The whole Catholic world knows by now that the Maltese bishops are accused – by some fellow Church authorities – of ushering a ‘disaster’. All thanks to their guidelines to priests on the pastoral care of families in ‘complex situations’, code for households led by adults not married within the Church.

To some extent, all this talk about disaster is just so much expressive sound and fury. It’s impossible to separate from your opinion about Pope Francis’s own guidelines in Amoris Laetitia (The Joy of Love). If you hate it – as do the critics of the bishops – then the results will inevitably be a disaster since its criteria of success are rotten betrayal to begin with.

But you can like Amoris Laetitia, as I do, for its sense and sensibility and still think it can lead to disaster – complete failure understood in terms of Pope Francis’s own criteria of success. In the Maltese case, the seeds for disaster are already there, predating the bishops’ guidelines.

Now, ordinarily, there’s nothing of secular interest in rows raised by the Church’s sacramental discipline or lack of it. Given the presence of the Catholic Church in Maltese public life, however, a disaster for the Church will inevitably reshape the character of debate, culture, education and the tertiary sector.

The criteria to measure success or failure in Pope Francis’s own terms are mainly three.

First, there’s the larger story in which the Church sees itself. On family issues, the Church’s major narrative – in Malta as elsewhere – has long been that real family values have been under siege (‘cultural bombardment’ is a favourite image) from an insidious relativism.

Pope Francis wants the Church to distance itself from this narrative of culture war. Amoris Laetitia was written partly with this in mind.

But will another narrative take its place? If none does, the result could be pointless drift. One good work after another,perhaps, but with nothing to give it deeper significance.

Pope Francis wants that overarching story to be of the Church as a field hospital: the first-aid global carer of all the victims of the military, political, economic and ecological violence of others. Amoris Laetitia itself draws on medical metaphors. So, if its application does not help give force to that narrative, it may well end up contributing to a sense of cultural drift.

Second, Amoris Laetitia clearly thinks of itself as promoting the renewal of the sacraments, not as understating their importance or loosening the rules surrounding them. So, if the consequence of its application is that the sacraments fall into greater disuse (as was the unintended consequence of some of the liturgical reforms of Vatican II), it will have failed.

Third, the entire spirit of Amoris Laetitia is one of cultural confidence and authority. There is no letting go of the notion that the Church’s teachings on marriage and the family are right.

The criterion of success is whether application leads to a more vibrant sense of authentic Christian life. If it leads to a demoralisation of priests, something has gone seriously wrong.

Maltese parish priests are being asked to represent not a new set of rules but a new kind of communication with the laity

Those are the criteria of success. What about the seeds of disaster already implanted in the Maltese case? They’re social and intellectual.

First, there is contradictory organisation. Several Maltese priests have complained that the guidelines were sprung on them without much (or any) real discussion.

In other words, the guidelines exhorting priests not to treat Church teachings as a cold set of rules were themselves dispensed as a new set of rules.

Hierarchy in the Church has its place. Pope Francis has himself made use of it in disdaining to answer the ‘doubts’ expressed by some cardinals about Amoris Laetitia, clearly pulling rank against opponents he considers pharisees more interested in entrapment. But the case of the Maltese parish priests, racked by doubt, is a different one.

They are being asked to represent not a new set of rules but a new kind of communication with the laity. Some will have to learn by example. They have the right to expect the bishops to be one.

Amoris Laetitia is based on the idea that communion in the Church is a complex network. For that idea not to be utopian waffle (and, ultimately, another utopian disaster), it is not just the sacramental life that has to change accordingly but the organisational one as well.

The second seed of disaster is the alienation of many priests from their own intellectual tradition. The idea of letting the laity be guided by its conscience has given some priests a crisis of conscience.

This isn’t just delicious irony. There are two definitions of conscience at stake.

The idea of conscience as the seat of purely subjective decision – something I decide purely by consulting my feelings independently of anything else – is a modern, secularised notion, where you can never be said to have done wrong if you follow your conscience. This is what the troubled priests fear the laity is being authorised to do (and, no doubt, what many people think the bishops have said).

But it is quite clear that the bishops, and Amoris Laetitia, are drawing on an older Christian notion: ultimately, all your ethical decisions are for your conscience alone (and deciding to receive holy communion is an ethical decision too) but, if you get it wrong, you also pay the price.

You can’t read Amoris Laetitia properly and believe it’s licensing a free for all. On the contrary, it urges an examination of conscience so radical that to follow it can be disturbing.

For example, it urges those who have left first marriages behind to revisit the scenes of the wreckage and to seriously ask themselves what part they may have played in other people’s shattered lives. Conscience speaks truth to power – beginning with one’s ego.

Amoris Laetitia and the bishops are the traditionalists when it comes to conscience. It’s the opponents who are in the thrall of a key notion of contemporary cultural relativism.

However, the traditionalism of Amoris Laetitia will be lost from view if the priests themselves don’t recognise it. Right now, it seems many don’t.

And if they don’t, how can they not be demoralised in feeling they are being asked to do something they don’t believe in?

Intellectual alienation, demoralisation, and the wrong organisation for the mission. Yes, unless they’re addressed, despite the best intentions, the Maltese application of Amoris Laetitia could possibly end with the hollowing out of the most important Maltese institution outside the State.

ranierfsadni@europe.com