THERE is confusion and anxiety about the Pope’s statement in his exhortation Amoris Laetitia (The Joy of Love). In a footnote Francis implicitly extends the possibility of receiving absolution in the Sacrament of Reconciliation and permission to receive Communion to remarried Catholics, under certain circumstances.
The confessional should not be a “torture chamber”, he writes, but “an encounter with the Lords’ mercy; and the Eucharist “is not a prize for the perfect, but a powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak”.
Certain “conditions” must be met, among them “humility, discretion and love for the Church and her teaching, in a sincere search for God’s will and a desire to make a more perfect response to it. Yet the message is that Communion for the remarried may sometimes be allowed.
Why would Pope Francis relegate such an important provision to a mere footnote? Because Amoris Laetitia does not mark a rupture in Church teaching. The “crisis of the family” concerns not much the manifold threats to family life today but also the challenge of responding to those families whose situation does not match what the Church teaches is the ideal. Pope Benedict XVI had earlier spoken of the risk that the Church was being “identified with certain commandments or prohibitions” so that “not even a hint of the true greatness of the faith appears.”
While there is continuity, there is also genuine development. Francis doggedly pursues the implications of the Gospel value of mercy. He saw it as timely, even “providential”, that the document on the family was published during the Year of Mercy. During that year, there were many opportunities to ponder the inexhaustibly rich parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37).
What is the task for the Church now, after a year of struggling? Pope Francis has said: “Today the Church needs to grow in discernment, in the ability to discern”. Discernment, for Francis, is not individualism but a profoundly ecclesial activity with its own time-tested criteria of authenticity. The call is to a greater trust in, and sensitivity to, the promptings of the Holy Spirit.
Francis himself predicted that the process would not be without confusion and uncertainty. In his encyclical, Evangelii Gaudium, he observed: “It is true that this trust in the unseen can cause us to feel disoriented: it is like being plunged into the deep and not knowing what we will find. I myself have frequently experienced this”.
The Church is currently experiencing the disorientation that comes from entering into a more synodal, more Spirit-led way of moving forward. Yet, Francis’ words encourage us to trust in the midst of the uncertainty, since “there is no greater freedom than that of allowing oneself to be guided by the Holy Spirit, renouncing the attempt to plan and control everything to the last detail, and instead letting him enlighten, guide and direct us, leading us wherever he wills”.
Indeed, mercy is the very foundation of the Church’s life. All of her pastoral activity should be caught up in the tenderness which she shows to believers.
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