It has been 10 years since Amoris laetitia (chose your own translation) was emitted into the world and, of course, its time to sit in circles and talk about it while predetermined statements are already cooling from the laser printer. They are sitting in circles at the Paul VI Audience Hall from 7-14 October. That’s quite a while, if you think about it.
A couple things might strike someone who is keeping track of the proceedings. I can’t imagine that that is a large number, but, nonetheless we have to keep at least the corner of our eye on things. After all, we are living in a time when the modus operandi includes creeping incrementalism: the Whatever High Atop The Thing knows it can’t complete the agenda right away, so they nudge their projects forward guttatim… peditemptim… minutatim… overcoming resistance with delay because cunctando regitur mundus.
In this particular confab about AL there are speeches. Here is something Leo said. It is of particular interest because it touches probably most neuralgic point of Francis’ document.
“Our task, therefore, is not only to interpret these realities, but to let them question us and motivate our pastoral responsibility, so that the Church may find renewed ways of proclaiming the Gospel, offering sacramental grace, accompanying families, and making visible the tenderness with which Christ continues to walk among his people.”
There it is. Did you see it? “offering sacramental grace”. That’s Holy Communion for the divorced and remarried.
Meanwhile Sister Helen Alford, OP, smart gal, trained in engineering and then some theology here and there (she’s primarily a social scientist… I think that’s fair), asserted in her keynote speech that Familiaris Consortio and Amoris are in continuity with each other, but that 35 years had passed between them and that, well, life experiences have undergone change, don’t ya know. THIRTY-FIVE WHOLE YEARS! And now we have another 10 years of “lived experience”. But, hey, don’t worry. FC and AL are in continuity … as though nothing had changed during the intervening 35 years (like rampant divorce and just shacking up if even that, upsurge in demonic trans and homosexualism, the near complete loss of moral capital by bishops, bankruptcies, closures, open persecution of those who want tradition, etc.)
Sr. Alford, you may have seen in another post, in the same speech quoted a Dominican who thinks the Our Lord engaged in – I am not making this up – “flirting” with the Samaritan woman.
Dear readers… Jesus was not “flirting” with her. And, in regard to Amoris and Communion for adulterers, did I miss the point where He said to her “Hey, it’s ok to have serial marriages!”? What made her enthusiastic about the encounter was that He had told her everything about her messed up love life, not that he had accompanied her with “sacramental grace.” Christ showed her compassion. Christ showed her the Truth.
Circling back to Leo’s offering at the confab, he talked about our current situation regarding marriage and the family, as though “fragility” as in broken marriages, living together outside of marriage (fornication, adultery), homosexuality, on a massive scale had never before in history been a “pastoral challenge.”
News: read the New Testament and the Church Fathers, and the medieval Church Doctors for pre-Modern cases of infidelity. The Church has faced critical situations since John’s Gospel (the woman caught in adultery in one instance).
From the reportage (my emphases and comments):
The Pope pointed out that an important element to focus on is “fragility,” as it strongly shapes peoples’ lives and relationship with God and the Church. [In this and in everything else which will be said at this confab, keep in the back of your mind the notion of “lived experience”, which is increasingly being used as a trump card against the Magisterium up to Amoris.]
“The experience of fragility raises the question of whether we are able to remain close to one another when life no longer corresponds to what had been hoped for, and whether we can recognize the work of grace even in situations marked by limits, wounds and apparent failure,” the Pope emphasized.
He highlighted that families can teach something to all as fragility is common to our human condition and to the life of the Church.
“We need grace, forgiveness and new beginnings to accomplish God’s will, and we learn that fidelity is itself a grace to be received and a path to be gradually renewed, often through trial,” he said.
In this regard, he asked another series of questions that the Church needs to reflect on to help accompany one another:
“What kind of Church, then, do people encounter precisely when they are most fragile? Do our communities help them discover that they still have a place, a responsibility and gifts to offer? Can the truth we proclaim be encountered through the patience, closeness and mercy of our pastoral presence? How can we announce to them the fullness of the Gospel’s teaching about the family?”
One is left with the impression that, in Amoris and in “lived experience” something new has been discovered. Rather than offer people the truth in charity, I guess we are now to … I dunno… make camomile tea and braid each others hair with aroma therapy in sensitivity to everyone’s fragility.
You know who’s fragile these days? People being suppressed by their bishops because they desire the Church’s traditional worship.
Yet another floating word, with “unity”. I digress.
Not only, Leo said…
“Listening to one another, allowing what we hear to resonate within us, and remaining attentive to the promptings of the Holy Spirit can awaken the pastoral creativity we need in the face of new questions,” the Pope said.
Maybe you can help me out, but I think it wasn’t long ago that language about certain sins – obviously sinful behavior was redubbed as “emerging questions”. I can’t find it right now, but I’ll bet your readers can.
For another view, here is something one of my interlocutors texted in our brilliant group:
Do they realize how fearless and unyielding those popes and bishops and missionaries of old had to be just to get the newly converted barbarians in line with sacramental marriage and its implications? Think Germans and the old Friedelehe by which they could have one “real” wife and then keep entering these “pacts” with any number of women when they’d get fed up with the first one (Charlemagne among them). The problem is that these people – who tell me we’re in The Springtime of the Church – have to find ways surreptitiously to buttress the idea [NB: This is important…] that there is something different about modern man by which the original sin and Christ grace and the doctrine of the church handed down by the apostles don’t work anymore. Not only that, but the objections of the modern world to the Church’s truth on God and man have some points to them (in their view) so we must build bridges with that. Thus forgetting that bridges must be built between fallen men and God, not between vain theologians and contemporary bozos. PONTIFICES for crying out loud!
A Cri de Coeur.
We have to keep an eye on the coverage, knowing full well that part of the M.O. is creeping incrementalism. What they do today won’t make a huge impact … yet. Down the line it will become a new paradigm of lived experience that reflects how modern man has matured out of the stuffy old nest of rigid doctrines and less-than-full Gospel revelations.
supercooper on What’s going on in Rome?: “Lord have mercy. I am thankful to God for a profound signal grace to keep me in the Catholic Church.…”
