Correcting the correctors, not for the first time

The pseudo-traditionalist website rorate-caeli.blogspot.com has become perhaps stranger than ever in the aftermath of the much-ballyhooed ‘filial correction’ of Pope Francis.

It’s getting attention, as Roberto de Mattei says on the site, though it’s hard to justify his claim that it’s had an “extraordinary impact”, even if it’s been widely reported even in Russia and China, with the ever-temperate Steve Skojec of onepeterfive.com reporting that there were 100,000 visits to correctiofilialis.org within just 48 hours.

Perhaps so, but a petition in support of the correction has, at time of writing, gathered little more than 12,000 signatures. Sure, truth isn’t dictated by majority vote, but a few thousand signatures backing a document signed by a few dozen fringe figures isn’t quite as earthshaking as the correctors and their cheerleaders evidently believe.

Not that declarations that the Pope is wrong are unprecedented for those teetering on the edges of the Church. As Andrea Tornielli points out at lastampa.ie, St John Paul was accused of no fewer than 101 heresies by one group. Indeed, in 1989, 162 theologians wrote to challenge him on one issue, with their open letter being signed by over 17,000 priests and lay people in the Netherlands and almost as many from Germany, and with 63 Italian theologians publishing a separate public letter criticising Rome for other reasons.

Over at patheos.com/blogs/markshea, Mark Shea relates how one reader, Michael Liccione, finds the so-called ‘filial correction’, to be “mostly a massive exercise in question-begging”.

He continues: “Thus, e.g. while it’s true that unrepentant adulterers and fornicators should not receive the Eucharist, the real question is whether every irregular marriage or cohabiting relationship constitutes unrepented adultery or fornication. The Pope thinks not, and I agree with him. But the text never addresses that question.”

Early reactions to the ‘correction’ focused more on the authors then the text, but as the days passed, people had time to engage with it, with Scott Eric Alt, for instance, systematically working his way at scottericalt.wordpress.com through the seven heresies the Pope is supposedly propagating. What he keeps finding is that nothing the Pope has said or done supports the allegations of the signatories, and often is utterly contrary to them.

“Nowhere – nowhere – does Pope Francis say that those who have ‘full knowledge’ and ‘voluntarily choose’ to commit adultery within an irregular marriage are not in mortal sin. He Does. Not. Say. That. Search as long as you like; you won’t find it,” he writes of one of the charges, for instance.

“At best,” he continues, “this notion is read into the text. At worst, it is simply made up. The Correctors do not say where, specifically, in the text, this heretical idea is to be found. “They quote a number of passages, but they don’t say which particular ones, or which particular words, are supposed to support each of the particular heresies they list.”

Omissions

At ncronline.org, Stephen Walford sweeps through the text, pointing to conspicuous and important omissions in documents the signatories cite, accusing them of not abiding by standards they’ve previously claimed, and noting that the charges indeed omit precise references to Amoris Laetitia.

“All seven are based on a fantasy, as if the signatories have collectively dreamt up some parallel text,” he says, noting the perversity of the authors having ignored or missed how the papal exhortation contains clear rejections of the heresies they cite, and demonstrating this point by point.

It is worth remembering, as is pointed out at primacyofreason.blogspot.com notes, that just two months after Amoris Laetitia was published Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI told Francis: “My true home is your goodness. There I feel safe. Thank you for everything. We hope that you will continue to go forward with all of us on this road of Divine Mercy, showing us the way of Jesus, toward Jesus, toward God.”

It would be nice if those who attack the Pope would listen to his predecessor, since a fair few of them claim to respect him.