Tag Archives: Amoris Laetitia

Did the Modernists just get a nasty surprise?

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13 Dec 2020 Update – The original premise of this article was utter nonsense.  All of the nasty surprises seem to be flowing only in one direction:  from them to us.  

8 APRIL UPDATE – It would appear that the answer posed in this article’s title may well be “no.”  We’re hearing now that Pope Francis** is setting in motion yet another “commission” to study the question of female deacons.  The good news from the Vatican just never ends, does it?  Who knows where this will go, but in the meantime it seems purposely designed to keep the “churn” and general rate of chaos high among the Faithful.  The Trads are getting their chains yanked, regular Novie Catholics are getting their chains yanked, and maybe even the Modernists are getting their chain yanked.  What is the purpose of all this?  Seems like classic Peronista tactics, which I guess shouldn’t be surprising this many years into this pontificate.  

We simply must keep praying for our Church, for our Pope (whether or not he considers himself the Vicar of Christ) and that Our Lady will soon clean house in this troubled, chaotic and pretty messed up human component of the Body of Christ.

Oremus!

** Formerly known by the very accurate title “Vicar of Christ.”  You may have heard that this august title has fallen out of favor with the former Cdl. Bergolio.  The term has been relegated to a historical footnote in the current edition of the Vatican Yearbook.

Original (prematurely optimistic) article:

Today–12 February 2020–is the day the much anticipated/dreaded Papal document on the Amazon Synod came out.  We were all bracing for the worst sort of news when it came to married priests and lady jungle deaconesses, but instead the document says something rather different.

Here is the text of tweet made by EWTN’s Raymond  Arroyo:

The Pope’s final Amazon document is a shock and a wakeup call to progressives who have sought “revolutionary” change in the Church. Pope Francis has reaffirmed the tradition of ordaining celibate men, and ruled out ordaining women. Expect a ferocious response.

Does that mean we’re out of the woods?  Probably not.  As many online commentators–each with much deeper thought processes and way larger numbers of followers–have been warning, the whole idea of adding married priests and/or female deacons into the post-Vatican II Church was never the objective.  Rather, the goal was to move the Catholic Church in ever closer alignment with the secularist goals of the UN and the likes of Jeffery Sachs, George Soros, and of course little Greta.  The climate and environment are the real threats to mankind, and globalism is the only solution.  The salvation of our souls and the methodologies used to obtain said salvation is a back-burner issue.  And I’m afraid that while the current (and let us not forget temporary) leadership in Rome works ever harder to make the Church the UN’s favorite NGO, the issues of married priests, lady deacons, and eventually full-on priestesses is far from settled.

Still, isn’t it delightful to think how disappointed all the Modernists are at this moment? All of the coquettish hinting that the door was open for massive new changes and innovations to the priesthood.  Oh, how they must have been anticipating it!

This pope is a master of weaponized ambiguity, and no mistake.  Most of that ambiguity has worked to the advantage of the Modernists (think Amoris Laetitia).  Each odd little statement he makes at an audience or airplane presser is like a little hand grenade of weaponized ambiguity tossed into the foxholes of Faithful Catholics with devastating effect.  You “progressive” theologians, priests, bishops and laity have loved lobbing those grenades at us.  But every now and again, one of those ambiguous hand grenades might just blow up in your own face.

Francis, Chairman Mao, and King Henry VIII

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It’s hard to keep up with all the moves being made during this pontificate.  Many of the pronouncements coming from the Vatican seem to be intentionally ambiguous, allowing for the faithful to fib to themselves that nothing’s changed, and allowing the less heterodox among us to exploit the carefully constructed loopholes in documents like Amoris Laetitia.  No doubt the end product of this month’s synod will produce whoppers of equal magnitude.

Then, of course, there are the outright moves of betrayal, such as the stunning agreement with the Red Chinese which effectively throws the Underground Church in China under the bus.

Even though many faithful Catholics are confused, perplexed, disturbed, and perhaps even outraged by the Pontiff’s moves, there are those whom we suspect would be quite pleased…

Amoris Laetitia: Winners & Losers?

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Painting of King Henry the VIII holding a copy of Amoris Laetitia by Pope Francis.

Regardless on which side of the Amoris Laetitia debate you find yourself, it’s  undeniable that the promulgation of this document has produced considerable churn (understatement).  Earlier blogs on this site have decried the way in which AL, by its ambiguity, produced such a wildly-varying degree of interpretations.  Some bishops say nothing has changed; others see the opportunity to allow divorced & remarried Catholics to start receiving Holy Communion again.  In one zip code, a divorced/remarried Catholic is an adulterer; in the next that Catholic is simply “on a journey” of some sort, and receiving the Eucharist might well be possible if an unspecified number of prerequisites are met.

Who are the winners and losers in all this?

Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican Secretary of State, says that AL represents “a paradigm shift, and the text itself insists on this, that’s what is asked of us — this new spirit, this new approach!”  Factions favoring such a change refer to Amoris Laetitia‘s stress on the objective relevance of extenuating circumstances, the subjective conscience and discernment to allow some divorced and civilly remarried Catholics to receive Holy Communion and apply it to allowing use of artificial contraception in some cases (National Catholic Register, 11 Jan 2018).

Henry VIII and AL

Although it comes a few centuries too late, it makes me wonder if one of the “winners” might not be His Majesty, King Henry VIII.  Wasn’t that all he was asking when he divorced Catherine of Aragon, dumping her in favor of Ann Boleyn?  One can just imagine him insisting to Thomas Moore (perhaps while visiting him in the Tower of London), that there was a bucketload of “extenuating circumstances,” and that the King was perfectly clear in his “subjective conscience of discernment,” and surely the “extenuating circumstances” of no royal heir.

Yeah….right….

Lex Luthor and Martin Luther

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Comic book villan Lex Luthor grinning diabolically. Martin Luther standing behind Lex and staring at him.

Is it wrong to mention the arch-villain from the Superman comics and the founder of Protestantism in the same breath?  Hardly.  Both are scoundrels.  While we’re at it, we might as well throw in Henry VIII, probably the only serial killer to start his own religion.

While our separated brethren prepare to celebrate the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther’s revolt, Roman Catholics around the world have absolutely nothing to celebrate, and should think twice about joining in on the festivities.

Martin Luther was a heretic.   Contemporaries of Luther who willingly followed him in his errors are heretics as well.  The rending asunder of Christendom which Luther initiated has continued unabated for five centuries, so that now the number of protestant denominations and sects number in the tens of thousands.  There’ll probably be a couple new ones out by the time you read this.  The two dozen folks who break away from the Maple Avenue Four-Square Bible Rock of Salvation Church in order to found the Reformed Four-Square Bible Rock of Salvation Church of Birch Street will consider themselves a church every bit as legitimate as the one which Christ Himself founded two millennia ago.  They’ll come up with their own particular interpretation of the Bible, perhaps form a new doctrine or two, and continue merrily along until a handful of their congregation get pissed about something and break away to form yet another church.

Gee…thanks Luther.  Thanks a bunch.

Has the Church Christ founded required course corrections periodically?  Yes, and at every critical juncture the Holy Spirit has raised up men and women of heroic virtue who remained loyal and enacted needed reforms within the Church, keeping her intact.  These reforms were not doctrinal in the sense that the Church had developed a false doctrine.  The reforms had to do with practices, procedures, and norms which had gotten out of kilter due to the errors of sinful men and women.  The mechanics of the Church require fine tuning and occasionally, even a complete overhaul from time to time, but the bedrock of the Magisterium requires no such tinkering.

Luther’s big mistake (and it was a whopper!) was not the pointing out of practices requiring reform, but rather his determination that the Roman Catholic Church was in and of itself utterly defective and requiring abandonment and replacement with a church of Luther’s own invention. Lex and Martin

That  act of hubris on Martin Luther’s part, and the ensuing sorrow and chaos it created, the number of souls it led astray…well nothing Lex Luthor could accomplish with mere kryptonite could even come close.

Why the Pope Weaponizes Ambiguity

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Yellow diamond shaped highway road sign with confusing arrows pointing in every direction with a 45 MPH speed limit sign. The words "Good Luck" are attached between the two signs.
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Image:  weknowmemes.com

Ok…so what’s the deal here?  The Vatican issues a document titled Amoris Laetitia (“The Joy of Love”).  As written, the document seems to indicate that, in an undetermined number of cases, it may be permissible for Catholics who are divorced and living together in subsequent non-sacramental marriages to receive Holy Communion.

Or maybe not.

That’s the problem.  The document, as written, is ambiguous, vague, and open to interpretation (and, of course, misinterpretation).

As a former military guy, we used to get orders which were vague, unclear, or confusing all the time.  If we didn’t fully understand the orders, we were supposed to ask questions.  We were expected to ask questions.  If we just shrugged, gave it our best guess and went off half-cocked, things usually went poorly.  Then, when standing tall in front of that long green table, we’d inevitably be asked “If the orders weren’t clear to you, why didn’t you ask?”

Well, the publication of Amoris Laetitia generated plenty of confusion among Catholics, both the rank & file laypeople, priests, bishops and even cardinals.  What the heck were we supposed to make of this papal exhortation?  How was it supposed to be implemented?

Several leaders within the Church did what any good soldier should do:  they requested clarification.  As written, the orders (Amoris Laetitia) were confusing and ambiguous in parts.  Four cardinals, including Cardinal Burke, requested clarification in a formal procedure which involved submitting a “Dubia” in which they raised doubts about what exactly it was they were supposed to be doing.

Were clarifications from “headquarters” forthcoming?  Nope.  Not yet, anyway.

And with that ambiguity came the inevitable misinterpretations.  Some dioceses continued with the current policies regarding divorced and remarried Catholics, while others implemented very new, very liberal, and (one might say) very radical interpretations of Amoris Laetitia.   Even though it was clear that different “subordinate commands” within the Church were interpreting/implementing the document in completely opposite ways, still there was no clarification forthcoming from the Vatican.

Why in the heck not?

I haven’t been privy to any of the Pope’s daily briefings (if he conducts such things), so I have no way of knowing what his intentions and motives are.  Not a clue.

What I do understand, however, is that if orders are written which are intentionally vague, there might be a very distinct reason for that.

In an article written for The California Law Review titled “Obeying Orders: Atrocity, Military Discipline, and the Law of War,” University of Iowa law professor Mark Osiel examines the issue of culpability when it comes to issuing and obeying illegal orders, and the part such orders play in the chain of events leading to military atrocities.  Here are some of the things he says:

Deliberate ambiguity in the wording of orders often leads atrocity by bureaucracy to blur into atrocity by connivance… For a common soldier to be liable for disobeying a superior’s order, the order must attain a reasonable degree of specificity, according to the military law of most Western nations. Such an order, as one military lawyer writes, “is a specific mandate to do or refrain from doing a particular task…[I]t must particularize the conduct expected, or there cannot be any offense against it: an order to… perform one’s duties [for instance] does not meet this requirement. Legal ambiguity thus has very different effects on the potential liability of superiors and subordinates. For subordinates, it is exculpatory; for superiors with decision-making capacity, it is not. This is of considerable practical importance, because any order calling for atrocities is likely to be willfully opaque.

“Any order calling for atrocities is likely to be willfully opaque.”  What atrocities are contained in the papal exhortation?  Isn’t that going a bit overboard?  Hard for me to say.  I suppose it’s rather atrocious to take Christ’s words on the subject of divorce and upend them entirely, isn’t it?  Mr. Osiel continues:

Thus, a key problem with requiring that an order be manifestly criminal on its face, in order to hold subordinates liable for obeying it, is that this approach easily permits the superior officer who desires atrocity to formulate his orders in ways that ensure that soldiers obeying them are excused from criminal liability. It takes no great measure of verbal artistry to do this, for the slightest vagueness in his orders will generally introduce enough doubt about their unlawfulness in the mind of the average soldiers to excuse his obedience to them. This is because the manifest illegality rule authorizes soldiers to resolve all legitimate doubts about legality in favor of obedience.

Again, I’ll readily admit that comparing the whole issue of Communion for divorced & civilly remarried Catholics to wartime atrocities is really pushing the envelope, so let me step away just a bit to put it in less inflammatory terms.

  1. Orders issued by a superior should be clear, concise, and unambiguous.
  2. Subordinates who receive orders which are unclear, imprecise, vague or ambiguous should seek clarification from the superior issuing them.
  3. When a request for clarification is received, a superior should promptly address the questions asked, ensuring that no confusion remains as to the specifics of the order, or the intent behind it.
  4. If an order is written in a deliberately ambiguous or vague manner, it may well be that the superior issuing the orders intends to use the inevitable confusion which arises in a manner which will benefit himself or bring about an intended result which is either illegal or too controversial to be addressed in a direct and unambiguous manner.

If, when Amoris Laetitia was promulgated, the ambiguities were unintentional, the first three items described above would have taken care of things.  The papal exhortation has some confusing parts in it; some cardinals submit a Dubia, and the Pope addresses those confusing bits head-on, clearing up all the confusion.  Everybody proceeds on the same sheet of music, remaining fully in sync with the Magisterial teachings of the Church on the painful topic of divorce and remarriage.  No harm; no foul.

So far, that hasn’t happened yet.  As faithful Catholics, we should pray earnestly that it does.

I really, really, really don’t want number 4 above to be what’s going on here!

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Credits:

  1. Ostiel, “Obeying Orders: Atrocity, Military Discipline, and the Law of War” The California Law Review, Vol 6, Oct 1988