Amoris Laetitia, Culpability, and Communion:
The Gospel Context of Pope Francis’ Teaching on Divorce and Remarriage
Josephinum Diaconal Review (Fall 2017): 14-22
Matthew J. Ramage, Ph.D.
Benedictine College
Introduction
Over the past year since its release, Pope Francis’ apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia (hereafter AL) has been the subject of much confusion among the faithful of the Catholic Church. For centuries the doctrine of the Church has been that individuals who have divorced and entered into a new union without obtaining an annulment place themselves in a situation that is, objectively speaking, adultery.[1] In some of these cases, clergy find themselves approached by a couple who have become aware of their error and yet cannot separate, often for the good of the children born from their union. In these instances, the Church has long maintained that these parents have the duty to uphold the commandments by living in continence, that is, “as brother and sister.”
With the publication of AL, however, Pope Francis appears in certain respects to be recommending a departure from this tradition. In chapter eight of the document, Francis states that one or both of those parties involved in an objectively sinful union may in reality have little personal culpability for the situation in which they find themselves. Moreover, Francis notes that some people who have been denied annulments nevertheless feel certain that their previous and irreparably broken marriage had never been valid in the first place. The Holy Father contends that in cases such as these, clergy need not always require that the couple live “as brother and sister” if they are to be given the help of the sacraments. The trouble with Francis’s proposal is that it is not apparent how it can be squared with the practice and doctrine of the Catholic Church developed over the past two millennia. A number of high-ranking prelates have called attention to this stumbling block, including the now-famous dubia addressed to Pope Francis by four cardinals and the lesser-known but urgent appeal to Francis by three bishops from Kazakhstan.
Pope Francis on mitigating factors for those in “irregular” marital situations
In the pivotal eighth chapter of AL entitled “Accompanying, Discerning, and Integrating Weakness,” Francis elaborates a key principle aimed to help clergy reintegrate the divorced and remarried into the life of the Church. These individuals, he teaches, “should not be pigeonholed or fit into overly rigid classifications leaving no room for a suitable personal and pastoral discernment.”[2] For instance, pastors are aware that the situation of those who have entered a new union after a recent divorce or those who have failed in their family obligations is very different from the following three scenarios involving:
a) “a second union consolidated over time, with new children, proven fidelity, generous self-giving, Christian commitment, a consciousness of its irregularity and of the great difficulty of going back without feeling in conscience that one would fall into new sins.”[3]
b) “those who made every effort to save their first marriage and were unjustly abandoned.”[4]
c) “those who have entered into a second union for the sake of the children’s upbringing, and are sometimes subjectively certain in conscience that their previous and irreparably broken marriage had never been valid.”[5]
The issue in each of these cases has to do with personal culpability and whether the lack thereof could open the door for one to receive the Eucharist when otherwise he would be in a state of grave sin. However, in the last case—in which John Paul II is cited verbatim—Francis indicates that the lack of full consent in a person who marries for the sake of his or her children’s upbringing must also be coupled with (as evidenced by the word “and”) certainty that one’s previous marriage was never valid in the first place. Why this requirement is not mentioned in the first two cases would benefit from further clarification by the Holy Father.
Given the immense variety of irregular situations in which people find themselves, for Francis the key principle clergy need to bear in mind is that not all individuals bear the same degree of responsibility for being in the situation in which they find themselves:
What is possible is simply a renewed encouragement to undertake a responsible personal and pastoral discernment of particular cases, one which would recognize that, since “the degree of responsibility is not equal in all cases,” the consequences or effects of a rule need not necessarily always be the same.[6]
The pontiff adds a critically important comment in a footnote immediately following the above text: “This is also the case with regard to sacramental discipline, since discernment can recognize that in a particular situation no grave fault exists.”[7] Within the larger context of the chapter of AL and his comments since its publication, it is clear that Francis means to suggest that clergy need not always require the divorced and remarried person to refrain from receiving the Eucharist provided the individual in question is not gravely at fault for the situation in which he finds himself.
A few paragraphs later, Francis advances his argument with another appeal to the issue of culpability or the lack thereof among some of the faithful who are divorced and remarried:
Because of forms of conditioning and mitigating factors, it is possible that in an objective situation of sin—which may not be subjectively culpable, or fully such—a person can be living in God’s grace, can love and can also grow in the life of grace and charity, while receiving the Church’s help to this end.[8]
Francis’s position is clear: some people who are living in an “objective situation of sin” (i.e. the divorced and remarried who are engaging in intercourse) may not be “subjectively culpable, or fully such.” They thus may be able to receive the Church’s help to grow in the life grace and charity—help which, as the text’s footnote indicates, can sometimes include the reception of the sacraments of confession and the Eucharist.[9]
How are the faithful to know when it is appropriate to approach the clergy for the sacraments? Francis writes that priests have the duty to “accompany [the divorced and remarried] in helping them to understand their situation according to the teaching of the Church and the guidelines of the bishop.”[10] It is through conversation with the priest—the “internal forum”—that Francis hopes the faithful will be enabled to arrive at “a correct judgment on what hinders the possibility of a fuller participation in the life of the Church and on what steps can foster it and make it grow.”[11] It should be noted, however, that AL’s recommendations regarding the internal forum stand in tension with the magisterial tradition whose recent statements identify the external forum (the canonical annulment process) as the exclusive means for ascertaining whether or not a marriage is valid.[12] Moreover, while in canon law one’s approaching communion is indeed a matter of personal conscience (Canon 916), the minister distributing communion is bound not by this but rather by the individual’s external, objective status (Canon 915). [13]
The New Testament on divorce and remarriage in relation to Francis’ concerns
A survey of the biblical data relevant to our topic reveals that Jesus forbade divorce as well as remarriage.[14] Consider the following texts that the Catholic Church has long interpreted as teaching the reality of marriage’s indissolubility:
“But I say to you that every one who divorces his wife, except on the ground of unchastity, makes her an adulteress; and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery” (Matthew 5:32, RSV).
“Whoever divorces his wife, except for unchastity, and marries another, commits adultery” (Matthew 19:9).
“Whoever divorces his wife and marries another, commits adultery against her; and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery” (Mark 10:11-12).
“Every one who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery, and he who marries a woman divorced from her husband commits adultery” (Luke 16:18).
“To the married I give charge, not I but the Lord, that the wife should not separate from her husband (but if she does, let her remain single or else be reconciled to her husband) – and that the husband should not divorce his wife” (1 Corinthians 7:10-11).
In concert with these biblical texts, Francis himself assumes the doctrine of indissolubility and thus the immorality of attempting a new union when one already has a marital bond with another person.[15] In AL the pontiff is therefore not concerned with questioning the truth of indissolubility but rather addressing the issue of culpability. What Francis is arguing is that, assuming remarriage does objectively speaking constitute adultery, there nevertheless exist cases in which one is not culpable of a mortal sin even though he is living in an illegitimate second union.
To illustrate Francis’ point, consider the situation of a person who remarries so that her children will not be deprived of one parent. This person may eventually come to recognize the objective sinfulness of the (invalid) second union, and she may then desire to do what is right by the Church. But should the other party refuse to live “as brother and sister” and threaten to leave the family if sexual relations are refused, the party who wishes to live according to the Church’s teachings may find herself continuing sexual relations under duress. In such a case, the party desiring to do the right thing may be culpable only venially by reason of real confusion over the best course of action or compulsion by the other party.[16] All this goes to illustrate the sort of context behind Francis’ distinction that “an objective situation does not imply a judgment about the imputability or culpability of the person involved.”[17]
The Holy Father’s teaching on culpability for divorce and remarriage in light of Matt 5:32
Francis’ emphasis upon a distinction between objective situations of sin and the question of subjective culpability can be better understood if we attend to Jesus’ and Paul’s precise emphases in the New Testament texts cited above. In each of these cases, the onus of guilt lies upon the party who initiates a divorce (which in most cases is a man, but in Mark 10:12 and 1 Cor 7:10 also applies to women). In other words, Jesus is not directly addressing the question of whether the party who has been divorced against his will bears the same degree of moral guilt as the one who initiated the divorce. For instance, say a man divorces his wife on the basis that he simply does not have feelings for her anymore (a reason that would have been countenanced within certain circles of Judaism at the time): Francis questions whether the deserted woman is in a state of mortal sin if she remarries, especially if it is done for the sake of finding a husband who can provide for her children.[18]
To illustrate Francis’ point, let us zero in on Matt 5:32, wherein Jesus teaches that divorcing one’s wife “makes her an adulteress.” A common approach to this verse explains that the woman is made an adulteress because her desperate plight would have led her to remarry for the sake of raising her children.[19] But is the woman really an adulteress in such a scenario? The conventional translation of Jesus’ words in Matt 5:32 leads one to think that a divorced woman is caused to commit adultery, yet as Paul Mankowski argues, such a translation “misses the true force of the saying, imputing to the partner acted upon a sin of which she is in no way the agent.”[20]
The root of this translation problem has to do with the structure of Semitic languages (e.g. Hebrew and Aramaic, the languages Jesus spoke) and how verbs in these languages get translated into Greek (the language in which the New Testament was written). In the Greek of the New Testament, Matt 5:32 indeed could be read as “he makes/causes (ποιεῖ) her (αὐτὴν) to commit adultery (μοιχευθῆναι),” but this likely was not the force of the original spoken by Jesus. The reason is that the convention of using the word ποιεῖ (“makes”) followed by an infinitive (in this case “to commit”) is used in Greek to render Semitic verb forms whose meanings are not always causal. Thus in Hebrew the verb rasa means “he was wicked,” while the related form hirsia means “he make (someone) wicked.” But hirsia does not entail causing a man to become evil. Rather, what we have here in Hebrew is a verb with an ostensive or “pointing” force. Thus hirsia literally means “showing or pointing out someone as wicked,” which is to say, declaring him guilty.[21] It is probably this same dynamic that we find in Matt 5:32. The Greek ποιεῖ αὐτὴν μοιχευθῆναι means “he turns her into the equivalent of an adulteress” or “he makes her subject to the stigma of adultery.” Mankowski writes, “Thus she bears the taint and the disqualification of the adulteress in virtue of a decision made not by her but by her husband, and it is this injustice that Jesus condemns…The weight of the opprobrium falls on the man who makes his wife subject to hardship.”[22] To be sure, Jesus’ words still point to the objective situation of the remarried as one of adultery, but Francis’ concern is to show that her culpability for these circumstance is diminished.
Conclusion and practical advice to clergy
In light of the above discussion, it can be seen that Francis’ distinction between an objective state of sin and one’s subjective culpability finds solid grounding in the New Testament. The thrust of Jesus’ statements about divorce lies in the direction of the one who has unjustly initiated a divorce against his or her spouse. Francis is therefore correct in affirming that the culpability of a person who abandons his spouse is greater than that of a person who has been divorced against his or her own will and decides to enter a new union for the sake of his or her children.