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August 16, 2017
PASTORAL SOLIDARITY FUND FOR THE CHURCH IN AFRICA
"Responding to the call of the Church in Africa, as pastors in the United States we recognize the mutual bonds of solidarity that unite us-bonds that have been forged through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We stand in solidarity with the Church and the peoples of Africa, to recognize and support their courageous commitment to peace, justice, and reconciliation . As we do this, we are reminded of the words of the Holy Father: "Africa is not destined for death, but for life!" United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, A Call to Solidarity with Africa (2001).
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
To unveil/expose the background that informed the Apostolic Exhortation (Amoris Laetitia)
To attempt a synopsis of or take a walk-through Amoris Laetitia
BACKGROUND
NAME
Amoris Laetitia – (literally, the JOY OF LOVE)
It is the Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation On Love in the Family
(NB: An Apostolic Exhortation is usually published to encourage the faithful to live in a particular manner – greater conversion to Christ – or to do something of virtue. An exhortation does not have the ability to change the Church’s teaching … it is of ordinary teaching authority. It is different from a Papal Bull, Apostolic Constitution, Motu Proprio, Encyclical, Apostolic Letter, Papal Addresses, Papal Rescripts, etc.)
FRUIT OF TWO SYNODS: 1st Synod
5th – 19th Oct, 2014 - Extraordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops (III), to discuss the “ The Pastoral Challenges to the Family in the Context of Evangelization”
Purpose: "to define the 'status quaestionis' (current situation) and to collect the bishops' experiences and proposals in proclaiming and living the Gospel of the Family in a credible manner." The Instrumentum Laboris said that the Synod of Bishops "will thoroughly examine and analyze the information, testimonies and recommendations received from the particular Churches in order to respond to the new challenges of the family."
FRUIT OF TWO SYNODS: 2nd Synod
4th – 25th October, 2015 - Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops (XIV) (this Synod marked the 50th Anniversary of the Synod of Bishops) on the theme: “The vocation and mission of the family in the Church and in the contemporary world”
Purpose: To continue the work of the III Extraordinary General Assembly by "reflecting further on the points discussed so as to formulate appropriate pastoral guidelines" for the pastoral care of the person and the family
OTHER SOURCES
Apart from the Final Reports, documents and teachings of Predecessors of Pope Francis;
Pope Francis’ own numerous Catecheses on the family;
Previous magisterial documents;
Contributions of various Episcopal Conferences around the world (Kenya, Australia, Argentina...);citations of significant figures such as Martin Luther King and Erich Fromm (a German Social Psychologist) and
Quotes from the film Babette’s Feast to illustrate the concept of gratuity
According to the Final Report on the 2015 Synod to Pope Francis, a 3-fold approach characterized the dialogue and reflections during the Synods:
Assessing the complex reality of the family today from the vantage point of faith, indicating both its lights and shadows.
According to the Final Report on the 2015 Synod to Pope Francis, a 3-fold approach characterized the dialogue and reflections during the Synods: looking to Christ so as to contemplate once more, with renewed freshness and enthusiasm, what Christ has revealed and is handed down in the faith of the Church
According to the Final Report on the 2015 Synod to Pope Francis, a 3-fold approach characterized the dialogue and reflections during the Synods: and seeking the guidance of the Holy Spirit so as to discern ways in which the Church and society can renew their commitment to the family, founded on marriage between a man and a woman
RELEASE OF AMORIS LAETITIA
The document was signed by Pope Francis on 19th March, 2016 on the Solemnity of St. Joseph, Husband of Mary
It was released on 8th April, 2016 at a Vatican news conference with Cardinal Lorenzo Baldisseri, General Secretary of the Synod of Bishops, Austrian Cardinal Christoph Schonborn of Vienna and Giuseppina and Francesco Miano, a married couple who participated in both the 2014 and 2015 synods of bishops on the family.
CONTENT OF DOCUMENT – A RUNDOWN
STRUCTURE
Amoris Laetitia has 325 paragraphs
Distributed over 9 chapters with an Introduction (paragraphs 1-7)
Chapter 1 - In the Light of the Word (paragraphs 8-30)
Chapter 2 - The Experiences and Challenges of Families (paragraphs 31-57)
Chapter 3 - Looking to Jesus: The Vocation of the Family (paragraphs 58-88)
Chapter 4 - Love in Marriage (paragraphs 89-164)
Chapter 5 - Love made Fruitful (paragraphs 165-198)
Chapter 6 - Some Pastoral Perspectives (paragraphs 199-258)
Chapter 7 - Towards a Better Education of Children (paragraphs 258-290)
Chapter 8 - Accompanying, Discerning and Integrating Weakness
(paragraphs 291-312)
Chapter 9 - The Spirituality of Marriage and the Family (paragraphs 313-325)
INTRODUCTION
Opens with what is dearest to the Church (greatest motivation for this enterprise:
“The Joy of Love experienced by families is also the joy of the Church” (AL #1)
States what the Synod sought to do:
“The Synod process allowed for an examination of the situation of families in today’s world, and thus for a broader vision and a renewed awareness of the importance of marriage and the family.” (AL #2)
Two points of encouragement from Pope Francis:
“I would make it clear that not all discussions of doctrinal, moral or pastoral issues need to be settled by interventions of the magisterium” … cultures are diverse and every general principle needs to be inculturated, if it is to be respected and applied… (AL #3)
I recommend, not a rushed reading of this text, but a patient and careful reading of each part, so that all may feel called to love and cherish family life… (AL #7)
Notes a division of opinion during the Synod
"The debates carried on in the media, in certain publications and even among the Church’s ministers, range from an immoderate desire for total change without sufficient reflection or grounding, to an attitude that would solve everything by applying general rules or deriving undue conclusions from particular theological considerations." (AL #2)
Pope Francis did not propose to resolve those differences by imposing unity:
"Unity of teaching and practice is certainly necessary in the Church, but this does not preclude various ways of interpreting some aspects of that teaching or drawing certain consequences from it. This will always be the case as the Spirit guides us towards the entire truth..." (AL #3)
Links Exhortation to Jubilee Year of Mercy in 2 ways (AL #5)
First, the Exhortation represents an invitation to Christian families to value the gifts of marriage and the family, and to persevere in a love strengthened by the virtues of generosity, commitment, fidelity and patience
Second, the Exhortation seeks to encourage everyone to be a sign of mercy and closeness wherever family life remains imperfect or lacks peace and joy.
CHAPTER 1: IN THE LIGHT OF THE WORD
Contains biblical reflections on key themes related to the topic of marriage and family life with Psalm 128 as main focus;
i. You and your wife (AL 9-13)
ii. Your children are as the shoots of an olive tree (AL 14-18)
iii. A path of suffering and blood (AL 19-22)
iv. The work of your hands (AL 23-26)
v. The tenderness of an embrace (AL 27-30)
An important note:
The Bible “is full of families, births, love stories and family crises” (AL 8). This impels us to meditate on how the family is not an abstract ideal but rather like a practical “trade” (AL 16), which is carried out with tenderness (AL 28), but which has also been confronted with sin from the beginning, when the relationship of love turned into domination (cf. AL 19). Hence, the Word of God “is not a series of abstract ideas but rather a source of comfort and companionship for every family that experiences difficulties or suffering. For it shows them the goal of their journey...” (AL 22).
CHAPTER 2: THE EXPERIENCES AND CHALLENGES OF FAMILIES
Considers the contemporary realities of family life, acknowledging the unique challenges faced in the present time.
“We should do well to focus on concrete realities of marriages and families and allow the Holy Spirit to guide us in our reflections” Conversely, if we fail to listen to reality, we cannot understand the needs of the present or the movements of the Spirit
Some of the Challenges noted:
Extreme individualism which weakens family bonds and ends up considering each member of the family as an isolated unit
Freedom of Choice that lacks noble goals or personal discipline; and degenerates into an inability to give oneself generously to others
Migration and its effect on populations and the ideological denial of differences between the sexes (AL 56);
CHAPTER 3: LOOKING TO JESUS: THE VOCATION OF THE FAMILY
This chapter is dedicated to some essential elements of the Church’s teaching on marriage and the family.
This chapter is important because it presents the vocation of the family according to the Gospel and as affirmed by the Church over time.
Above all, it stresses the themes of
i. indissolubility,
ii. The sacramental nature of marriage,
iii. The role of marriage in the transmission of life and
iv. The education of children.
The Chapter also touches on:
Imperfect Situations: Made up of faithful who are living together, or are only married civilly (in our context, sometimes customarily or by mutual agreement), or are divorced and remarried and therefore participate in the Church’s life in an imperfect manner. The Church…
i. seeks the grace of conversion for them
ii. Encourages them to do good; to take loving care of each other
iii. To serve the community in which they live and work
The Chapter also touches on:
The CARE to be exercised by Pastors towards such Wounded Families: Careful discernment of situations
“While clearly stating the Church’s teaching, pastors are to avoid judgements that do not take into account the complexity of various situations, and they are to be attentive, by necessity, to how people experience and endure distress because of their condition’ (AL 79).
CHAPTER 4: LOVE IN MARRIAGE
To illumine Love in Marriage, the Holy Father examines, in detail, each phrase of St. Paul‘s Hymn of Love in 1 Corinthians 13:4-7
This section is truly a painstaking, focused, inspired and poetic exegesis of the Pauline text. It is a collection of brief passages carefully and tenderly describing human love in absolutely concrete terms.
Note a little digression yet quite instructive:
In discussing ‘Growing in Conjugal Love’ (AL 120-141), the Holy Father refuses to judge it against ideal standards:
“There is no need to lay upon two limited persons the tremendous burden of having to reproduce perfectly the union existing between Christ and His Church, for marriage as a sign entails ‘a dynamic process…, one which advances gradually with the progressive integration of the gifts of God’” (AL 122).
On the other hand,
The Pope forcefully stresses the fact that conjugal love by its very nature defines the partners in a richly encompassing and lasting union (AL 123), precisely within that “mixture of enjoyment and struggles, tensions and repose, pain and relief, satisfactions and longings, annoyances and pleasures” (AL 126) which indeed make up a marriage.
Possible Implication?: Do not expect the success or positive results of married couples at the on-set of their marriage but examine that in their later years… Is it a message of inspiration/perseverance or a point of no return even where a spouse or both lack discretion or where permanence is excluded?
On Transformative Love:
“Longer life spans now mean that close and exclusive relationships must last for four, five or even six decades; consequently, the initial decision has to be frequently renewed” (AL 163).
As physical appearance alters, the loving attraction does not lessen but changes as sexual desire can be transformed over time into the desire for togetherness and mutuality: “There is no guarantee that we will feel the same way all through life. Yet if a couple can come up with a shared and lasting life project, they can love one another and live as one until death do them part, enjoying an enriching intimacy” (AL 163).
CHAPTER 5: LOVE MADE FRUITFUL
This chapter is entirely focused on love’s fruitfulness and procreation.
It speaks in a profoundly spiritual and psychological manner about welcoming new life, about the waiting period of pregnancy, about the love of a mother and a father.
It also speaks of the expanded fruitfulness of adoption, of welcoming the contribution of families to promote a “culture of encounter”, and of family life in a broad sense which includes aunts and uncles, cousins, relatives of relatives, friends.
Amoris Laetitia does not focus on the so-called “nuclear” family” because it is very aware of the family as a wider network of many relationships.
It notes that the spirituality of the sacrament of marriage has a deeply social character (cf. AL 187). And within this social dimension the Pope particularly emphasizes the specific role of the relationship between youth and the elderly, as well as the relationship between brothers and sisters as a training ground for relating with others.
CHAPTER 6: SOME PASTORAL PERSPECTIVES
This chapter treats various pastoral perspectives that are aimed at forming solid and fruitful families according to God’s plan.
It focuses on ministers who will have to accompany couples in the early years of marriage, when in contemporary culture risk of crisis is at its highest.
This discussion transitions naturally into the need to minister to abandoned, separated, or divorced persons, stressing the importance of the recently reformed annulment process.
The Pope also speaks to families with members who have homosexual tendencies. The section concludes with a discussion of death and widowhood.
Some Pastoral Suggestions:
Families should not only be evangelized, they should also evangelize improve the psycho-affective formation of seminarians, and families need to be more involved in formation for ministry
Pastors must strengthen the love of family members, helping them to heal wounds and to work to prevent the spread of this drama of divorce in our times
Regarding families with members with homosexual tendencies, it is necessary to respect them and to refrain from any unjust discrimination and every form of aggression or violence
CHAPTER 7: TOWARDS A BETTER EDUCATION OF CHILDREN
This chapter is dedicated to the education of children: their ethical formation, the learning of discipline which can include punishment, patient realism, sex education, passing on the faith and, more generally, family life as an educational context
Take note that “obsession, however, is not education”. Parents cannot control every situation that a child may experience… “If parents are obsessed with always knowing where their children are and controlling all their movements, they will seek only to dominate space. But this is no way to educate, strengthen and prepare their children to face challenges. What is most important is the ability lovingly to help them grow in freedom, maturity, overall discipline and real autonomy” (AL 260).
The coinage ‘safe sex’ conveys “a negative attitude towards the natural procreative finality of sexuality, as if an eventual child were an enemy to be protected against.
CHAPTER 8: ACCOMPANYING, DISCERNNG AND INTEGRATING WEAKNESS
In this very sensitive chapter is an invitation to mercy and pastoral discernment in situations that do not fully match what the Lord proposes.
3 very important verbs are used: guiding, discerning and integrating, which are fundamental in addressing fragile, complex or irregular situations.
The chapter has sections on the need for gradualness in pastoral care; the importance of discernment; norms and mitigating circumstances in pastoral discernment; and finally what the Pope calls the “logic of pastoral mercy”.
A word to the Wise Pastor…
Avoid judgments which do not take into account the complexity of various situations
Be attentive, by necessity, to how people experience distress because of their condition
Reach out to everyone, of needing to help each person find his or her proper way of participating in the ecclesial community, and thus to experience being touched by an ‘unmerited, unconditional and gratuitous’ mercy
A word to the Wise Pastor…
Integrate more fully into Christian communities, in variety of ways possible, the baptized who are divorced and civilly remarried while avoiding any occasion of scandal…Such persons need to feel not as excommunicated members of the Church, but instead as living members, able to live and grow in the Church
A relationship between rules and discernment:
“It is true that general rules set forth a good which can never be disregarded or neglected, but in their formulation they cannot provide absolutely for all particular situations. At the same time, it must be said that, precisely for that reason, what is part of a practical discernment in particular circumstances cannot be elevated to the level of a rule” (AL 304).
On the Logic of Pastoral Mercy
“To show understanding in the face of exceptional situations never implies dimming the light of the fuller ideal, or proposing less than what Jesus offers to the human being. Today, more important than the pastoral care of failures is the pastoral effort to strengthen marriages and thus to prevent their breakdown” (AL 307).
“At times we find it hard to make room for God’s unconditional love in our pastoral activity. We put so many conditions on mercy that we empty it of its concrete meaning and real significance. That is the worst way of watering down the Gospel” (AL 311).
A strong encouragement to all (this is the spirit-soul of the chapter)…
“I encourage the faithful who find themselves in complicated situations to speak confidently with their pastors or with other lay people whose lives are committed to the Lord. They may not always encounter in them a confirmation of their own ideas or desires, but they will surely receive some light to help them better understand their situation and discover a path to personal growth. I also encourage the Church’s pastors to listen to them with sensitivity and serenity, with a sincere desire to understand their plight and their point of view, in order to help them live better lives and to recognize their proper place in the Church.” (AL 312).
CHAPTER 9: THE SPIRITUALITY OF MARRIAGE AND THE FAMILY
This closing chapter is devoted to marital and family spirituality. Persons called to family life are reassured that this context does not detract from their spiritual growth or potential, and says that this vocation should be seen as their own path to mystical union. It closes by emphasizing the necessity of mercy within the family, explaining that all are called to grow, develop, and mature, helping one another in spite of weaknesses and limitations.
In the final paragraph the Pope affirms: “No family drops down from heaven perfectly formed; families need constantly to grow and mature in the ability to love …All of us are called to keep striving towards something greater than ourselves and our families, and every family must feel this constant impulse. Let us make this journey as families, let us keep walking together. (…) May we never lose heart because of our limitations, or ever stop seeking that fullness of love and communion which God holds out before us” (AL 325).
CONCLUSION – WITH A PRAYER
PRAYER TO THE HOLY FAMILY
[Let us pray together:]
Jesus, Mary and Joseph, in you we contemplate the splendor of true love; to you we turn with trust.
Holy Family of Nazareth, grant that our families too may be places of communion and prayer, authentic schools of the Gospel and small domestic churches.
Holy Family of Nazareth, May families never again experience violence, rejection and division; may all who have been hurt or scandalized find ready comfort and healing.
Holy Family of Nazareth, makes us once more mindful of the sacredness and inviolability of the family, and its beauty in God’s plan.
Jesus, Mary and Joseph,
Graciously hear our prayer.
Amen!
GHANA CATHOLIC BISHOPS’ CONFERENCE
with support from the
UNITED STATES CONFERENCE OF CATHOLIC BISHOPS (USCCB)