The necessary charity of pontifical clarity
- pastorcorner
- May 17, 2023
- 4 min read
The necessary charity of pontifical clarity
We can easily interpret papal ambiguity as permission to reject received teaching, accept contrary opinions, and even believe or commit evil.
Pope Francis speaking at the general audience at the Vatican, Dec. 21, 2022. / Vatican Media
The refusal of Pope Francis to directly respond to the dubia (questions) by four cardinals asking him to clarify the ambiguities of Amoris Laetitia—the Apostolic Exhortation on love, marriage, and the family—unleashed a wave of disappointment, distrust, and unjust hyper-criticism. That’s unfortunate.
During an April 2023, meeting of priests in Budapest, an unnamed Jesuit asked Pope Francis, “I would like to offer the compassion and love that the Gospel asks for everyone, even the enemy. But how is this possible?” The response of the Holy Father sparked the scorn of several conservative websites. He explained:
§ Sexual abuse scars victims in ways that stay with them their entire lives.
§ “The abuser is to be condemned, indeed, but as a brother. Condemning him is to be understood as an act of charity. There is a logic, a form of loving the enemy that is also expressed in this way. And it is not easy to understand and to live out.”
§ “The abuser is an enemy. Each of us feels this because we empathize with the suffering of the abused.”
§ “Even talking to the abuser involves revulsion; it’s not easy. But they are God’s children too. They deserve punishment, but they also deserve pastoral care. How do we provide that? No, it is not easy.”
Despite widespread concern, there isn’t much of a problem with the Pope’s off-the-cuff remarks on the tension between justice and mercy. His basic points are rooted in traditional Catholic teaching. A more thorough response would have stressed the gravity of the sin before God, the need to seek forgiveness, and the duty of reparation—as summarized in the Act of Contrition.
God created us in His image and likeness (cf. Gen. 1:27). Jesus teaches us to forgive our enemies. “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Mt. 5:43-44). Jesus also teaches just punishment. “If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and throw it away; it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell…” (Mt. 5:27-30).
Unfortunately, the Pope’s previous comments on capital punishment and hell undermine confidence in his words and stimulate hyper-critical reactions among many Catholics.
In 2018, Pope Francis ordered a change in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, in which he vaguely termed the death penalty “inadmissible.” In 2020 encyclical Fratelli Tutti, the Pope wrote:
The firm rejection of the death penalty shows to what extent it is possible to recognize the inalienable dignity of every human being and to accept that he or she has a place in this universe. If I do not deny that dignity to the worst of criminals, I will not deny it to anyone.
Circumstantial recourse to the death penalty is always open to debate. But Tradition and the Scriptures permit the death penalty as an unpleasant moral necessity. The Roman Catechism teaches:
Another kind of lawful slaying belongs to the civil authorities, to whom is entrusted power of life and death, by the legal and judicious exercise of which they punish the guilty and protect the innocent. The just use of this power, far from involving the crime of murder, is an act of paramount obedience to this Commandment which prohibits murder. The end of the Commandment is the preservation and security of human life.
The principle of non-contradiction requires that Tradition, Scriptures, and Magisterium agree.
In 2018, Pope Francis appeared to deny the existence of hell in an interview with atheist journalist Eugenio Scalfari. The Catholic News Agency downplayed the report as a likely misunderstanding by Scalfari. The Vatican “clarification” was unsatisfactory and merely explained, “the literal words pronounced by the pope are not quoted.”
Early in 2023, Pope Francis suggested that hell is a state of mind, not a place. “Hell is a state, it is a state of the heart, of the soul, of a position towards life, towards values, towards family, towards everything. There are people who live in hell because they ask for it, there are others who don’t, who suffer. And who goes to hell, to that hell, to that state? It is already living from here.”
The Holy Father’s theological speculation has metaphorical merit (comparable to the Twilight Zone’s episode, “A Nice Place to Visit”) but falls short of affirming the disturbing teachings of Jesus: “Then he will say to those at his left hand, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels’” (Mt. 25:4).
In contrast to these imprecisions, Pope Francis’ predecessor Pope Benedict spoke of hell and its existence with spontaneous clarity during a 2008 Q&A with priests.
§ The Pope [Benedict] called heaven, hell, and purgatory “fundamental themes that unfortunately appear rarely in our preaching.”
§ “When one is not aware of the judgment of God, when one does not recognize the possibility of hell, of the radical and definitive failure of life, then one does not recognize the possibility and necessity for purification.”
§ He noted that ideologies, such as communism, which prided themselves on worldly action that would correct all injustices, promising “to build the world the way it was supposed to have been,” instead destroyed the world.
§ “Today we are used to thinking: What is sin? God is great, he understands us, so sin does not count, in the end, God will be good toward all.”
§ “…there is justice, and there is real blame. Those who have destroyed man and the earth cannot sit immediately at the table of God, together with their victims.”
Clarity is charity because it serves the truth. We can easily interpret papal ambiguity as permission to reject received teaching, accept contrary opinions, and even believe or commit evil. Needless ambiguity does not serve the truth.
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