Amoris Laetitia

diversified situations of life. Later on, Pope St Pius X, in his Catechism recalled that mortal sin requires a grave matter, but also full awareness and deliberate consent. Interestingly enough, in an article in German in 1972 about the indissolubility of marriage, the future Pope Benedict XVI, Josef Ratzinger wrote about the possibility for the admission to Communion of certain categories of persons who live in a second marriage, when certain conditions are fulfilled. We all know that, as prefect of the congregation for the doctrine of faith and later as pope, his emphasis was on the objective aspects of moral theology, to counteract today’s widespread moral relativism. Yet, objective morality cannot be separated from its correlative subjective aspects. In fact, the complex situation of wounded families in today’s world poses a serious pastoral problem, which Amoris Laetitia intends to address, through a down to earth application of the teachings of the Gospel and of the most recent ecumenical council, Vatican II.

Within this context, the novelty of Amoris laetitia – so to speak, because it is all in the Gospel and wherever and whenever the Gospel is earnestly lived – lies in the perspective of further integrating such faithful in the life of the Church. Only persons detached from reality would question the opportunity of such a line of action, considering the notable proportion of failed marriages and problematic family situations, with all the difficulties that such a wide phenomenon entails. possible that an objective situation of sin may not be subjectively culpable, or fully such that in such a way one can be living in God’s grace and grow in it, while receiving the Church’s help to this end. In certain cases, this can include the help of the sacraments.

In their Criteria, also published on the Vatican’s house journal L’Osservatore romano, the Maltese Bishops follow the ancient theology of conscience restored by Amoris laetitia and spell out a whole series of ‘ifs’. If, at the end of the discernment, if it has been undertaken with humility, discretion and love for the Church and her teaching, if a divorced and civilly remarried person has sincerely searched for God’s will with an informed conscience, and has a desire to respond more perfectly to it; and if, at the end of all that, they are at peace with God then they cannot be barred from confession and holy communion.

On a final note, no human discourse can say everything about any topic and leave nothing else to be discussed. This applies, in our case, to the subjective aspect of morality, with the paramount role of conscience in moral decision making, which is the other facet of the coin that is its corresponding objective dimension. The treatment of pastoral action with persons in problematic marital and family situations by Pope Francis fits within the line of the hermeneutic of continuity and deepening and not of discontinuity and rupture of the teaching and ortopraxis of the Church.