moments call up the Treaty of Rome to establish that freedom of movement has been a principle of the European project from the very beginning or summon the Good Friday Agreement to see how it explicitly commits the UK to working on building its relations with Ireland as an EU member.
It even allows us to download documents like the Cloyne Report in order to test whether our political leaders accurately describe them when they paint them as attacks on Vatican canon lawyers.
And of course, it allows us to study all manner of Church documents and communications for ourselves.
Debate
Much online debate in recent weeks has revolved around the so called ‘dubia’ (‘doubts’), five questions four cardinals have put to Pope Francis about his post-synodal address Amoris Laetitia. Seemingly four cardinals wrote to the Pope in September seeking clarifications of certain points about the address, and, having received no answer, have published their questions.
Dr Stephen Bullivant, writing at catholicherald.co.uk, observes that “submitting dubia is a standard part of Church life” and that “it’s not unreasonable to expect a clear answer”. It’s a fair point, but one that comes unstuck if one accepts the observation of papal biographer Dr Austen Ivereigh from his Twitter account @austeni that “But in this case it’s dissent / theological protest masquerading as a dubium. The answer has been given. They just don’t like it.”
Edward Pentin, writing at ncregister.com, has published the entirety of the dubia along with explanatory notes from the Cardinals. It’s worth reading, but doing so properly also requires reading not merely the relevant passages of Amores Laetitia but also parts of at least three other Vatican documents and some guidelines from the bishops of Buenos Aires on the pastoral care for the divorced-and-remarried in light of the post-synodal exhortation.
The latter can be found at cruxnow.com, while Amores Laetitia and such documents as Familiaris Consortio can be read at w2.vatican.va. In truth, it rather looks as though, far from being sincere questions, the cardinals’ dubia are intended to catch out the Pope, not unlike how the Pharisees so famously quizzed Jesus on the propriety of paying taxes to the Romans.
How could Pope Francis really have been expected to respond to a question about whether, following his exhortation, Catholics should still 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”.
Leaving aside the implied threat that a disagreement with St John Paul would be read as a breach with the Deposit of Faith, had he answered “yes, of course”, does anyone really believe the quartet of cardinals would have accepted that as a statement that “Rome has spoken, the case is closed”?