And yet, they said, Pope Francis is acknowledging in a loving way that families and individuals are often stressed and wounded, and that the church needs to be compassionate and welcoming.
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“So many people were involved, even from New Hampshire”, Libasci said.
“It has a unique ability to please and disappoint nearly everyone who reads it”, Bishop Tobin said.
WKBN First News talked to people in the Valley about how they feel about the Pope’s document. As the pope himself appears to have feared, no issue was garnering more attention than his reflections on divorced and remarried couples – who, under church law, are living in adultery and technically unable to receive Communion.
“He does say that each case is a little bit different”. While progressives such as Cardinal Walter Kasper of Germany, who is one of Francis’ favorite theologians, favor this approach, it is opposed by conservatives, who say it would undermine the principle of the indissolubility of marriage that Jesus established.
The Pope said gays should be respected but firmly restated the church’s position that there are “absolutely no grounds” to equate gay unions to heterosexual marriage. He said that the church’s teachings on marriage should not be the final word.
“It will be a mixed committee, including clergy and laity”.
Is does not suggest a need for change in church doctrine.
But the 256-page Apostolic Exhortation released by the Vatican Friday was a disappointment.
Thomas H. Groome, a professor of theology and religious education at Boston College, said it offered “a much less prohibitive stance towards people who may be in ‘irregular unions'”.
Mr Kelly said that the Pope is asking Catholics to be “the merciful face of Christ in the world”.
The pope wrote that priests should be flexible on communion for divorced people.
“It calls us to go out to the people on the edges of life, of society and affirm them and tell them they are important”, said Wenski. He said, “Pope Francis does not outlaw that, whereas John Paul II specifically outlawed (it)”.
On gender identity, the document says “accept our humanity, as it was created”, but that’s not exactly the acceptance the transgender community was looking for.
Quoting the writings of Argentine poet Jorge Luis Borges and the 20th century psychoanalyst and humanist philosopher Erich Fromm alongside the encyclicals of Francis’s papal predecessors, “Amoris Laetitia” is also a treatise on the practice and pitfalls of marital love, and the ways in which the church can support modern marriage and family life.
“Such families should be given pastoral guidance, so that those who manifest a homosexual orientation can receive the assistance they need to understand and fully carry out God’s will in their lives”, the Pope said.
“It’s a very tricky thing”, Brumley said. The document sought to reject the emphasis on black-and-white rules for the faithfuls.
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Frese, 55, a software company owner, divorced 16 years ago after nine years of marriage that gave the couple three children.
