Pope Francis said on Tuesday that “persecution is the church’s daily bread”. These were the subject of the most speculation before the document was released and sit on one of the main fault lines between liberals and conservatives in the church.
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Archbishop Martin said it had a warm, distinctive and familiar style that speaks to the reality of ordinary life. However, she says there are a growing number of leaders who are open to changes in order to be more accepting. The exhortation is the concluding document of the 2014 and 2015 synods of bishops on the family. He said the document tries to navigate the hard path of supporting church teaching while letting the civilly remarried to participate in the life of the church.Thomas Groome, a theology professor at Boston College and a former priest, said he thought the most striking thing in the document was that it never spoke of artificial birth control.
“It is a long document”. Pope Francis’ “care” in recognizing all marriages would not constitute a weakening of faith, but “would be a testimony to the indissolubility of marriage itself”.
The apostolic exhortation goes on to state that “because of forms of conditioning and mitigating factors, it is possible that in an objective situation of sin – which may not be subjectively culpable, or fully such – a person can be living in God’s grace, can love and can also grow in the life of grace and charity, while receiving the Church’s help to this end”.
Also, just about every broadcast news report I heard made mention of the fact that, in the Joy of Love, Pope Francis does not change Catholic Church teaching on abortion. “He clearly has been talking to people about situations facing the family”, she said. “All require pastoral attention”.
Chapter 8 is that part of the papal document that suggests that priests should be more attuned to encouragement of sinners to follow Christ than to enforcement of church dogmas.
The encyclical “reflects the many (diverse) viewpoints expressed at the synod”, said Fr Hugo Valdemar Romero, spokesman for the Archdiocese of Mexico City. “This is about a reform of church”, the archbishop added.
Jesuit Father David Neuhaus, patriarchal vicar of the Hebrew-speaking community of the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem, said people looking for “juicy” headlines would be disappointed.
Special day: Pope Francis greets newly married couples during his general audience in St Peter’s Square at the Vatican on September 30 past year.
In a practical sense, this requires the priest-in the formal context of Confession or spiritual direction-to listen honestly and openly to the particular situation of the individual or couple, and to facilitate the realisation of the truth of the situation by them, illuminating it always and only with the light of Church’s teaching.
The exhortation “gives us a guide book for the future”, he said.
Bishop Rhoades said that it’s going to take a long time for these writings to be put into practice. “It moves constantly between the ideal and the real”.
“In the section entitled ‘The Transmission of Life and the Rearing of Children, ‘ the Holy Father points out that ‘if the family is the sanctuary of life, the place where life is conceived and cared for, it is a horrendous contradiction when it becomes a place where life is rejected and destroyed'”. Nor does he claim to offer a comprehensive pastoral plan to be implemented around the planet. “He is in the most powerful position in the world when it comes to moral teachings and he has failed LGBTQ”, she said.
“The document is very much in keeping with Pope Francis’ tenure as pope, which is tolerance, mercy and acceptance and reiterates the beauty of family life and how essential it is”, Flanagan said.
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