THE
P RTAL
May 2016
Page 24
Amoris Laetitia
Geoffrey Kirk has been looking into this
document and asks . . . How magisterial
can you get? Or not, as the case may be
In
an astonishing reaction to Amoris
Laetitia (hereinafter ) the doyen of
Vatican conservatives, Raymond, Cardinal
Burke has claimed that is not a document
of the Roman Magisterium, but simply a few personal reflections by Pope
Francis on the proceedings of the two extraordinary synods on the family. A
personal reflection of 58.000 words in the course of which the author quotes
himself in his own footnotes might seem a trifle portentous – but no matter.
Burke’s view may simply be a clever ploy to
undermine the ‘Francis Revolution’ from within. But
it leaves members of the Ordinariate with a ticklish
problem. When we entered the Catholic Church we
solemnly pledged ourselves to uphold ‘all that the
Catholic Church holds and teaches’. And in case we were
in any doubt about what that meant, Anglicanorum
Coetibus defined it for us as acceptance of the Catechism
of the Catholic Church, .
So the question for us has to be: does anything
in contradict , or any other major
document of the Magisterium (Familiaris Consortio,
for example)? Or what precisely was it that we signed
up to?
Wise men, it seems, find it hard to say. But
when a principal author of (the estimable
Christoph Schönborn, Cardinal Archbishop of
Vienna) starts to talk about ‘development of doctrine’
– and misrepresents our own John Henry (An Essay on
the Development of Doctrine, 1845) into the bargain there is reason for anxiety.
Schönborn was trying to assure us that there has
been no change in doctrine, but that the ‘development’
lies in the pastoral application of traditional teaching.
Ex-Anglicans can be forgiven if they detect the faintest
smell of rodent.
Alteration by atrophy is an old Anglican ploy. Because
it is not easy – or even possible – to get the consensus
required for a change of doctrine, pastoral decisions
about its application are devolved to the lowest possible
level (‘subsidiarity’) – the parish priest in the first
instance, eventually the individual conscience. In the
absence of centralised institutional enforcement, the
exception becomes the rule, and no decision about
change is, in the end, needed. In effect, it has become
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redundant. A generation later, most
people will simply have forgotten that there ever was
a rule; and those who do remember it will be