“Save us, Lord, we are perishing!” (Mt 8:25)
Several serious studies by prominent members of the Society of St. Pius X denounce the Apostolic Exhortation, The Joy of Love.
Dear Friends and Benefactors,
With a few weeks enabling us to step back and analyze the scandalous exhortation of Pope Francis, we now have at our disposal especially at www.dici.org , the official news website of the Society of St Pius X, several serious studies by prominent members of our Society. I would like to quote some excerpts of these and encourage you to read each text.
Bishop Fellay: the boat is sinking!
Two days after the promulgation of this lengthy text (260 pages), our superior general denounced it in his sermon before 4,000 pilgrims at the pilgrimage of Notre-Dame-du-Puy-en Velay (France)
“Mixing joy with tears. Allow me to allude to a current event, a very recent event: an Apostolic Exhortation entitled The Joy of Love, which makes us weep. This Exhortation is the summary of the two Synods on marriage. It is very long, it contains many things that are correct and beautiful, but after building what I was about to call a fine building, a beautiful boat, the Supreme Pontiff cut a hole into the hull of the boat, beneath the flotation line, and you all know what happens then. What difference does it make that the hole was made with every possible precaution? What difference does it make that the hole is very small? The boat is sinking.
Our Lord Himself said not to change one iota: “one jot or one tittle shall not pass of the law” (Mt 5:17-20). When God speaks, these words allow no exception. When He commands, God has an infinite wisdom which has foreseen all cases; there is no exception to God’s law. And now suddenly they pretend that this law about marriage is upheld by saying that marriage is indissoluble—they keep this statement, they say it—but afterward they say that there can nevertheless be exceptions along these lines: so-called “remarried” divorced persons, in that state, while living in sin, could be in a state of grace and therefore can go to Communion. That is extremely serious. I think that we do not sufficiently appreciate the gravity of what has just been said. What difference does it make that these are very small exceptions in a corner? That is how they brought about Communion in the hand. And as I told you, small holes in a boat are enough. The boat is sinking! ”
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Fr. Mathias Gaudron : a triumph of subjectivism”
“(W)ith Amoris Laetitia, (the pope) has opened a breach that in effect calls into question all Catholic moral teaching. In Chapter 8 (Accompanying, Discerning and Integrating Weakness), Pope Francis opens the door to abandoning Catholic morality under the aegis of papal teaching. He not only repeats the dubious statements of the last Synod of Bishops to the effect that the divorced-and-remarried are “living members of the Church,” upon whom the Holy Ghost pours out “gifts and talents for the good of all” (¶299), but he goes even further. It is true that Catholic doctrine about marriage and all previous norms continue to remain in force, and therefore persons living in concubinage or with a civil union only are by the very fact forbidden to receive absolution or Holy Communion. But…there are exceptions! (…)
Above all, though, Chapter 8 is what makes Amoris Laetitia one of the most deplorable papal documents in recent Church history.
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Fr. Jean-Michel Gleize: a new morality, an occasion of spiritual ruin for the entire Church
“19. Christian marriage may perhaps remain the ideal in the eyes of the Church, but what counts is the idea that each individual conscience has of the ideal. What is good is not what is objectively good, but what the conscience considers to be good. Even if one supposes that the consciences of the married are more enlightened than those of others and thus conceive a higher ideal, it is still the conscience that determines the ideal. The difference between the ideal of the married and the ideal of others is a difference of degree, a difference of greater or lesser fullness. Now this is total subjectivism and therefore total relativism. Relativism comes from subjectivism: situation ethics, which is moral relativism, is the result of morality founded on conscience. And such is the new morality of Pope Francis.
20. One of its possible consequences was widely anticipated. Here it is at last: “I am in agreement with the many Synod Fathers who observed that ‘the baptized who are divorced and civilly remarried need to be more fully integrated into Christian communities in the variety of ways possible, while avoiding any occasion of scandal’ ” (¶299).
21. “In the variety of ways possible:” why not, then, in admitting them to Eucharistic Communion? If it is no longer possible to say that the divorced and remarried are living in a state of mortal sin (¶301), why should the fact of giving them Communion be an occasion for scandal? And at that point, why refuse them Holy Communion? The Exhortation Amoris Laetitia is clearly moving in this direction. In so doing, it represents an occasion of spiritual ruin for the entire Church; or in other words, what theologians call a “scandal” in the full sense of the term. And this scandal is the consequence of a practical relativization of the truth of the Catholic Faith concerning the necessity and indissolubility of the sacramental union of marriage.”
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Fr. Alain Lorans : the destruction of doctrine by the pastoral teaching
“In Italy, Msgr. Alberto Carrara, editor of the diocesan bulletin of Bergamo, wrote on April 14: “Divorced and separated persons who have remarried can be readmitted to the sacraments. This is one of the innovations of Amoris Laetitia, the apostolic exhortation Pope Francis wrote following the two synods on the family.”
Theological and canonical critics of this exhortation may be legion; its pastoral applications are above such analyses, considered antiquated. Only one idea is retained: what was formerly forbidden by doctrinal rigidity is now permitted by pastoral mercy.
It must be remembered that since the Council, doctrine is not directly contradicted, nor openly attacked: it is simply circumvented, as one gets around an obstacle, in the name of pastoral practice. Opposing the traditional doctrine to conciliar praxis, attempting to argue on theological grounds against a practice that follows the mentality of the moment and adapts to the customs of the day, is as useless as trying to grasp a slippery bar of soap with scholarly concepts. The conciliar praxis can only be responded to with the traditional discipline, founded on bimillenial doctrine—a discipline that is not an opposed praxis, but rather the opposite of conciliar praxis.”
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See also, Fr. Christian Thouvenot: After the Synod: Indissolubility called into question
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2017, Fatima’s hundred anniversary is at the door. The devil is frantic. But we know that She will crush his head and her Immaculate heart will triumph. Cheers to all her soldiers during this apocalyptic battle! Let us grab our rosary and recite it faithfully every day.
Yours truly in Jesus, Mary Immaculate,
Fr. Daniel Couture
District Superior
