While 45 priests and academics asked the Pope to clarify what they said were erroneous statements in his apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia, Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano published a defence of the document.
In a letter to Cardinal Angelo Sodano, dean of the College of Cardinals, the priests and academics said that part of the papal document can be read in a way that is “contrary to Catholic faith and morals”.
On the other hand, Rodrigo Guerra López, a philosopher at the Centre for Advanced Social Research in Queretaro, Mexico, stated that “it is not strange to find resistance when Christian thought takes a new step forward”.
“Amoris laetitia is a true act of pontifical teaching,” he said. “It is very imprudent, in addition to being theologically inexact, to insinuate that this apostolic exhortation is a kind of personal opinion, almost private.”
In Amoris Laetitia, he added, there is an “organic development” of the understanding and application of the deposit of faith, but “Pope Francis does not change the essential doctrine of the Church”.
Patriarch blasts west
Patriarch Ignatius Joseph III Yonan, head of the Syriac Catholic Church, strongly criticised “American, French, English, [and] European Union politicians” whose efforts to remove President Bashar al-Assad have led to a nightmare for the region’s Christians.
In an interview with the National Catholic Register, the patriarch said Syria, “one of the most moderate, laicised countries in the region, has been ravished by one of the most sectarian wars,”, as he decried the western alliance with the “Wahabbism of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other [Persian] Gulf states”.
“Go to the depth of the problem: It is not a question of poverty,” he said. “It is a matter of Islam, radical Islam, and most of the Sunni Muslims are radical. Why? Because they take their Quran literally.”
Bishops oppose defence system
Archbishop Peter Lee Ki-heon, president of the Episcopal Commission for Reconciliation, and Bishop Lazzaro You Heung-sik, president of the Commission for Justice and Peace of South Korea, said the country’s planned anti-missile system makes the country “the centre of a new Cold War”.
The bishops also warned of “dangers for humanity” and “economic suffering among the poor”. They called upon North Korea to abandon its nuclear testing and North and South alike to make the peninsula a place of “reconciliation and life in cooperation, rather than a dangerous place of clashing States”.
‘Secret of Jesus’ prayer’
Reflecting on the Gospel reading (Lk 11:1-13) last Sunday, Pope Francis said: “This word [Father] is the secret of Jesus’ prayer. It is the key he himself gives us so that we can also enter into this relationship of trusting dialogue with the Father, who has accompanied and sustained his life.
“Jesus’ teaching on prayer continues with two parables, in which he takes as a model the attitude of a friend toward another friend, and of a father toward his son. Both aim to teach us to have complete trust in God, who is Father. He knows better than us our needs, but he wants us to present them with audacity and insistence, because this is our way of participating in his work of salvation.
“We need to ask that the Holy Spirit comes to us. But what is the use of the Holy Spirit? To live well, to live with wisdom, with love, doing the will of God. How beautiful a prayer it would be if in this week, each one of us would ask: ‘Father, give me the Holy Spirit.’”
(Compiled by Fr Joe Borg)