Amoris Laetitia: Some Movement At Last

 

After months of cowardly, unjustifiable silence (I write this in case some Pollyanna begins to write we Catholic bloggers were too hasty in the condemnation of our prelates’ silence after Amoris Laetitia), finally, some timid reaction begins to appear from a handful of Cardinals. 

I had read some months ago a hint of Cardinal Burke at a letter received by the Pope, to which (he said in his naivete) the Pope would have to answer. This is, mind, the same Cardinal who accused us of being the sowers of discord when Amoris Laetitia was first published, and who (thank God) must have seen with his own eyes how wrong his position was.

The facts are here.  Several Cardinals write to the Evil Clown in September (this is, if memory serves, five long months after the publication of AL; in the age of Twitter, this is still worse than inexcusable), and pose him five dubia. The Evil Clown has it known he does not intend to answer. Four of the Cardinals publish the letter, together with the information that the Pope has refused to answer and that the original signatories were more than the published four. 

The good of all this: something, at last, is moving, and it is thinkable that these cardinals will, if no answer is forthcoming, draw the consequences and denounce the documents as heretical. In my eyes, the decision of the four to go public could mean (but you never know) that they are going to escalate this. Many months after all of us, of course; but they, nowadays you can’t expect a Prince of the Church to guide anyone; you are happy enough if they follow the laity one step or two, after months of uninterrupted outrage. 

The bad of all this: the method of officially asking the Pope could be, in fact, a first step towards declaring the document a heretical one. However, it could also be an attempt to save face with the (real) Catholics all over the world in the face of continuing opposition, asking the Pope to give some vague “clarification” which allows said Cardinals to bend over backwards and reassure us that hey, everything is fine, whilst the real message of Amoris Laetitia is confidently pushed on the (fake) Catholics all over the world.

Think this: Francis never had a problem with contradicting himself. Even if he were to officially declare that actually, in a way, in general, adulterers are not allowed to receive communion, this would be worth very little as long as the document stays as it is. The document itself is formulated in such a way that one can always hide behind a finger. Cardinal Burke was the very first to do it himself! Nor is it reasonable to assume that willingly vaguely formulated texts will now be clarified in an extremely explicit, black and white, clear cut way.   You just can’t ask a heretical Pope to clarify heresy, and think you will receive a Catholic answer. 

Which leads us to the crux of the matter: whilst the method of the dubia may be a first necessary step in an escalation to come, in the end and after all letters have been written and (not) answered Amoris Laetitia cannot be fought with clarifications.

The text must be, at the very least, amended; but as the parts to be amended are so many, and the document is so perverted, the document must be retracted in its entirety, and substituted for a Catholic one. 

Everything else will be way short of the mark. Nor can the pathological optimists now lull themselves in the illusion that as a handful of Cardinals have spoken, things will end well in the end. Remember that hundreds of Bishops reacted to the attempt to water down doctrine at the first Synod, and all of them but one shut up when Amoris Laetitia was released. 

The harsh reality is this: the document is clearly heretical, and it must go. Nothing less will suffice. The dubia and the ping-pong with the Vatican only have value if they lead to the end result of the complete obliteration of Amoris Laetitia. Already the choice to raise dubia raises eyebrows. The text is openly heretical. No Catholic can have any doubt about it. 

And by the way: there will no word of praise for the Cardinals here. They are merely doing their own duty, after many months of culpable silence, after leaving Catholics all over the world confused and disoriented; and one of them, after accusing the voices of reason to be the ones who throw oil on the fire. 

But again: in this disgraceful time of ours, one is glad for every meowing. 

M