The Hardened Hearts of the Catholic Right [View all]

[rug]

Michael Sean Winters | Apr. 12, 2016

Most of the reactions to Amoris Laetitia, the apostolic exhortation delivered by Pope Francis last Friday, have been welcoming, which seems fitting seeing as the Holy Father calls on the Church to be more welcoming in the text. Even those bishops whom we suspect were in the minority at the synod have issued positive statements. That said, some of the responses have been remarkably negative.

Cardinal Raymond Burke wrote an article for the National Catholic Register in which he writes:

In other words, the Holy Father is proposing what he personally believes is the will of Christ for His Church, but he does not intend to impose his point of view, nor to condemn those who insist on what he calls “a more rigorous pastoral care.” The personal, that is, non-magisterial, nature of the document is also evident in the fact that the references cited are principally the final report of the 2015 session of the Synod of Bishops, and the addresses and homilies of Pope Francis himself. There is no consistent effort to relate the text, in general, or these citations to the magisterium, the Fathers of the Church and other proven authors.

Earlier, he claims that Pope Francis himself indicated that Amoris Laetitia is not an exercise of the magisterium, citing paragraph 3 of the document. It is obvious that Cardinal Burke wants to downplay the significance of this document, but I read paragraph 3 and it only says that the magisterium can’t solve all problems, not that the document is not an exercise in the magisterium. And, so far from this text being merely an expression of what Pope Francis “personally” believes, the fact that the pope stuck so closely to the conclusions of an overwhelming consensus on the world’s bishops gathered in the synod lends the text even greater magisterial weight, not less. Funny, I do not recall Burke and others making the case that Familiaris Consortio was not an exercise in the papal magisterium, even though that text, too, was the result of a synod.

http://ncronline.org/blogs/distinctly-catholic/hardened-hearts-catholic-right