Tag: Amoris Laetitia

Second Thoughts on Pope Francis & Family Issues

Confessional

Last week I posted a (mostly) tongue-in-cheek comment on Pope Francis’ Apostolic Exhortation, Amoris Laetitia. The document represented the pope’s reflections on the synod of bishops that met over the last two years to reformulate the Church’s teachings on marriage, sexuality and the family.

Obviously, all of those elements find themselves mired in profound crisis in the contemporary world. Given that fact, and despite the pope’s efforts to save the day in the face of the intransigence of the world’s episcopacy, the document proved to be highly disappointing.

Notwithstanding what I wrote last week, Amoris Laetitia left me wishing that the Church could bring itself to speak in plain language accessible to us all.

But no:  the encyclical was full of platitudes and written in opaque Vaticanese. It demonstrated the out-of-touchness of Church leadership, and its inability and/or unwillingness to help today’s women and men face up to their real problems in the light of a rich faith tradition perfectly capable of providing such assistance.

No wonder so many young people – so many couples – have long since dismissed the Church as irrelevant and counterproductive in terms of making sense of their lives in a globalized world!

[News flash to the Vatican: Outside of your little realm, the major problem facing couples today is not whether divorced people should be allowed to receive Holy Communion! It’s not even whether or not artificial birth control is morally acceptable. (Catholics have long since resolved that “problem;” they use contraceptives in the same percentage as everyone else.)]

Instead, think of the real problems we all face around the fraught matters Amoris Laetitia pretends to address, but which it only dances around, and in the end avoids. These problems were recently outlined by psychologist, Dr. Harriet Fraad, in an interview with economist, Richard Wolff. They include the following:

  • The introduction of the internet and easy birth control has changed the nature of dating and sexual relationships.
    • Increasingly, couples meet online instead of through family and friends.
    • It is no longer socially unacceptable for them to have sex before marriage.
    • In fact, hardly anyone waits till marriage.
    • This makes marriage less necessary and attractive as a means of achieving access to sex.
  • Divorce statistics (as well as witnessing the unhappiness of their parents) similarly discourage marriage. Fifty percent of first marriages end in divorce; 60% of second marriages and 70% of third marriages finish the same way. And after divorce women are usually left holding the bag in terms of child support.
  • Families are stressed when economic circumstances make it necessary for both parents to get jobs. That typically means women end up working a double shift – in the workplace and in the home.
  • The prospect of overwork eventual divorce leads more and more women to choose to remain single. Many become Sugar Babies to Sugar Daddies – older, well-established men who pay off their Baby’s overwhelming college loans or credit card debt.
  • Men, on the other hand, find themselves deprived of their traditional, male-defining role as bread-winners. Anger results – deflected towards guns, the military, sports addictions, evangelical religions (where women are subordinate) and pornography.
  • Children suffer the consequences of it all. They are left alone after school, when most of their problems emerge – not the least of which is obesity.
  • With all those realities in mind, marriage is increasingly viewed as an unnecessary hassle — a luxury good – accessible and desirable only for the well-to-do.
  • So young people end up postponing or rejecting it altogether.
  • They opt instead for serial cohabitations without commitment.
  • Or they become “Herbivore” men, “Dried Fish” women, or MGTOWS.

It’s not that Pope Francis doesn’t bring up many of these problems. Nor is he incapable of addressing them in ways helpful to struggling families. In fact, his three major publications (including Amoris Laetitia) provide clear principles for doing so.

  • His eco-encyclical, Laudato Si’, teaches clearly that all things are connected. The role of religion (which means “binding force”) is to make connections apparent.
  • Similarly that encyclical along with his Exhortation, “The Joy of the Gospel,” identifies capitalism-as-we-know-it as the connecting structural cause of contemporary problems. Its demands pits employers against their employees and men against women; it underpays them or deprives them of work; it requires them to work longer hours, drives both parents into double shifts, destroys families in the process, and then claims to represent “family values.”
  • And finally, in Amoris Laetitia itself the pope identifies conscience (informed by thoughtful consideration of the Christian tradition) as the most reliable guide humans have at their disposal.

Simply highlighting those principles and calling Catholics to adult dialog about their application to dating, marriage, divorce, contraception, abortion, and child-rearing would have done much more than the largely impenetrable document the Vatican actually produced.

Amoris Laetitia: Pope Francis’ Recent Publication is a Real Cliff-Hanger

Amoris Laetitia

It was like a cliff-hanger novel that had me on the edge of my seat. I’m talking about Pope Francis’ latest publication – his Apostolic Exhortation, Amoris Laetitia: On Love in the Family (AL). In it the pope purposed to gather the contributions of bishops at their extended Episcopal Synod which met over the last two years. The meetings were tasked with responding to the contemporary crises of the family and human sexuality including contraception, abortion, divorce, and same-sex marriages (AL 4).

The Exhortation read as if it were the plot of a Wild West thriller:

A backward town has been taken over by a gang of crooks, frauds and perverts. They’re well-entrenched. And the Black Hats have all the locals cowering behind locked doors. Unexpectedly however, a new sheriff shows up with his shiny star and white hat. The gangsters try to bribe him to join up with them. Sheriff Frank is clearly tempted throughout most of the book. But then in the final chapter, without warning he shows his true and familiar colors. In concluding scenes reminiscent of “OK Corral,” the sheriff utterly defeats the Black Hats calling on a secret weapon no one foresaw.

That’s roughly the tale of Pope Francis, his Vatican adversaries, the Episcopal Synod, and Amoris Laetitia.

Beforehand, observers knew that many of the Synod’s participants comprised a dark gang – patriarchal traditionalists stubbornly opposed to any changes in church doctrine. They would surely uphold moralist positions which Nancy Reagan expressed so well: “Just say No!” Reaffirm tradition and law, and expect the faithful meekly to obey.

At the same time, everyone was also aware that Pope Francis’ leanings were in the opposite direction. As new sheriff in town he had won the hearts of the world from the moment he uttered his first papal words identifying him with St. Francis of Assisi — the 13th century friar whose humble simplicity has rendered him the most beloved saint in all of Christian history.

The early chapters of Amoris Laetitia are like listening to the backroom argument between Sheriff Frank and those tempting him to cross over to their dark side. It’s a back-and-forth that has readers wondering which side the pope is really on.

The Black Hat Gang insists on doing things “the way they’ve always been done around here, Sheriff.” This means:

  • No change in the church’s position on contraception (AL 68, 80, 82, 222).
  • Same with abortion (42, 83).
  • Ditto for extra-marital sex (125)
  • And trans gender identifications (56)
  • “Marriage” between same sex partners has absolutely nothing to do with marriage as intended by God (52, 251,292).
  • The divorced and remarried are objectively living in conditions of sin (292).
  • Euthanasia and assisted suicide are strictly forbidden (48, 83).

Sheriff Frank seems confused at first. He retorts:

  • Remember, we’re all just wounded human beings prone to mistakes and recovering within the Church’s field hospital (291).
  • Poverty, immaturity and lack of education force people into apparently “sinful” choices only they can understand (201, 294, 295, 302).
  • Women in particular have a tough time in this “man’s world” (54, 156). Men need to listen to them (203).
  • And if we’re truly reject abortion and euthanasia, we must also firmly reject the death penalty (83).
  • Moreover, objectively speaking, second marriages following divorce are often more loving and healthier than first. The divorced and remarried are not living in sin (301).
  • As for same sex attractions and sexual transformations, remember we’re all male and female to some extent; it’s not simply a matter of biology (56, 286).
  • And none of us needs to answer everyone’s problem (2, 38). That’s what consciences are for (37).
  • Above all, remember square everything with the example of Jesus, his universal love and his prohibition about judging others (58, 79, and 250,296,308).

There’s much more to the argument. But you get the flavor.

What’s important is where the new sheriff comes down – how he defeats the Black Hat Gang in Amoris Laetitia’s happy ending. In short, he fires his “silver bullet” – MERCY. He makes an argument that can only be called a species of  “Situation Ethics.” In the end, he says, mercy dictates that:

  • Although the Black Hat Gang is correct that the objective demands of God’s law must be recognized as applying to everyone without exception (295),
  • Human beings only gradually integrate the law’s requirements over the course of their entire lives (295).
  • This means that circumstances such as immaturity, pace of moral development, lack of knowledge, appreciation of the law, along with a whole host of mitigating circumstances (302) often excuse subjects from the law’s requirements, at least temporarily (295).
  • In the end, conscience, love, and mercy [recognition of life’s “wonderful complications” (308)] are the most reliable guides we humans have (295).

That’s the pope’s final word on the contemporary crises of the family and human sexuality including contraception, abortion, divorce, and same-sex marriages.

That, after all, is about as much as Sheriff Frank or anyone can do for Catholics. The rest, as he says, is up to us – and the sovereignty of our consciences.