Pope Francis’s post-synodal apostolic exhortation on love in the family, Amoris Laetitia, has been received as “groundbreaking” by his supporters and schismatic by his critics.
New York Times columnist Ross Douthat asserts that the Pope’s position on marriage in particular represents "a decentralized, quasi-Anglican approach to questions where the church and the post-sexual revolution culture are in conflict." In the National Catholic Reporter, Michael Sean Winters counters that Douthat’s comments are "the ruminations of a man who has been listening to some crank theologians and canonists who think Francis is flirting with heresy, who confuse moral and sacramental theology, who know nothing of the various ways the church's teaching about what is, and is not, a valid marriage has changed over the years."
HDS asked Francis Schüssler Fiorenza, Charles Chauncey Stillman Professor of Roman Catholic Theological Studies, for his perspective on Catholicism, marriage, and Amoris Laetitia. A former student of both Pope Benedict (Joseph Ratzinger) and Cardinal Walter Kasper, Schüssler Fiorenza says that the church has throughout its history found ways to accommodate the reality of changing family relationships even as it preaches the indissolubility of marriage.
HDS: How has the Roman Catholic Church's teaching on marriage developed over history?
Francis Schüssler Fiorenza: In the gospels of Matthew and Mark, there's a strict statement about marriage attributed to Jesus:
“But I say to you that anyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of unchastity, causes her to commit adultery; and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.” (Matthew 5:32)
The meaning of that text has been debated. Paul quotes that statement and then makes an exception immediately, the Pauline or Petrine privilege. If two are married as non-Christians, and one converts to Christianity and the other remains a pagan, then there would be an exception to break the marriage and take a new spouse. The Petrine privilege allowed the Pope to dissolve the marriage of two persons, one a Christian and one not.
Then, in the Greek church—and these are Greeks that are united with the Catholic church—a whole tradition grows up in which you're allowed one divorce and remarriage. That's not taken seriously.
Then there's another tradition that comes from the canon lawyers. They say, “Well, we can determine that this first marriage is not valid. And if we declare it not valid, then you can remarry.” Various reasons were given and these have become more lenient over time so that one’s consent to marriage could be seen as not fully valid. In other words, if you did not or couldn’t have full consent, it wasn't a valid marriage. From that flows the whole process of annulment that we have now.
Now, I think there's been a diversity of how Catholics have reacted to church doctrine and law. Some say you can get an annulment if you have money and you go through the process. Even so, you’ve been married for 20 years and suddenly they're saying your marriage never existed? And what about the children of an annulled marriage? Are they bastards? Well, the canon lawyers say “Maybe the marriage never existed, but your children aren't bastards. They're still legitimate children as if they were in a valid marriage.” Only a lawyer can think like that. Many Catholics find such reasoning problematic.
HDS: So where does Amoris Laetitia fit in?
Schüssler Fiorenza: Well, it's important to know first of all that the discussion of marriage didn’t start with Francis. It was the German bishops who started this process 20-25 years ago. They recognized that a lot of people were getting remarried and having children. These people wanted to raise their children as Catholics and to go to church as a family. So, the bishops came together to look at the situation as a pastoral rather than doctrinal issue. Even Cardinal Ratzinger (Pope Benedict) was open to it at first, but then backtracked much later on.
Also, what the Pope articulates in Amoris Laetitia is a decision of the majority of the bishops at the synod. It wasn't his unique decision. And it’s a compromise. They didn’t come up with a general rule. They said we have to look at the circumstances of the first divorce and we have to look at the circumstances and pastoral situation of the second marriage.
Let’s say you have a first marriage and the husband or wife separates from their spouse. What does that person do alone? Sometimes, one person is really guilty and the other person's left to deal with the situation. Do we allow them to receive the Eucharist or not? It's not so much about the doctrine of marriage. It's more a pastoral challenge. How do you take a set of new circumstances into account?
So, to me what Francis is saying in Amoris Laetitia is really very minimalistic. He’s not saying that, as general rule, if you're divorced then you can remarry and go to Eucharist. He’s acknowledging that there can be special circumstances for a particular person, that they're sorry for the situation that they're in, they have children, and they want to receive the Eucharist.
HDS: What about Douthat’s point that the exhortation isn’t minimalistic at all? He argues that San Diego’s Bishop McElroy and others are interpreting the Pope’s position as “Divorce is unfortunate, second marriages are not always ideal, and so the path back to communion runs through a mature weighing-out of everyone’s feelings,” and that “The objective aspects of Catholic teaching on marriage—the supernatural reality of the first marriage, the metaphysical reality of sin and absolution, the sacramental reality of the Eucharist itself—do not just recede; they essentially disappear.”
Schüssler Fiorenza: Douthat’s looking at marriage from a very abstract point of view, whereas the proposal coming from the German bishops, the synod, and Pope Francis is concerned about the concrete pastoral situation.
People divorce and remarry. You just can't break a second marriage and say, “Okay, divorce your second wife. Have her go live alone with the children and you go back to your first wife.” It’s an intolerable situation, and the church is trying to think through it pastorally.
Douthat converted to Catholicism and he wants some ideal religion that corresponds to an ideal that he has of life. The problem is that real life’s not like that and the church is trying to take pastoral situations into account when dealing with remarried Catholics. Moreover, the life span today is quite different from earlier times. Take the example of St. Elizabeth of Hungary. She was married at 15, had four children by 20, at which time her husband died in the Crusades. When she died at 24, she had already raised a family and been a widow for four years. Today, people live much longer. We talk about the Alzheimer’s epidemic growing because so many people live past 85.
Also, it's interesting that Douthat is so focused on marriage when it comes to the Pope’s doctrinal rigor. Francis is concerned with the poor, with the social mission of the church, with the obligations we have to immigrants. There you can say Francis is much more rigorous.
So, that's why I really don't think the church is becoming Protestant. The Catholic hierarchy still maintains the indissolubility of marriage, but they’re saying that there are ad hoc decisions to be made.
Look, marriage has never been a pristine institution. So when Douthat talks about Pope Francis precipitating a schism over the issue of communion and remarriage, it's overlooking the whole history--and current plurality--of Christian marriage. Moreover, I think today, we are facing other challenges in regard to marriage. Many are not marrying in the church, but cohabiting. Many more marriages than in the past are ones where each partner belongs to a different religious tradition. How should the church deal with these? Think pastorally. Think concretely. That’s what the Pope is trying to say.
—by Paul Massari