VATICAN CITY (AP) — The Vatican is striking
back at conservative critics of Pope Francis' landmark document on family life,
ratcheting up its defense of the pope with new vigor as bishops begin
implementing the document around the world.
The Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano on
Wednesday carried a lengthy essay by an Italian Catholic historian insisting
that Francis' "The Joy of Love" was absolutely in line with his
predecessors and church doctrine on the thorny issue of whether divorced and
civilly remarried Catholics can receive Communion.
Earlier this month, the Vatican-approved
magazine La Civilta Cattolica ran an interview with Cardinal Christoph
Schoenborn in which the Vienna archbishop pointedly rejected conservative
claims that Francis' work didn't count as an authoritative teaching document.
Both articles upped the ante in the
increasingly divisive theological and ideological battle sparked by "The
Joy of Love," and were published on the eve of Francis' trip to Poland,
where the Jesuit pope will symbolically deliver the document to the deeply
conservative Polish church at a youth rally next week.
When it was released in April, "The Joy of
Love" immediately sparked controversy because it opened the door to
civilly remarried Catholics receiving Communion. Church teaching holds that
unless these divorced and remarried Catholics obtain an annulment — a church
decree that their first marriage was invalid — they cannot receive the
sacrament, since they are seen as committing adultery.
Francis didn't create a church-wide pass for
these Catholics, but suggested — in vague terms and strategically placed
footnotes — that bishops and priests could do so on a case-by-case basis after
accompanying them on a spiritual journey of discernment.
The conservative criticism was swift.
American Cardinal Raymond Burke, a figurehead
for archconservatives who was removed by Francis as the head of the Vatican's
supreme court, insisted that the document wasn't part of the church's teaching
magisterium but rather was a personal reflection on meetings of bishops about
family matters.
"The personal, that is, non-magisterial,
nature of the document is also evident in the fact that the references cited
are principally the final report of the 2015 session of the Synod of Bishops
and the addresses and homilies of Pope Francis himself," Burke wrote in
the National Catholic Register.
Schoenborn rejected Burke's claim in his
interview with Civilta Cattolica.
The document, Schoenborn said, "is an act
of the magisterium that makes the teaching of the church present and relevant
today."
Italian Cardinal Carlo Caffarra, another
leading conservative, has criticized the document as vague and confusing, and
denied that it opened the door to Communion, since doing so would contradict
previous church teaching on the indissolubility of marriage.
Francis' own doctrine czar, German Cardinal
Gerhard Mueller, concurred with Caffarra, saying the pope would have been more
clear if he had intended such an opening. Mueller argued in a May 4 speech in
Spain that decisions about whether someone can receive the sacraments cannot be
arrived at purely in the realm of individual, private discernment.
"A privatization of the sacramental
economy would certainly not be Catholic," he said.
In Wednesday's Osservatore Romano, Italian
historian and politician Rocco Buttiglione said the church has always taught
that there can be cases in which the faithful might not believe themselves to
be in a state of mortal sin, or might not be fully responsible for it, which
can mitigate their culpability.
"The path that the pope proposes to
divorced and remarried is exactly the same that the church proposes to all
sinners: Go to confession, and your confessor, after evaluating all the
circumstances, will decide whether to absolve you and admit you to the Eucharist
or not," he wrote.
Buttiglione's argument, featured on the front
page, marked a shift in the Vatican's defense of Francis' document, confronting
the criticisms head-on rather than just praising the pope's text.
The initiative could signal a more concerted
campaign by the Vatican to ensure that the "The Joy of Love" is
interpreted as Francis intended. Already, conservative Philadelphia Archbishop
Charles Chaput has said that divorced and civilly remarried Catholics can only
receive Communion in his archdiocese if they abstain from sex and live as
"brother and sister."
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