THE language and style of Amoris Laetitia (Joy Of Love) is simple and engaging. The Pope tries to speak about human experiences in a warm, concrete and compassionate way. This is not always the case with Church documents which tend to have divided relationships into ‘regular’ and ‘irregular’ according to an arbitrary law or discipline. This clarity in relations is never the reality. There is always something of a ‘patchwork’ and, the use of this language, has excluded families and people from experiencing the understanding and mercy of the Church.
This Letter or Exhortation is guided by a different spirit, namely, “it is a matter of reaching out to everyone”, in accord with the gospel. “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone.” (John 8:7) We are all journeying, regardless of our marriage and family situation. Even a marriage that is ‘going well’ is journeying. It must still learn, grow and flourish. It knows sin and failure and needs reconciliation and new beginnings even in old age. (AL 297)
Pope Francis has managed to speak about the situation without categorising and cataloguing relationships. He exercises mercy and tries to see things through the “eyes of God” who condemns no one and reaches out to all.
The language is important and not just superficial. Between the two Synod events, October 2014 and October 2015, one could already detect a change of tone which became richer in esteem towards the individual who had ceased to be a ‘case’ or ‘category’.
This spirit of ‘inclusion’ clearly worries some people. They suspect, wrongly in my view, that relativism is at work. They miss the rigour of Church teaching and detect laxity.
However, Pope Francis leaves no doubt regarding his intentions. “As Christians, we can hardly stop advocating marriage simply to avoid countering contemporary sensibilities, or out of a desire to be fashionable or a sense of helplessness in the face of human and moral failings. We would be depriving the world of values that we can and must offer. It is true that there is no sense in simply decrying present-day evils, as if this could change things. Nor is it helpful to try to impose rules by sheer authority. What we need is a more responsible and generous effort to present the reasons and motivations for choosing marriage and the family, and in this way to help men and women better to respond to the grace that God offers them.” (AL 35) ………..(to be continued….)