It sometimes seems that the further to the rightward and leftward ends of the Church spectrum Catholics go, the more controversial Pope Francis can seem, and never more so than now in the aftermath of Amoris Laetitia.
Criticism of the Pope surely crossed into a whole new realm on April 11, though, when the lead author on the traditionalist website onepeterfive.com reacted with fury to Cardinal Raymond Burke’s appreciative comments about the new papal exhortation.
“This is nothing less than a betrayal from one who should have offered hope,” he tweeted. “We have been thrown to the wolves.”
Commenting on the cardinal’s ncregister.com article ‘Amoris Laetitia and the constant teaching and practice of the Church’, Fr Dwight Longenecker writes at patheos.com/blogs/standingonmyhead that the cardinal has made it clear that “those who set themselves up as critics of the Holy Father and the exhortation are wrong and are causing scandal”.
Behaviour
“The behaviour of the Catholic fundamentalists over the weekend has been scandalous,” Fr Longecker continues, observing that, “Some who believe themselves to be such good Catholics have used vile and obscene language about the Pope, trumpeted their prognostications of doom and gloom and in doing so have declared themselves not to be the best Catholics of all, but the worst.”
While many who would paint themselves as a kind of ‘loyal opposition’ have long maintained that the Pope is causing confusion in the Church, Cardinal Burke takes a different view, Fr Longecker says, maintaining that they themselves “have caused scandal because their self-righteous, ignorant and arrogant writings have caused others to stumble, lose faith in the Church and to question the authority of the Holy Father and the Church they say they love”.
Among the highlights of the cardinal’s article, Fr Longecker says, is his explanation of how the new exhortation should be understood. “The only key to the correct interpretation of Amoris Laetitia is the constant teaching of the Church and her discipline that safeguards and fosters this teaching,” he quotes Cardinal Burke as saying, with the cardinal showing how “Pope Francis makes clear, from the beginning, that the post-synodal apostolic exhortation is not an act of the magisterium”, but is, rather, best understood as “a reflection of the Holy Father on the work of the last two sessions of the Synod of Bishops”.
Analysis
Fr Longenecker sums up the cardinal’s analysis by saying “In other words, a post-synodal apostolic exhortation, by its very nature, does not propose new doctrine and discipline but applies the perennial doctrine and discipline to the situation of the world at the time”, and points out that pastoral exhortations are about pastoral practice.
“In other words it is not about theory primarily,” he says, “but about real people in real situations in the Church.”
Primer on Catholic Social Teaching
Elsewhere on patheos.com, Artur Rosman writes at patheos.com/blogs/cosmosinthelost about presidential candidate Bernie Sanders’ April 15 paean to Catholic Social Teaching.
He quotes how Senator Sanders in a prepared statement said such things as how “society and the state must ensure wage levels adequate for the maintenance of the worker and his family, including a certain amount for savings” and celebrated “the essential wisdom of Centesimus Annus”.
The great irony of what St John Paul II’s key document on Catholic Social Teaching taught, Rosman observes, is how it was, in his opinion, abused by Catholic Neo-Conservatives to defend oppressive economic structures and to encourage their importation into post-Communist Poland.
Admitting that he is wholly undecided about voting, he nonetheless says that regardless of how his fellow Americans intend to vote, they should read Mr Sanders’ Vatican statement ‘The Urgency of a Moral Economy: Reflections on the 25th Anniversary of Centesimus Annus’.
All else aside, it’s a fine primer on the economic aspects of Catholic Social Teaching.