On July 18, 2016, the Catholic Herald posted this article:
"Forty-five theologians and clergymen have written to cardinals asking them to request a clarification from Pope Francis that Amoris Lætitia doesn’t contradict Church teaching....
"The letter is intended as an appeal to the cardinals rather than a public campaign. Possibly for this reason, the signatories have not yet disclosed their names, though they may do at a future date. The only signatory to have come forward publicly is Dr Joseph Shaw, who teaches philosophy at the University of Oxford and is chairman of the Latin Mass Society.
"Dr Shaw, who is acting as spokesman for the group, said last week: 'All we are asking is that Pope Francis make clear that putative heretical implications of the document are just that: heretical.'" [3]So the pope is not only a hypocrite, as this blogger has maintained from the moment he named himself Francesco after San Francesco d'Assisi, but also a heretic?
Not so fast. On July, 20, 2016, the Associated Press reported that "[t]he Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano on Wednesday carried a lengthy essay by an Italian Catholic historian insisting that Francis' 'The Joy of Love' was absolutely in line with his predecessors and church doctrine on the thorny issue of whether divorced and civilly remarried Catholics can receive Communion." [4]
"Earlier this month, the Vatican-approved magazine La Civilta Cattolica ran an interview with Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn in which the Vienna archbishop pointedly rejected conservative claims that Francis' work didn't count as an authoritative teaching document.
...
"[But] American Cardinal Raymond Burke, a figurehead for archconservatives who was removed by Francis as the head of the Vatican's supreme court, insisted that the document wasn't part of the church's teaching magisterium but rather was a personal reflection on meetings of bishops about family matters.
...
"[Similarly,] Italian Cardinal Carlo Caffarra, another leading conservative, has criticized the document as vague and confusing, and denied that it opened the door to Communion, since doing so would contradict previous church teaching on the indissolubility of marriage.
"Francis' own doctrine czar, German Cardinal Gerhard Mueller, concurred with Caffarra, saying the pope would have been more clear if he had intended such an opening. Mueller argued in a May 4 speech in Spain that decisions about whether someone can receive the sacraments cannot be arrived at purely in the realm of individual, private discernment.
"'A privatization of the sacramental economy would certainly not be Catholic,' he said." [5]
The Vatican is not just cracking from within: it is having its own private earthquake of unprecedented magnitude.
What is startling is the pope's redefinition of sin:
"We should no longer talk about people 'living in sin.' In a sentence that reflects a new approach, the pope says clearly, 'It can no longer simply be said that all those living in any "irregular situation" are living in a state of mortal sin' (301). Other people in 'irregular situations,' or non-traditional families, like single mothers, need to be offered “understanding, comfort and acceptance' (49). When it comes to these people, indeed everyone, the church need to stop applying moral laws, as if they were, in the pope’s vivid phrase, 'stones to throw at a person’s life' (305)." [6]
The above, however, only applies to heterosexuals. On April 8, 2016, Slate.com concluded that
"if you’re gay, the Vatican has bad news. 'Amoris Laetitia,' an 'apostolic exhortation' published on Friday, says no same-sex union can be a marriage. That’s because, as the document explains, 'No union that is temporary or closed to the transmission of life can ensure the future of society.' But if you’re straight and infertile, the rule about transmitting life doesn’t apply. Your marriage is just as valid as anyone else’s, according to the document, since 'procreation and adoption are not the only ways of experiencing the fruitfulness of love.'" [7]
The inclusion of the preceding paragraph in this entry is not an approval or a rejection of same-sex unions or marriages by this blog; it merely points out, yet again, the hypocrisy of this pope.
While many may not like the Catholic church's traditional and conservative doctrine on sexual intercourse, it is applied to everyone equally regardless of sexual inclination:
"[I]t is a serious error to think that a whole married life of otherwise normal relations can justify sexual intercourse which is deliberately contraceptive and so intrinsically wrong." [8]
In other words, only procreational sex is permitted, even within a heterosexual marriage. Non-procreational sex, or as this blogger terms it, "recreational sex," is wrong. Does this wrong rise to a level of a sin? This blogger does not know.
Established Catholic doctrine on "sins gravely contrary to chastity [such as] masturbation, fornication, pornography, and homosexual practices," can be found in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. [9]
Whether this pope will further heighten the "joy" of families, leading to a corresponding increase in the amount "joy" the Catholic church receives currently, by endorsing man's love for masturbation, pornography as well as recreational sex of every kind imaginable, in order that build-ups of sexual tension and frustration can be satisfactorily alleviated, remains to be seen.
[1] https://w2.vatican.va/content/dam/francesco/pdf/apost_exhortations/documents/papa-francesco_esortazione-ap_20160319_amoris-laetitia_en.pdf
[2] Ibid.
[3] http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/news/2016/07/18/theologians-amoris-laetitia-needs-clarification/
[4] http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/EU_REL_VATICAN_DIVORCE_DEBATE?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
[5] Ibid.
[6] http://americamagazine.org/issue/top-ten-takeaways-amoris-laetitia
[7] http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/faithbased/2016/04/pope_francis_amoris_laetitia_is_a_closeted_argument_for_gay_marriage.html
[8] http://w2.vatican.va/content/paul-vi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-vi_enc_25071968_humanae-vitae.html
[9] http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p3s2c2a6.htm
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