The conclusion of our stripped down look at Amoris Laetitia with some commentary by PopeWatch:
301. People living in shack ups, the Pope refers to them as “irregular unions”, can’t simply be considered to be living in mortal sin because of possible mitigating factors. (When it comes to sin the human mind can come up with infinite excuses for such conduct. The Church never bought into that, except as a possible lessening of the penance imposed in the confessional. Pope Francis takes this aspect of the priest-penitent relationship and uses it to argue that mortal sin is not mortal sin. He clearly indicates that he is not referencing as a mitigating factor ignorance that what is being done is sinful, which would be the only legitimate factor which would cause someone not to be in a state of sin in such an adulterous marriage.)
302. More of this rubbish.
303. Personal conscience uber alles.
304. Rules are sometimes not rules for the individuals involved. (A rather confused paragraph. Arguing that white is really black tends to be a fairly complicated exercise.)
305. “For this reason, a pastor cannot feel that it is enough simply to apply moral laws to those living in “irregular” situations, as if they were stones to throw at people’s lives. This would be speak the closed heart of one used to hiding behind the Church’s teachings, “sitting on the chair of Moses and judging at times with superiority and superficiality difficult cases and wounded families.” (Note the scare quotes around irregular when referring to people in adulterous unions. The Pope argues like a juvenile in many cases. This passage obviously tells priests that if they fail to give communion to people living in shack ups in mortal sin, they do so at their jeopardy. This Pope will make the priests of our Church co-conspirators with him in ignoring the clear command of Christ.)
306. The paragraph with the infamous footnote 351, the same footnote that the Pope claims to have forgotten about, which clearly allows the granting of communion to people living in mortal sin.
307. The Pope claims not to be doing what he is clearly doing.
308. Ignore paragraph 307-Mercy uber alles is the order of the day.
309. Year of Mercy. (I think future Church historians may have other terms for this wretched year.)
310. If you don’t buy into all this you probably aren’t a child of God. (More juvenile bullying by the Pope.)
311. People who don’t buy into this are probably heretics.
312. Priests-you got the message didn’t you?
305. …”This Pope will make the priests of our church co-conspirators with him in ignoring the clear command of Christ.”
I’m offering up my morning Rosary for the priest who follow this sheppard.
The Church will withstand the errors.
The faithful will have a faithful Sheppard too.
This is a storm that has been brewing for a long time and we are witnesses of it’s power.
It too will pass. The Son will shine in His Church. Keep at the daily rosaries.
“sitting on the chair of Moses and judging at times with superiority and superficiality difficult cases and wounded families.”
This Pope has an odd way of readying scripture and deriving the opposite meaning. The part about “sitting on the chair of Moses” referred to Jesus saying that the Pharisees having legitimate authority to judge but that their conduct didn’t match their word. In other words, if the Pope were orthodox he should have read it as “Laity, listen to and submit to the moral teachings of the Priests since they are supposed to teach what the Magisterium teaches. Priests, shape up and live to the moral teaching of the Church and actually teach what the moral teaching of the Church are.”
Instead, he turns the teaching upside down and makes the unfaithful priests and willful sinners right and condemns the faithful Catholic and faithful priest.
I would really like to see how he eisegetes Isaiah 5:20 “Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!”
Good Lord, Don, you deserve a medal for plodding through that ambiguous, obscure, boring, repetitive, and highly-unsatisfying document. Hard enough to read it, much less try to summarize it like this.
Agreed Anil Wang- he just seems to see things opposite the way they are, it seems a purposeful misreading!
Maddening.
This whopper (325 paragraph deception) misrepresents, distorts, and includes aspersion, defamation, and prodding of priests and teachers from behind– but sweetly and confusingly intermingled with paragraphs of inspiration about the hopes of love and family.
The image to me is not the pope joyfully leading his followers in the open air a la John Bosco– but instead a pied piper.
Jorge Bergoglio does not know the realities of those of us whose lives have been decimated by long unrepented, public infidelities, known to the Church and supported by the Church, even as the marriages are judged to be valid. He is locking us, our families and our children up in a room with our abusers, hears our cries and turns his attention to the sufferings of our abusers, obsesses over them, sheds tears for them, publicly excuses their behaviors and motives.
Even, as he ignores us, their victims.
His lack of Charity is incomprehensible to me. To this victim of marital clerical abuse, his treatise, excusing unrepentant, long term infidelity and civil unions of those involved in the same, and their fruits, is little different than publishing, as a Papal teaching document, a similar defense of clerical child abuse.
Jorge Bergoglio is a nauseating human being.
Karl
Thanks Don. Excellent work for teasing out the substance of the Pope’s many heretical words from the swamp of emotional drivel. Pope Francis is the personification of C. S. Lewis’s character Screwtape who seeks the damnation of all that listen to him.
Does anyone know of a good analysis (maybe written by one of the Church Fathers or Doctors) of Christ’s words “What you hold bound will be held bound, what you loose will be loosed.” I cannot imagine that He meant that the successors to St. Peter were allowed to abrogate the 6th commandment.
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Karl, I’m very sorry for what you are going through. If you’ve petitioned for an annulment in the past, can you re-petition? It’s sad that this pope is not concerned with the faithful half.