The U.S. bishops are welcoming Pope Francis’s new apostolic exhortation, “Amoris Laetitia”, praising the pope’s call for careful encouragement and support of married life and engagement with families facing challenges. Archbishop Chaput also participated in the synod meetings in Rome, and hosted the World Meeting of Families in September 2015 in Philadelphia.
Advertisement
Every person is at a different stage of the journey and the Church has to journey with people, particularly those in strife; not just speak the truth and walk away.
While divorce and second marriages become increasingly accepted within the Catholic Church and within society as a whole, the now legal marriages of gays and lesbians continue to lie in the balance of these religious fringes.
It’s an enormous encouragement to believe in the power of love.
“By thinking that everything is black and white, we sometimes close off the way of grace and of growth and discourage paths of sanctification which give glory to God”, he said.
Glenn Stanton of Focus on the Family says this is typical of Pope Francis. He says family is “not a problem” but an “opportunity”. He’s very realistic, down to earth, heart in heaven and a foot on the earth.
Fessio also examines the positive aspects of “Amoris Laetitia” in the video, especially Francis’ reaffirmation of the Church’s teachings on key (and controversial) issues.
The pope’s shift shows that he recognizes a disenchantment among Catholics that cannot be resolved by even more edicts that force Catholics to choose between believing and belonging.
In his apostolic exhortation Amoris laetitia Pope Francis is helping priests to be better pastors, not giving individual consciences the ultimate authority to decide their spiritual state, a moral theologian and a canon lawyer both maintain. “So great is the value of a human life, and so inalienable the right to life of an innocent child growing in the mother’s womb, that no alleged right to one’s own body can justify a decision to terminate that life, which is an end in itself and which can never be con-sidered the “property” of another human being”. He remembered the men and women “persecuted only for saying that Jesus Christ is Lord”. He makes it clear rightly prepared married couples have a ministry in these areas – to be companions on the journey for other couples and families. Do you think that it makes it a very nuanced document, and consequently there’s not the clarity there that some people want because of its complexity? “You must find a way, too'”. Indeed, the Holy Father himself notes, ‘I do not recommmend a rushed reading of this text.
He is trying and succeeding to get in touch with the great variety of marriages and families in particular, and on the understanding that many of them are, in fact, messy. Even the Holy Family’s “daily life had its share of burdens and even nightmares” (# 30). He has a handsome chapter on aging which is a very important topic today. Suggesting that engaged couples not only pray together, but pray individually for each other and for their marriage?
Progressives have proposed the use of an “internal forum” in which a priest or bishop work with a Catholic who has divorced and remarried to decide jointly, privately and on a case-by-case basis if he or she can be fully re-integrated and receive communion. “That love, in the divine family, is the Holy Spirit.” .
“There is so much good in this document”, says Fessio in the video. Numerous people who want huge sea changes in the Church seemed so excited by Pope Francis.
“It is a kind of – I would say somewhat ironically – “polite persecution”.
“A healthy dose of criticism is in order for us pastors, in the way that we treat people and the way that we present the church’s teaching”, the archbishop told members of the media.
There also are stronger statements on pastoral practices that were previously more discreet, such as discernment of conscience around “irregular situations” (such as being divorced and remarried), and the need for the church to improve marriage preparation. The pastoral question is how to help these people who have, through a sinful beginning, have come to a situation that contains obligations. Francis knows that life is messy and painful – and acknowledges that.
Advertisement
Kidd serves as the sole campus minister at the secular University of Prince Edward Island, and as such, she interacts with students from a variety of backgrounds and with widely varying definitions of the word “family”. They have eight children now who are deeply educated in faith. “Beware! But go forward, I will be with you, ‘” he said.
