By Jamie O’Brien and Marco Ceccarelli
The beauty of the family, based on the indissoluble marriage between a man and a woman, and the fragile realities and challenges facing married couples today, was the focus of Pope Francis’ 2016 Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia, The Joy of Love, released in April.
At the heart of the document, said Perth Archbishop Timothy Costelloe upon its release, is the idea that, while the Church must not abandon or water down the ideals of Christian life, its role should be to accompany people on their faith journey, supporting and encouraging them while never condemning those who find it difficult to do so.
The 263-page Exhortation details the Holy Father’s conclusions, following the two synods dedicated to the theme of the family: the Extraordinary Synod of 2014 and the Ordinary Synod of 2015.
Archbishop Costelloe described the Exhortation as a remarkable gift for the Catholic Church throughout the world.
“The Exhortation is explicitly addressed to the whole Catholic community, but will be of great interest to many other people as well, because it speaks of an emotion each one of us, as human beings, experiences,” he said.
The Exhortation is made up of nine chapters, subdivided into 325 paragraphs, with 391 notes and the final prayer to the Holy Family.
Archbishop Costelloe explained that the Pope has not changed any Catholic teaching.
“What he has done is call for a process of careful and faithful discernment of each particular situation, in the light of the Church’s teachings,” Archbishop Costelloe said.
“A key principle underpinning the Pope’s thought would appear to be the idea that, while it is never the role of the Church to abandon, side-step or water down the high ideals of the Christian life, it is the role of the Church to accompany people on their journey of faith, supporting and encouraging them as they strive to live up to those ideals, while never condemning people who find it difficult to do so,” he said.
A second key principle, continued the Archbishop, is closely aligned to the first, and appears to stress the distinction between objective morality and subjective responsibility.
“While the demands of the Gospel and the teachings of the Church may be clear, the capacity of people to understand, accept and embrace these may be limited by a variety of complex factors.
“In such situations, which are very common today, the Church is called to accompany people on what may be a long journey of discernment, as they seek to respond to God’s will for them.
“The Pope writes that ‘without detracting from the evangelical ideal, there is a need to accompany with mercy and patience, the eventual stages of personal growth as these progressively appear’,” (par 308).
Speaking on the discernment of people living in what the Church has termed, ‘irregular situations’, and how they should be incorporated into the life of their local Catholic community, the Archbishop said that the Pope is clear that this is an urgent task.
“Chapter eight of the Exhortation offers a variety of principles on which to ground any decisions.
“The blind application of objective rules, without taking into account the individual circumstances of people’s concrete situations, does not, in the Pope’s mind, reflect the teachings and practice of Jesus.”
The Archbishop emphasised that the document must be seen as a unified whole.
“It would be a mistake to lift certain phrases or paragraphs out of their context and build an interpretation of the whole document on a few isolated parts.
“At the same time, the Exhortation itself needs to be placed in the wider context of the Pope’s insistence that ‘the name of God is Mercy’ and that ‘Jesus is the face of the Father’s mercy’.
“Amoris Laetitia is an urgent appeal to the whole Church to place divine mercy at the heart of its teaching and pastoral practice in relation to the family today.”
The Archbishop concluded his preliminary reflections by commenting that “as a Church, we should be enormously grateful to Pope Francis”.
“In Amoris Laetitia, he is calling us all to a comprehensive fidelity to our faith.
From pages 6 and 7 from Issue 5: ‘Christmas 2016 – Looking forward to the Birth of Christ & Reflecting back on the Year 2016?’ of The Record Magazine