I recently visited San Marco’s convent in Florence. It is a magnificent edifice with the friars’ cells on the upper vault having been decorated by the early Italian Renaissance painter and Dominican friar, Fra Angelico. Fra Angelico, beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1982, was actually resident there between 1436 and 1445 and his frescos include the well-known and absolutely stupendous Annunciation which can be found at the top of the stairs leading to the cells. A few decades later, another friar of fame joined the Dominican community at San Marco – Fra Girolamo Savonarola.
Savonarola is renowned for reasons far different from those of Fra Angelico and rather than being beatified, he was actually excommunicated by Pope Alexander VI and executed as a heretic and a schismatic. He was a ‘radical’ in his Christian belief and in its manifestation in civic life.
He was also a crusader against secular art and culture - inspired by his evangelical zeal and repeated his calls for Christian renewal as well as his denunciation of clerical corruption, autocratic rule and the exploitation of the poor. However, it was probably his refusal to join in the Pope’s so-called ‘Holy League’ against the French that sealed his fate.
Although circumstances are very different today and it is difficult to make any comparison whatsoever, I find it ironic that the situation is somewhat the other way round with the current occupant of Peter’s See in Rome being under siege from certain ecclesiastical quarters, with some going so far as accusing him of heresy. They are clearly not happy at all with his style and with the direction of his leadership.
The main bone of contention at the moment appears to be Francis’s apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia which is the document published after the synods on the family celebrated in 2014 and 2015. The exhortation contains a footnote, the so-called Footnote 351, which addresses the controversial question of whether those who have divorced and remarried may receive Communion.
Although the Pope did not change Catholic teaching on the indissolubility of marriage and, hence, on considering as not being in conformity with Church teaching, the situation of any Catholic who, after celebrating a sacramental marriage seeks the dissolution of such marriage in the civil courts and subsequently enters into a civil marriage with another person, he takes a different approach in terms of how one may judge such a situation.
Quoting Tim Staples, the director of apologetics and evangelisation at Catholic Answers, the Pope is “quite simply applying what is a commonly held teaching of the magisterium – everyone who commits an objectively grave sin is not necessarily culpable of mortal sin – to the particular situation of people who have divorced and remarried without having received an annulment”.
Apparently, loyalty to the Pope only applies when the incumbent is considered to be conservative or traditionalist and Catholics who are neither of the two are told to fall in line
Only mortal sin prevents one from receiving Communion. As Staples states: “A person living in a situation of objective grave sin (remarried outside the Church) yet not subjectively and mortally culpable for that sin would not have an impediment to receiving the Eucharist according to divine law.”
In Footnote 351, Pope Francis reiterates what he had written in a previous exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium: “I want to remind priests that the confessional must not be a torture chamber, but rather an encounter with the Lord’s mercy” and that the Eucharist “is not a prize for the perfect, but a powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak”.
The controversy that erupted is on how to interpret Amoris Laetitia. Late last year, four cardinals formally and ‘privately’ asked the Pope for clarifications, submitting to him five dubia (doubts) for which they requested a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ reply. Francis gave neither which is what prompted the four cardinals to go public. Apparently, loyalty to the Pope only applies when the incumbent is considered to be conservative or traditionalist and Catholics who are neither of the two are told to fall in line.
The fact that Francis has so conspicuously ignored the ‘gang of four’ is already an important statement in itself. In various countries, bishops are issuing guidelines to priests to assist in the interpretation of Amoris Laetitia. It is reported that in a private letter to the bishops of his former diocese – that of Buenos Aries in Argentina – the Pope agreed with an approach that opens up the possibility for divorced and remarried Catholics to receive Communion.
Moreover, when last month, the Maltese bishops issued their guidelines to priests entitled ‘Criteria for the Application of Chapter VIII of Amoris Lætitia’, they were subsequently published in L’Osservatore Romano which is the semi-official newspaper of the Holy See. This could indicate papal endorsement for the position adopted by Archbishop Charles Scicluna and Bishop Mario Grech.
In paragraph 10, the Maltese bishops write to their priests: “If, as a result of the process of discernment, undertaken with ‘humility, discretion and love for the Church and her teaching, in a sincere search for God’s will and a desire to make a more perfect response to it’ (AL 300), a separated or divorced person who is living in a new relationship manages, with an informed and enlightened conscience, to acknowledge and believe that he or she are at peace with God, he or she cannot be precluded from participating in the sacraments of Reconciliation and the Eucharist.”
I can understand why such a bold statement gave rise to some of the reactions that were expressed privately or even publicly. Stating things simply, we are not accustomed to a Church that speaks this kind of language. We are used to a Church that describes situations as either ‘black’ or ‘white’. As Pope Francis clearly states in Amoris Lætitia, this can no longer be the case.
What surprised me, however, was that some of the concern regarding the guidelines came from quarters I would not have expected it to come from. Possibly this is because we were taught, for so long, to think in terms of absolutes and certainties. Yet, to quote Christ himself: “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her” (Gospel of John, chapter 8, verse 7).
Speaking as a Catholic who still considers his faith to be an important part of his being, the signs we have been given over the past months and years, particularly since the election of Pope Francis in 2013, is of a Church that is seeking to become more inclusive and in harmony with the teachings of Christ. I fail to understand how there are still some who would rather see some of God’s children exiled.