TEACH DON'T JUDGE

Despite “passages of great wisdom and beauty on marriage and on family life,” Archbishop Chaput of Philadelphia said that “persons of fidelity and substance” who have criticized the Exhortation, Amoris Laetitia, for problems such as seemingly opening a door to the divorced and remarried to receive Holy Communion “can’t in justice — be dismissed.” 

The Archbishop may have been referring to the four Dubia Cardinals and others, such as the signers of the Filial Correction and Father Thomas Weinandy. He made his remarks at the Third Annual National Assembly of Filipino Priests in Houston, Texas.

Archbishop Chaput said that the Exhortation has created “pastoral challenges” regarding what it means for priests to accompany straying Catholics and to be merciful to them, especially when it comes to Catholic teaching on marriage and sexuality. 

And so, the debate regarding the Apostolic Exhortation continues!

Some Prelates regard the document as normative and are establishing policies within their respective diocese for the implementation of what Pope Francis has described as a “pastoral accompaniment,” while others see it as problematic and in contradiction to the traditional moral teaching and practice of the Church regarding Catholics in second marriages.

Here’s the problem with both viewpoints.

In both cases, the Bishops are seeking to intervene inappropriately and abrogate the proper role which the individual human conscience rightfully exercises in determining whether or not it accepts or rejects Church teaching and decides to either engage or avoid engaging in a particular action.

Those who reject Pope Francis' call for pastoral accompaniment say they are defending the consistent moral doctrine of the Church that anyone who divorces a spouse and attempts marriage which is fully conjugal commits adultery.  And they further defend their position by automatically judging that every person in such situations is guilty of grave sin and therefore is to be denied access to the Sacraments.  

By so doing, these self-proclaimed “defenders of the faith” deny the role which the human conscience plays, a role so critical that. in some cases, personal responsibility may be so mitigated as to negate the imposition of any sanction or penalty for the objective state of sin in which these people may find themselves.

On the other hand, those who tout Pope Francis’ call for pastoral accompaniment suggest that somehow Pastors are now to assume the responsibility for a couples’ actions and give them approbation to avail themselves of the Sacraments.  

These proponents of the Apostolic Exhortation make the same mistake as its detractors and assume to themselves the unique and critical place which the exercise of the individual conscience plays in moral judgments and their consequences.

Let me repeat what I have written about this subject ad nauseam by now.

The teachings of the Scriptures and the Church’s magisterium (together constituting the Deposit of the Faith) are clear and convincing.  

Marriage constitutes a covenant by which a man and a woman enter into a relationship of lifetime permanence and exclusive fidelity which is ordered to the procreation and formation of children.   

No human agency (including the Church) can nullify a valid indissoluble Marriage.  Those who attempt to do so and enter into a invalid marriage engage in actions which are objectively and gravely sinful as they contravene the truths which derive from Scripture and Tradition.

Regarding this teaching, no Catholic of good faith can disagree.

But whether or not an individual is personally responsible to the extent that they are culpable of grave sin and incur the ecclesiastical penalty of being deprived access to the Sacraments is a judgment which only the individual conscience rightfully exercises.

No other person (including the Church itself) can substitute itself for the proper role and exercise of the individual conscience.  Not the so-called “defenders of the faith” and not Pope Francis' "Pastors of accompaniment".

Each of us one day will stand before the judgment of Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.  

When we do so, we must accept the responsibility for the judgments and actions we, not others, made in life.  We will claim our lives and life choices without excuse.  We will not be able to defend ourselves by pleas that we did what we did because “others” told us to do those things or to avoid those actions.

Jesus gave us the Gospel as a pathway by which we could order our lives in the service of truth and charity.  How we do or not do that belongs to us alone.  

It belongs to the Lord alone to then render judgment regarding whether we lived with integrity or not.

So, then, once and for all, let the Church and the Bishops speak clearly and with one voice:  teach, don't judge.

Announce the truth of the Gospels and the doctrine of the Church, help couples’ with the sincere questions they raise about their particular situations, but leave the judgments they make to themselves, neither approving or punishing what they decide and leaving that to the Unique Tribunal of Divine Judgment.

In this argument, I believe, can be found both truth, charity and mercy combined.