Shock! Francis Actually Meant What He Said in Amoris Laetitia!

I know I’m way late on this, being away always at the wrong time, but an explosive development came out late last week, and you can tell how important it is by the backflips the usual papolotrists are doing trying to explain it away.  Heck, Jeff Mirus reduced adultery to a venial sin to try to make this an inconsequential development!

So, the bishops of the Buenos Aires developed a document explaining to priests how to implement the infamous chapter 8 of Amoris Laetitia, doing so along plainly literal lines, taking the document at its word and just going from there, giving free reign to priests to give Communion to divorced people who have remarried without obtaining an annulment.  They submitted this interpretation to Franky George Bergoglio for his approval and he granted it, with great vigor.  In fact, he says the plainly heterodox “interpretation” of the document is the only one possible/permissible.  Which, duh, but a lot of folks have egg on their faces now, and they’d rather turn the Catholic Faith into a meaningless mishmash of pretzel logic than be wrong (Mirus, for one, has done this for years, even well before Francis).

Summary via LifeSite/Rorate below:

In a letter reportedly leaked by a priest in Argentina, Pope Francis writes that there is “no other interpretation” of Amoris Laetitia other than one admitting divorced and remarried Catholics to Holy Communion in some cases. The letter, dated September 5, comes in response to a confidential document by the bishops of the Buenos Aires pastoral region to priests instructing them on the application of the Pope’s controversial apostolic exhortation. LifeSite has acquired copies of both original documents and has provided professional side-by-side translation……..

LifeSiteNews’ translation of the Pope’s letter is here

LifeSiteNews’ translation of the bishops’ directive is here

The bishops’ directive called “Basic Criteria for the Application of Chapter Eight of Amoris Laetitia” says that in “complex circumstances” when the remarried couple could not “obtain a declaration of nullity,” the priests can nevertheless move forward to grant them access to Holy Communion. If the priest recognizes that “in a particular case there are limitations that diminish responsibility and culpability (cf. 301-302), particularly when a person judges that he would fall into a subsequent fault by damaging the children of the new union,” says the directive, “Amoris Laetitia opens the possibility of access to the sacraments of Reconciliation and the Eucharist (cf. notes 336 and 351).”

The Pope’s letter affirms this path with effusive praise for the bishops’ work. Writing to the delegate of the Buenos Aires Pastoral Region, Monsignor Sergío Alfredo Fenoy, the Pope says, “I thank you for the work they have done on this: a true example of accompaniment for the priests.”

Pope Francis adds: “The document is very good and completely explains the meaning of chapter VIII of Amoris Laetitia. There are no other interpretations. And I am certain that it will do much good. May the Lord reward this effort of pastoral charity.”……..

………The leaked document is the first time there is explicit confirmation that Pope Francis interprets Amoris Laetitia as allowing communion for divorced and remarried Catholics without the condition that the couple in the irregular situation live as brother and sister without sexual relations, as was always required by the Church.

Is anyone surprised?  Did anyone think Francis would repudiate the plain meaning of Amoris Laetitia?  How many demonstrations of radicalism and even heterodoxy must we have before some people will accept the idea that we have not just a bad pope, an incautious pope, but one that is openly promoting things directly contrary to the constant belief and practice of the Faith and the very Word of Life Himself?!?  I mean for crying out loud when will you get over your manifest error that Church = pope and pope = Church?!?

I just, totally coincidentally, completed some reading on the fall of Pope Liberius to the Arians. That, at least, was done under extreme duress, but fall he did.  He did most definitely sign onto at least a semi-Arian formulation.  Then we have the subsequent “problems” of Honorius/Formusus and John XXII.  The point being, popes have on several occasions promoted dubious doctrinal beliefs, including two of the three most recent occupants of the See of Peter. But Francis is stressing the machine well beyond its limits, we either have to admit that we have a pope who is endorsing error – I pray God innocently – or we have to basically pretend that the entire moral edifice of the Church means nothing.

Am I over-reacting?  Can there be an over-reaction to this development, the first solemn confirmation that Amoris Laetitia was no mistake, no inadvertant claim, that the positions contained therein express the true will of the pope made with complete deliberation?  This is really unprecedented.  All previous such instances were much more vague, more minor, or on far more inconsequential matters than  what we see now.  As Rorate noted in a subsequent post, we’re now down to a very clear situation – within the Church herself –  of standing with Christ, or standing with satan.  Is that too much?  I don’t think so, at all, but perhaps this can be your place to vent on the subject, if you haven’t, already.

As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.