Over the weekend, I sent some experts and observers a few general questions about that new apostolic exhortation from Pope Francis on love. (I shared some other insights earlier today here.)
Here’s what I got back from Greg Erlandson, Catholic writer and editor, who was until recently the longtime publisher of Our Sunday Visitor Publishing.
KJL: Why is Amoris Laetitia important?
Greg Erlandson: What I like about Amoris Laetitia is that it seems drenched with the kind of wise pastoral observations about love and marriage and the family that, frankly, we don’t see in many Church documents. This is of course where the stumbling blocks can be as well. This is not what we expect from a pope or bishop, necessarily. I often have observed that that those who move up (or want to move up) the hierarchical ranks, one tends more and more to “write like a bishop.” One focuses on careful formulations and often leaves out the personal or the practical (which can be really messy). Francis doesn’t do that.
The stress on mercy that permeates the document underlines the fact that history will surely judge this pontiff to be “the Pope of Mercy.”
KJL: Who is the chief audience?
ERLANDSON: This is a good question. I’d like to say the audience should be the Catholic in the pew, but the best I can hope for is that chunks of it will be distributed in such a way that the Catholic in the pew will draw sustenance from it. The audience is certainly those in various forms of ministry (especially to the family), who will find it full of insights.
The pope may want all men and women of good will to read it, but it is too much. And as the secular media coverage has suggested, the general observer goes straight to Chapter 8 and tries to decode whether the Church is changing its teaching. Period. This will miss the rest of the document’s messages.
KJL: Who is it a help to?
ERLANDSON: I hope that this will have an impact on how pastoral ministry is done. I also hope that it will be helpful for those who have felt themselves alienated or estranged from a Church that — in their minds – always stresses the negative.
Its encouragement for programmatic support for the engaged and the married is of critical importance. Right now, there are a mish-mash of approaches, with little consistency, for the engaged. I terms of supporting the already married, there are few offerings and a great need.
KJL: What’s the challenge?
ERLANDSON: One challenge is how to communicate all the messages of this document in a way that people will be able to access and understand. This will be a great opportunity and task for Catholic media. This is not just an opportunity to communicate the pope’s vision, but to communicate a broader understanding of the value the Church has always put on the institution and sacrament of marriage. It is critically important that the voice of the laity be heard in this communications effort.
The second challenge is Chapter 8. If I were a priest or bishop, I am not sure that I have a clear understanding of what the Pope is encouraging or allowing. That we want those in irregular situations to be embraced by the Church and accompanied is clear. What that will mean in terms of a pastor in Germany or Argentina or Uganda or Washington, D.C., I am not so sure. This – in addition to the two recent moto proprios re: annulments — seems to put great expectations on bishops.
KJL: What’s the worry?
Erlandson: Confusion is always the worry. People who are relying on secular summaries of what the Pope may be saying could have unrealistic expectations or disappointment. The Church must have a strategy for communicating the heart of the Pope’s message, but does it?
KJL: What does it mean for the broader/ecumenical/secular culture?
Erlandson: The broader secular culture has deconstructed marriage to such an extent that I am not sure it will actually wade into this document to understand what the Church is saying. Marriage seems to be becoming an expression of romantic longing rather than the bedrock of society.
And here’s what Relevant Radio host Sheila Liaugminas, author of Non-Negotiable: Essential Principles of a Just Society and Humane Culture:
KJL: Why is AmorisLaetitia important?
Sheila LIAUGMINAS: The Church devoted two years of intensive study of and attention to the family in the world today, the joys and challenges, the needs and gifts of families in societies and civilization at this moment in time. They are considerable. Such global focus on family life and struggles, the individual within families and those seeking to start a new family or avoid marriage and family life altogether is, in and of itself, very important, vitally so, in a prevailing culture that (in the Western world especially) has devalued family roles and structures over recent decades at a dramatic rate with dreadful consequences.
That those two years culminated in a document by the pope that immediately captured headlines in the world’s leading elite news outlets, is a testament to the human need for origins, belonging, and the affirmation of this special relationship that transcends other that come after.
KJL: Who is the chief audience?
LIAUGMINAS: Everyone. But as the document states, officially it’s for “Bishops, Priest and Deacons, Consecrated Persons, Christian Married Couples, and All the Lay Faithful.” However, knowing Pope Francis as we do, we can be sure it’s for everyone. And the world certainly needs to see attention focused on families in all circumstances of love and loss, challenge and need, hope and joy.
KJL: Who is it a help to?
LIAUGMINAS:“The Joy of Love” is especially a help to those struggling without love or with a false notion of it, and that seems like a great and growing population in our culture and many other cultures in the world, given what bishops from many continents brought to the synods that produced the material that formed this document.
It’s a help to families embattled by addictions, strife and conflicts in relationships. And to broken families, and those breaking but trying to hold it together.
It’s a help to people who either don’t have a sense of the masculine in the role of father, or the feminine in the role of mother, or the willingness to affirm either in the current culture of gender ideology, confusion and what’s commonly called ‘political correctness’. Pope Francis isn’t concerned about what’s politically correct, and he writes clearly and boldly of fatherhood and the ‘grave effects’ the absence of the father has on family life and society as a whole. And of ‘the dignity and rights of women’.
He writes about gender differences and ideologies that blur them and “sunder what are inseparable aspects of reality”. Few other public voices, especially leaders, are talking in such clear terms.
KJL: What’s the challenge?
LIAUGMINAS: Pope Francis poses it as “a mosaic made of up many different realities, with all their joys, hopes and problems. The situations that concern us are challenges.” In some, it’s verbal and physical abuse, he says. In others, it’s something as foreign as polygamy, arranged marriages, and the very Western practice of cohabitation of couples. Drug and alcohol addiction, pornography, gambling, violence and hatred, all mentioned as “scourges of our time.” all “causing immense suffering and even breakup for many families”.
Then there’s the “breakdown in families torn apart, the young uprooted, the elderly abandoned.” And “young adults confused and unsupported.” Which “breeds new forms of social aggression.”
So, what challenges does Pope Francis not cover in this document, is what a good, slow, careful reading of the text can lead one to wonder.
KJL: What’s the worry?
LIAUGMINAS: Erosion of nothing less than the continuation of civilization, the future of marriage and raising intact families with multi-generational bonds to raise healthy families who will pass on heritage, faith, citizenship, roles in the family and in the world, and responsibilities to others in the world.
KJL: How to approach it most responsibly?
LIAUGMINAS: It’s not a difficult program Francis puts forward. He says what’s needed is “…to offer a word of truth and hope.” To offer “what is most beautiful, most excellent, most appealing, and at the same time what is most necessary.”
KJL: What does it mean for the broader/ecumenical/secular culture?
Liaugminas: The world needs the witness to love, tenderness, compassion, and mercy that the Church offers, especially through the reintroduction of marriage as covenant and sacrament, self-sacrifice that leads to well-formed and supported families. That’s where, he says, we learn “endurance and the joy of work, fraternal love, generous – even repeated – forgiveness, divine worship and the offering of one’s life.”
In his rather lengthy reflection on the meaning of “the lyrical passage of St. Paul” so well known in wedding ceremonies, starting “Love is patient, love is kind…” Francis does an extensive discourse on each part of that passage, directed at the conditions of our time. Living that out means giving the world hope, love, and reigniting faith in humanity that a cynical world has been losing, but never lost.
Later, Francis cites a powerful lesson by Martin Luther King Jr. about seeing the image of God in the face of a nation that hates you, in a race that hates you, in every person even if they hate you. “And when you come to the point that you look in the face of every man and see deep down within him what religion calls ‘the image of God’, you begin to love him in spite of [everything].
“Somebody must have religion enough and morality enough to cut it off and inject within the very structure of the universe that strong and powerful element of love.”
Then Francis adds: “The Christian ideal, especially in families, is the love that never gives up.”
That can change the world.
And C. C. Pecknold, professor of theology at the Catholic University of America:
KJL: Why is “The Joy of Love” important?
Pecknold: It’s important because here the pope uses an instrument of authoritative or magisterial teaching to counsel Catholic bishops, priests, those in consecrated life, and all the lay faithful on joys and challenges of love in the family.
KJL: Who is the chief audience?
PECKNOLD: The chief audience is the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics. Of course that makes it interesting to the whole world, and Pope Francis is certainly aware that non-Catholics also have an interest in the Church’s teaching.
KJL: Who is it a help to?
PECKNOLD: It’s mainly a help to young people, encouraging them to marry and have families, and also to parents to whom he gives much practical advice against helicopter parenting, and for building up children for growth in the virtues. He tells families to get off their cell phones and talk to each other, eat dinner together, pray together.
KJL: What’s the challenge?
PECKNOLD: The challenge of this Apostolic Exhortation is at its margins, and at those places where the pope is dealing with difficult cases. Aristotle says that hard cases make bad laws, and Francis is certainly aware of this. He isn’t trying to remake the Church’s law, but he doesn’t want to turn away from the hard cases either. And here his counsel does not follow the Kasper proposal, but neither does it exclude the leeway of discernment that the German circle of the last Synod advocated for local bishops as long as their local discernments about the proper reception of the Eucharist don’t contradict the Church’s teaching or give the impression of a double standard.
KJL: What’s the worry?
PECKNOLD: The worry is that his counsel of local discernment and personal consultation between priests, the local bishop, and those in difficult or ‘irregular’ situations will indeed contradict the Church’s teaching, create double standards and cause confusion among the lay faithful. If that happens then clarifications will be forthcoming from this pope or the next.
KJL: How to approach it most responsibly?
PECKNOLD: There’s a long-standing principle of biblical interpretation to interpret the ambiguous by way of the clear. That principle holds for all papal teaching as well, where we must understand that it is never ambiguous or even, God forbid, erroneous points that ever enter into the ordinary magisterium which guards the sacred deposit of faith. That’s how to approach this Apostolic Exhortation as well.
KJL: What does it mean for the broader/ecumenical/secular culture?
PECKNOLD: The broader culture yearns for the transcendent standard that they also rail against. Here is a non-threatening pope who points them to the transcendent standard of God’s dream for marriage and the family, and the Church’s laws can be seen as expressions of this dream of happiness, rather than some coercive set of principles.
Mary-Rose Verret, co-founder of Witness to Love, a marriage mentoring program (and author of a book by that name):
KJL: Why is Amoris Laetitia important?
Mary-Rose Verret:“The Joy of Love” is an important reminder of the relevance of the truth of the family and the real meaning of love and married life in today’s world. It is a beautiful balance of church teaching, encouragement, practical suggestions, and pastoral concerns. With the years and sheer number of work involved in the senates these past few years it is very important to have clarity and a final summary moving forward. This apostolic exhortation is the beginning of a new way of looking at marriage and marriage preparation in the church.
KJL: Who is the chief audience?
VERRET: This apostolic exhortation is for a wide variety of people. Certain chapters are geared towards married couples, engaged couples, those who work in ministry, and clergy specifically. My particular favorite is Chapter 4. It is a beautiful source of practical and spiritual encouragement for couples. It includes a reflection on 1Corinthians and all the qualities of love.
KJL: Who is it a help to?
VERRET: There is something in the joy of love for everyone. There are sections that discuss abusive relationships, infertility, old age, struggling marriages, young adults, children, the engaged, happily married couples, flourishing families, broken families… I can think of no one that would be outside of the audience that this document is intended for.
Specifically I do think that this document will help those preparing couples for marriage and it will embolden them to try new things. Marriage preparation as we know it is ultimately not meeting the needs of today’s couples. I believe in this document the Pope Francis pushes us to find creative ways of ministering to couples before and after the wedding day. He discusses “marriage missionaries,” mentors, those who help couples to understand the gift and the challenge of that marriage is and to walk with them and accompany them.
KJL: What’s the challenge?
VERRET: I think it’s greatest challenges are its length, its breadth and its depth. There were so many areas of concern that needed to be covered as well as beautiful church teaching that needed to be highlighted that there is truly no way in my opinion to have anything shorter. The good news is is that the chapters are pretty evenly divided areas of concern and one could read through and find the section specificall intended for them.
KJL: What’s the worry?
VERRET: My worry is that given the length of the document that people will be intimidated by it.
KJL: How to approach it most responsibly?
VERRET: The most responsible approach would be to read the chapters specifically intended for you if that is all the time you have. But if you have all the time in the world start at the very beginning because it’s a very good place to start.
KJL: What does it mean for the broader/ecumenical/secular culture?
VERRET: For the broader culture I believe that even though some may try to spin this document as “a muddying of the waters “with regards to church teaching, there is no change. Ultimately if we can get a society talking about marriage and family life from a Catholic perspective we have done something good.
Writer, Radio Host, Theologian, Marriage Innovator: Pope Francis, Joy of Love