So how is it possible that “2 + 2 in #Theology can make 5”? Spadaro tells us that theology “has to do with God.” Does he mean, then, that God might violate the laws of logic? If so, he has plunged into the error that Benedict XVI critiqued in his famous Regensburg address: the notion that faith cannot be subject to rational analysis. Benedict saw this disparagement of reason as a weakness of Islamic thought. He probably never anticipated that the problem would crop up in the editorial offices of La Civiltà Cattolica.
If Spadaro can suspend the ordinary rule of logic with vague references to “real life” and “people,” then he can sew up the debate on Amoris Laetitia very neatly. Every case is different—so the argument goes—and therefore no general laws can apply. By that logic, since every stone you toss up in the air is different, you can never be sure that the stone will come down.
Another possible interpretation of Spadaro’s curious tweet is no more reassuring. He may have been suggesting that you and I and millions of other ordinary Catholics cannot be expected to follow the intricate logic of theologians—just as we are flummoxed by the abstruse calculations of quantum mechanics. We should therefore leave this important business to the professionals. In other words, we should accept what we’re told. We are not expected to understand; we are only expected to fall in line. Spadaro’s approach to faith is not based on reason. It may, however, be based on power.
As far as I can discern it, Spadaro’s argument against the dubia runs like this: We cannot lay down black-and-white rules for marriage and divorce cases because the circumstances of every case are different. That’s perfectly true. But isn’t the purpose of marriage tribunals to examine the circumstances of individual cases and to apply the general rules to those circumstances? If there are no general rules to be applied, then the tribunals (or the pastors, in the Amoris Laetitia dispensation) will be operating in a vacuum.
If we apply the same logic to another, less controversial field, we immediately recognize the absurdity:
Experienced tennis umpires know that there are many marginal calls. Whether the ball is called “in” or “out” is influenced by a number of different factors: the angle of the shot, the position of the line judge, the condition of the court. No two shots are alike. Therefore, only abstract theorists of the game would want the lines drawn on the tennis court before the match.
The Same “Talking Points”
It has become obvious that close associates of Francis, the defenders of Amoris Laetitia, and the critics of the four cardinals are all reading from the same script. The similarity in the arguments presented—even the phrases used—points to someone somewhere at the Vatican who has put together “talking points” for those who want to debunk the dubia. It is possible to discern at least seven:
1.Don’t talk about the dubia. The goal is not to answer the dubia but to sweep them off the table. The pope’s allies do not mention the questions that the four cardinals have actually asked, for they might sound too reasonable. They try to give the impression that the cardinals are asking trick questions or probing into arcana. Above all, they do not admit that the dubia would allow for a simple yes-or-no answer.
2.Insist that Amoris Laetitia is perfectly clear. The papal defenders cite each other’s remarks about the document’s alleged clarity but do not acknowledge that authoritative commentators have said the opposite. In the alternative, they say that the document is intentionally unclear, because ambiguity is necessary to preserve the pastor’s room for discretion in handling difficult cases.
3.Poke fun at the traditional Church teaching and at the old-fashioned pastors who uphold it. In speaking to the secular media, the allies play upon popular prejudices and sympathies.
4.Say that the dubia reflect a simplistic approach. The document is perfectly clear, its advocates say, but the recommendations call for a more nuanced understanding. The archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, has lamented that some people “are unsettled by the ability of the Pope to place himself in the midst of the uncertainties of people’s lives.”
5.Come down hard on papal authority. Never mind that the four cardinals are only asking questions. Never mind that Amoris Laetitia seems directly to contradict previous papal teachings, so some papal teaching must be questioned. Never mind that Francis himself has called for free debate and encouraged people to “make a mess.” Hammer away on papal authority. Suggest that those who question the papal document are undermining the principle of infallibility (when in fact the questions are intended to preserve the constancy of Church teaching).
6.Don’t be afraid to impugn the integrity of people who disagree. The British journalist Austen Ivereigh writes of an “anti-Francis revolt” that had taken on “a newly vicious tone”—before proceeding with his own vicious attack on critics of Amoris Laetitia.
7.Paint a rosy picture of relationships between Catholics and their pastors. The Kasper proposal presumes that a divorced and remarried Catholic has engaged in a deep and lengthy examination of conscience, aided by a discerning pastor. Such a penitent-confessor relationship is taken as the norm, although in reality it is surely the rare exception.
These “talking points” are not consistent with each other. It makes no sense, for instance, to insist on papal authority, piously invoking the principle “Rome has spoken,” in defense of Rome’s failure to speak. But this rhetorical strategy is intended not to win the argument but to squelch it—to silence the pope’s critics or, failing that, to persuade others to ignore them.
It should come as no surprise that the self-contradiction on which the defense of Amoris Laetitia is based—the apostolic exhortation changes no doctrine, yet some divorced and remarried Catholics may now receive Communion—leads to occasional tactical confusion. In February 2017, the Vatican press published a booklet by Cardinal Francesco Coccopalmerio, The Eighth Chapter of the Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia, whose forty pages are devoted to that very self-contradiction. Coccopalmerio declares that Amoris Laetitia expresses “with absolute clarity all the elements of the doctrine on marriage in full consistency and fidelity to the traditional teachings of the Church.” He goes on to maintain that insisting on sexual continence in a second union can threaten that union and therefore the welfare of children. In such a case, a person may “be in a concrete situation which does not allow him or her to act differently and decide otherwise without further sin.” Catholics in such a union may receive the Eucharist if they “wish to change this situation, but cannot realize their desire.” This interpretation of Amoris Laetitia conflicts directly with what Cardinal Müller said when he was the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
Coccopalmerio’s position as the Vatican’s top canon lawyer and his booklet’s publication by the Vatican press gave the impression that the work was a semi-official response to questions about the proper interpretation of Amoris Laetitia—that is, an answer to the dubia. That impression was strengthened by the announcement of a press conference at the Vatican on February 14 to introduce the booklet. Then to everyone’s surprise, Coccopalmerio failed to appear at that press conference, leaving a theology professor and an Italian journalist to introduce his work. And though the booklet had been touted in advance as the final answer to the much-discussed questions about Amoris Laetitia, the director of the Vatican press—Coccopalmerio’s publisher—conceded that “the debate is still open.”
The excuse later offered for Coccopalmerio’s absence, a scheduling conflict, was implausible—as if the publisher hadn’t thought of confirming the author’s availability before scheduling the press conference. If the cardinal’s booklet and the publicity surrounding its release were designed to quiet rumors of discord and intrigue within the Vatican over Amoris Laetitia, they had the opposite effect.
The rumors of discord and intrigue had grown when Edward Pentin reported in the National Catholic Register that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith had recommended a number of changes to Amoris Laetitia at
the draft stage, but “not one of the corrections was accepted.” Pentin’s report appeared to corroborate an earlier story by Jean-Marie Guénois in Le Figaro that the Vatican’s doctrinal office had submitted twenty pages of suggested modifications before the apostolic exhortation was made public—apparently all to no avail.
Another sort of intrigue was exposed by Michael Pakaluk, a professor of ethics at the Catholic University of America, who discovered that one passage of Amoris Laetitia was copied from an essay written more than twenty years earlier by a close associate of the pontiff. Writing in Crux, Pakaluk shows that an important sentence in the controversial Chapter 8 and other passages were drawn almost verbatim from an article published in 1995 by Archbishop Victor Manuel Fernández, now the rector of the Catholic University of Argentina and an adviser to the pope. Fernández is believed to have been the ghostwriter of the encyclical Laudato Si’ and to have had a major role in drafting Amoris Laetitia.
The unacknowledged use of material from an earlier essay raises new questions about the papal document. Ordinarily, Pakaluk writes, “an explicit quotation [in a papal document] of a theological journal article would be received as having its own distinctive force and weight. To say about it, then, in an unqualified way, ‘it is the magisterium,’ would be a kind of spiritual bullying.”
Moreover, Pakaluk points out that the sentence appropriated in Chapter 8, concerning St. Thomas Aquinas’s teaching about the consequences of difficulties in exercising particular virtues, distorts St. Thomas and was put to theologically troubling use in Fernández’s 1995 article. Did Fernández exploit his position as papal adviser (and perhaps ghostwriter) to give his own controversial ideas the stamp of papal approval? And did he needlessly embarrass the pontiff by appropriating his own words without attribution? As Pakaluk observes, “In secular contexts, a ghostwriter who exposed the author he was serving to charges of plagiarism would be dismissed as reckless.” But with Amoris Laetitia, that sort of confusion has been the norm.
The Limits of Papal Authority
Within the Catholic Church, the authority of the Roman pontiff is considerable. But even papal authority—and especially papal infallibility—has its limits. The pope speaks with authority when he sets forth the Deposit of Faith, explaining, in union with the College of Bishops, what the Church has always and everywhere believed. In the case of Amoris Laetitia, the two meetings of the Synod of Bishops made it clear that the pope was not in union with all the world’s bishops on the Kasper proposal. But leaving that disagreement aside, anyone who understands the nature of the Petrine power should recognize that, even when he speaks on questions of faith and morals, there are some things the pope cannot say. For instance:
The Pope cannot say that 2+2=5. Nor can he repeal the laws of logic. So if the pope makes two contradictory statements, they cannot both be right. And since every pontiff enjoys the same teaching authority, if one pope contradicts another pope, something is wrong. Thus if Amoris Laetitia contradicts Veritatis Splendor and Casti Connubii—earlier papal encyclicals, which carry a higher level of teaching authority—the faithful cannot be obliged to swallow the contradiction.
The pope cannot tell Catholics what they think. He can, within certain limitations, tell them what they should think. But he cannot, simply by the force of his authority, change minds. The pope’s supporters insist that Amoris Laetitia is perfectly clear. “The Pope leaves no room for doubt about the teaching of the Church,” asserts Father Spadaro. Even if that statement came directly from the pope himself (which it did not, obviously), it could not be authoritative. If someone has doubts, then evidently there is room for doubt; not even the pope can gainsay that fact. Ideally the pope and those speaking for him would help Catholics to resolve those doubts, rather than suggesting that doubt implies disloyalty.
The pope cannot teach authoritatively by dropping hints. On the most controversial issue discussed at the two meetings of the Synod of Bishops devoted to marriage and the family, Amoris Laetitia is vague, allowing for radically different interpretations. Father Spadaro and Cardinal Schönborn and the Argentine bishops can all make a compelling argument that they know what Francis had in mind—especially because the Holy Father himself has endorsed their interpretations. But what the pope had in mind does not carry the same weight as what the pope actually wrote. And that is especially true when there is such abundant evidence that he deliberately left the question unresolved:
•The pope avoided addressing the question directly in his apostolic exhortation, left the clearest evidence of his intention in an obscure footnote, and then later told reporters that he didn’t remember that footnote.
•Francis endorsed the Argentine bishops’ interpretation in a private letter and Schönborn’s interpretation in an interview with the press. Obviously neither was a formal statement of the Magisterium.
•He declined to answer the dubia submitted by four cardinals.
•According to Archbishop Bruno Forte—a noted theologian, whose sympathies are generally with Pope Francis and who played a key role in drafting the first report of the Synod on the Family—the pontiff told him during the Synod session, “If we speak explicitly about communion for the divorced and remarried, you do not know what a terrible mess we will make. So we won’t speak plainly, do it in a way that the premises are there, then I will draw out the conclusions.”
By now it should be clear that in Amoris Laetitia, Francis carefully avoids making the sort of authoritative statement that would command the assent of the faithful. Catholics cannot be expected—much less commanded—to accept a new “teaching” that the pope has chosen, for his own reasons, not to make.
A Test of Orthodoxy—or Something Else?
In July 2017, Cardinal Christoph Schönborn—routinely identified as the “authoritative interpreter” of Amoris Laetitia—addressed an Irish audience about the document. Earlier, he had said that the notorious footnote 351, indicating that pastoral outreach to divorced and remarried Catholics “can include the help of the sacraments,” refers primarily to the Sacrament of Penance. Now the cardinal said that questions about the reception of Communion were a “trap,” because the real emphasis should be on an examination of conscience. Pastors, he said, should help couples evaluate their individual circumstances with an eye to answering the critical question, “What is the possible good that a person or a couple can achieve in difficult circumstances?”
“If we consider the immense variety of situations it is understandable that neither the synod nor this exhortation could be expected to provide a new set of general rules, canonical in nature, and applicable to all cases,” Schönborn reasoned. But prior to Amoris Laetitia, the clear teaching of the Church had provided a rule that applied to all cases: Catholics involved in a second marital union when their previous spouse was alive could not receive Communion unless they undertook to live as brother and sister. So even as he professed that Church teaching had not changed, he indicated that pastoral practice should change, indicating a willingness to compromise on that teaching.
Schönborn took a dim view of his fellow cardinals who were still pleading for a clarification. Conceding that cardinals have a right to speak with the pontiff about a contentious issue, he nevertheless criticized those who had made their request a matter of public record:
That cardinals, who should be the closest collaborators of the pope, try to force him, to put pressure on him to give a public response to their publicized, personal letter to the pope—this is absolutely inconvenient behavior, I’m sorry to say. If they want to have an audience with the pope, they ask for an audience; but they do not publish that they asked for an audience.
Something was lost in translation here. When Schönborn said the public questioning of the pope was “inconvenient,” he surely meant “inappropriate.” For his part, the cardinal believes that the pope has made significant changes in Church teaching. Yet he also insists that Amoris Laetitia is fully in line with previous Church teaching. According to Aus
ten Ivereigh’s sympathetic account of the address in Ireland,
Schönborn revealed that when he met the Pope shortly after the presentation of Amoris, Francis thanked him, and asked him if the document was orthodox.
“I said, ‘Holy Father, it is fully orthodox’,” Schönborn told us he told the pope, adding that a few days later he received from Francis a little note that said: “Thank you for that word. That gave me comfort.”
Assuming its accuracy (which we have no reason to doubt), Schönborn’s anecdote presents us with an astonishing picture: The successor to St. Peter—the man whose solemn duty it is to guard the Deposit of Faith—is asking another prelate whether his own teaching is orthodox. And he is comforted to hear an affirmative answer.
It is to be expected that Francis consults with Schönborn, one of his close advisers and a respected theologian. But he apparently sought assurance of his writing’s orthodoxy after the document had been issued. Publishing the document first and soliciting opinions about its doctrinal soundness later bespeaks a dangerously insouciant approach to the integrity of the Faith.
Is it possible that Francis was not entirely sure about the orthodoxy of Amoris Laetitia even after he released it? At the very least, his taking “comfort” in Schönborn’s reassurance indicates that the pope knew some influential prelates would find the document unsound.
But is there, perhaps, another way to look at the pope’s request for Schönborn’s opinion? Maybe Francis was not so much curious about the orthodoxy of his apostolic exhortation as he was interested in gauging the reliability of Cardinal Schönborn. The Austrian was respected by his colleagues as a serious theologian and known as a student and confidant of the retired Benedict XVI. If he could count on Schönborn’s support in the campaign for acceptance of Amoris Laetitia, the pope would indeed be comforted. Schönborn would be an important ally, and the pope knew that he faced a major battle.
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