As Professor Claudio Pierantoni recently stated, there is an ongoing debate between himself and Professor Josef Seifert on one side and Professor Rocco Buttiglione on the other as pertains to the apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia. Buttiglione, who is known as an early defender of the exhortation, has also publicly criticized the recent Filial Correction of Pope Francis. All three philosophers — each a man of standing in his own right — have known each other for years. Seifert and Buttiglione worked together for two decades at the International Academy of Philosophy (IAP) in Liechtenstein. For his part, Professor Pierantoni was a student at the IAP’s Chile campus (IAP-IFES, 2004-2012) and was a student of Professor Seifert. The following interview is aimed at gaining a better understanding of the theological and philosophical discourse between these three men. This time, it is Professor Seifert who explains his position.

Maike Hickson:How would you generally describe the line of disagreement concerning Amoris Laetitia between you and Prof. Pierantoni on the one hand and Prof. Buttiglione on the other?

Josef Seifert: I do not think there exists any disagreement between Prof. Pierantoni and me. And I believe that, until he should protest, in what I am going to state as my position, I will also speak for him, but I do not dare to attribute my answers explicitly to Pierantoni, since I do not know whether he will agree with all of them. Instead, I will speak of the disagreement that arose between myself and Prof. Buttiglione, my very close friend. (Buttiglione translated and introduced, most generously, my largest philosophical book, which soon will be published in English and Spanish, Essere e Persona, Being and Person, into Italian and worked for almost two decades with me as Professor and Prorector of the International Academy of Philosophy in the Principality of Liechtenstein, of which I am the Founding Rector. I have also worked with Buttiglione for years on the defense of Humanae Vitae and the Magisterium of Pope John Paul II on the family and human life and we have agreed for two and a half decades on almost everything, except on Machiavelli, whom I consider, with Jacques Maritain, the “Doctor of the Damned,” while he defends him in a book we want to publish jointly but of which he has lost the original of his part. But since the publication of AL, a deep rift between our views has risen).

From many writings and a personal letter Buttiglione has recently written me, I conclude that our disagreement on Amoris Laetitia is to a large extent dependent on two contradictory basic assumptions that underlie our disagreement.

(1) Buttiglione holds that as Catholics, we have to believe to be true whatever the Pope says in the exercise of his Ordinary Magisterium, while I agree that, yes, we have an obligation to look first for the truth contained in a magisterial document and to try to interpret it in the light of the truth expressed in the tradition, but do not have any absolute obligation whatsoever to believe that every part of a pronouncement of the ordinary papal magisterium is true or compatible with the perennial teaching of the Church.

Moreover, we have an obligation NOT to believe it to be true if we see that it clearly contradicts a) perennial Church teaching or b) evident moral truth accessible to human reason, or c) both. (Incidentally, Buttiglione and I also disagree as to whether what the Pope says in Amoris Laetitia is an exercise of his Ordinary Magisterium, which Buttiglione holds to be unquestionable, while I will explain four reasons why I do not believe so). But even if we were to agree that AL is an exercise of the Ordinary Papal Magisterium, I think it is clear that statements made in it (let alone only in a footnote) are not infallible, and therefore are not subject to an obligation to consent to them. Pope Francis himself confirmed this in even allowing the SSPX to dissent from significant documents of the Second Vatican Council, and, unlike the two preceding Popes, not making their consent to them a condition for their reintegration in the Catholic Church. On this I agree entirely with Pope Francis, who said (very well, I believe) that one cannot oblige any Catholic to consent to non-dogmatic documents of the Ordinary Magisterium of the Church, even when the magisterium is exercised in Council documents approved by the Pope, which certainly have a much higher magisterial rank and authority than mere footnotes in a post-synodal exhortation. The mere fact that AL would be founded on a majority consensus of bishops (which is disputed by a Cardinal who was present at the synods and remarked that a consensus with the novelties of AL did not actually exist in the two synods on the family), this is not enough to make its acceptance obligatory. Even if a clear exercise of the Papal Magisterium is present in given documents, their content, as long as it is not pronounced as a dogma, can be false. This was clearly the case with Pope John XXII who himself revoked his own heresy in a bull he wrote on the day before his death (and his teaching was also declared heretical by his successor), and with Pope Honorius I, all of whose works were condemned posthumously by a Council as heretical and have been burnt. Thus I am certain that on this first “disagreement of principle” I am right, and Buttiglione is wrong: We do NOT have to believe whatever a Pope writes in the exercise of his “ordinary Magisterium.”

(2) The second fundamental disagreement of principle between us concerns the respective role of “unity with the Pope” and of truth, in the hierarchy of values we have to respect. Buttiglione insisted repeatedly that for him the most important goal is “unity with the Pope,” while I think that the question of truth has an absolute priority. Therefore if, as I propose as a question to the Pope in my latest article on AL[1], pure logic shows that from one affirmation of AL, cited below, one can deduce the negation of intrinsically evil acts and this affirmation contradicts natural law and the entire Catholic Moral Teaching, especially Veritatis Splendor, then this affirmation is evidently false and this must be stated clearly and the affirmation ought to be retracted. To agree with the Pope, have unity with the Pope, on an error is of no value whatsoever. On the contrary: as Saint Thomas and the Acts of the Apostles stated clearly, in such a case the subordinate has an obligation to criticize his superior, even publicly, as St. Paul criticized St. Peter. Against my insistence on the absolute priority of truth over unity, Buttiglione wrote me that I am wrong in my short second article on AL even if I were right — meaning by this puzzling assertion either that “unity with the Pope” is more important than truth, or that we must not say the truth if truth endangers our unity with the Pope — a position with which I absolutely disagree, or that the statement from which devastating consequences logically follow could be truly false, as I suggest, while the main content of AL would not be touched by this error, because this error would refer only to a reason for the teaching of Al, not to that teaching itself (I will return to this second point).

Hickson: More specifically, what is the disagreement with Prof. Buttiglione with regard to the question of the magisterial weight of Amoris Laetitia?

Seifert: Buttiglione and I disagree as to whether what the Pope says in Amoris Laetitia is an exercise of his Ordinary Magisterium, which Buttiglione holds to be unquestionable, while I doubt it seriously for four (in my opinion decisive) reasons:

1. Because the decisive new points of AL are chiefly found in mere footnotes that cannot reverse the sacramental discipline of the Church of 2000 years, solemnly reconfirmed by the apostolic exhortation Familiaris Consortio of Saint Pope John Paul II. Such footnotes cannot be considered an Exercise of the Ordinary Magisterium, as also Cardinals Brandmüller and Burke as well as the other dubia Cardinals and many others noted.
2. Moreover, the Pope explicitly says in Ch. III of Amoris Laetitia that he does not want to settle the decisive novelty in AL through his magisterium, but leaves it open to decide by the various national and culturally different and decentralized bishops’ conferences.
3. He confirmed this position by approving both the decision of the Polish Episcopate to follow FC entirely and not to admit any divorced and civilly remarried or active homosexuals who do not want to change their lives, to the sacraments, and by confirming and praising at the same time also the opposite position: the pronouncement of the Argentinian Bishops of the Buenos Aires area, which coincides with that of many other bishops, including the archbishop of Granada. These bishops adopted the exactly opposite interpretation. The Pope even praised the far more radical pronouncement of the Bishops of Malta on AL, who proposed a completely situation-ethical interpretation of AL. Thus, Pope Francis follows the idea he proposes of a “decentralized magisterium” or different “magisteria” in the Church — all of which he approved — an idea which I heard Karl Rahner express in Munich half a century ago. Now, pure logic tells us that the position of the Bishops of Buenos Aires or Malta and that of the Polish Bishops’ Conference, which is diametrically and contradictorily opposed to that of the bishops of Buenos Aires (defended by Buttiglione), and both of which are admitted and approved by the Pope in his new “magisterial pluralism”, cannot both correspond to the “ordinary Magisterium of the Pope”. Hence the novel teachings of AL (, i.e., the Buenos Aires reading) cannot be the “Magisterium of the Pope”.
4. The novelties of AL are not primarily doctrinal but pastoral and thus more subject to categories of prudence or imprudence than of truth and falsity; for example, if Popes in the past have asked in the Exercise of their ordinary Magisterium in papal bulls or encyclicals that heretics, magicians, and witches should be burnt at the stake, or when they excommunicated in bulls entire cities because their prince led a war against the Vatican, I am certainly not obliged to believe that this was a prudent pastoral decision. Buttiglione himself, somewhat contradictorily, says that the new teaching of AL is a purely pastoral one and he also stated, at least in letters to me, that we are not bound to agree with the wisdom of a pastoral decision of a Pope that is not per se true or false, but can be prudent or imprudent. But in that case I am not at all obliged to agree with AL (according to logic being applied to Buttiglione’s admission), nor to agree that its new Pastoral guideline is wise.

(I differ regarding this in another respect with Buttiglione: in that I hold that the novel teaching of AL is not only pastoral but also doctrinal.)

Inasmuch as it is pastoral, however (and therefore not true or false, but prudent or imprudent), Buttiglione and I differ, at least so it seems, in that Buttiglione does not criticize the new Pastoral Guideline of AL and tries to explain its compatibility with the opposite Pastoral Guideline of FC, stated to be rooted in the Gospel itself by Pope John Paul II. I, however, even prescinding from any doctrinal question, find the new pastoral guideline of AL not only imprudent, but entirely inapplicable. In my first article on AL,[2] I gave, I believe, cogent arguments for the practical impossibility of “discerning” between adulterers who may and others who may not receive the sacraments without changing their lives. My argument coincides wholly with an argument given by the Polish Episcopate for their decision to abide by FC: it is impossible for a priest in 5 minutes’ conversation in the confessional to determine that an unrepentant sinner is invincibly ignorant and in the state of grace, even though he intends to keep committing what are, objectively speaking, grave sins. From this practical impossibility of applying discernment which can hardly fail to end in a general opening of Confession and the Eucharist to unrepentant adulterous and homosexual couples, the imprudence of the decision of admitting the “irregular couples” to the sacraments immediately follows.

Hickson: Could you explain to us here the question of the infallible extraordinary magisterium and the infallible universal ordinary magisterium?

Seifert: I think that the infallible Extraordinary Magisterium only applies to such central matters of doctrine and faith that either the Pope defines “ex cathedra” (which happened only two or three times in the history of the Church) or which a Council, in union with the Pope, defined as being a dogma and de fide in such a way that anyone who contradicted it was declared “anathema”. The infallible Ordinary Magisterium of the Church is present only in teachings of the ordinary magisterium that coincide with what the Church has taught always and everywhere, not with entirely novel teachings. Neither one of these criteria of infallibility applies to the novelties of AL.

Hickson: Is Amoris Laetitia of such magisterial weight that one may not disagree with its teaching without falling into the category of being disobedient, heretical, or schismatic, at least in spirit?

Absolutely not, for the reasons given. Therefore, to treat Catholics who dissent from AL as heretics, schismatics in fact or in spirit, or disobedient to the Pope, is a grave injustice.

Hickson: In this context, is it more important that we follow the pope and his new teaching for the sake of obedience (which is in itself a great good) or that we preserve the traditional teaching of the Church?

Seifert: I think that as soon as we find that a new teaching is false, we are obliged, not to obey it. And as soon as we find a new pastoral decision of the Pope inapplicable in good conscience, such as giving the sacraments to unrepentant sinners on the basis of an (impossible for us) “discernment” of whether their sin is compatible with their being in the state of grace for subjective reasons, we are likewise morally obliged NOT to obey it under the principle St. Peter formulated and Robert Spaemann recently called to mind, that we have to obey God more than men. This applies even more when we are convinced that giving absolution and the holy Eucharist to public sinners (even if they were in the state of grace) is, notwithstanding their personal innocence, wrong, as is implied in Familiaris Consortio 84. FC speaks of an objective disharmony of adulterous relations with the law of Christ and with the meaning of matrimony — and of the deep analogous and symbolic signification of marriage in relation to the relationship between Christ and the Church as a reason why a couple who lives in discord with the divine commandments should not receive the sacraments. This objective discrepancy is enough for the judgment of the Church that they must not be given access to the sacraments. (On this point, I made some incorrect concessions to Buttiglione in letters and my previous writings on AL). FC and Church tradition do not require that sinners who gravely deviate from divine law have to live “subjectively in mortal sin” (which God alone knows) for being denied access to the sacraments. If this were otherwise, we would also have to admit abortionists, first degree murderers, etc. to the sacraments because we can never know with certainty that they have lost sanctifying grace.

Hickson: You yourself, in your own polite criticism of Amoris Laetitia, pointed especially to Paragraph 303* of this papal document, highlighting the potential danger of making irrelevant any absolute moral norms. How did you and Prof. Buttiglione discuss this aspect of the debate?

Seifert: Prof. Buttiglione said about my second article, Does Pure Logic Threaten to Destroy the Entire Moral Doctrine of the Catholic Church?, that “I am wrong even if I am right” for the reasons of (1) having an obligation of consenting to anything the Ordinary Papal Magisterium is telling us (to which I have responded), (2) that a reason offered by the Pope for a teaching may be erroneous while the teaching itself is correct. In other words, Buttiglione believes that the assertion “that we can know in our conscience that God himself wants us to consider continuing to live in adultery the best and most generous response we can give him in our situation” is not the teaching of Pope Francis that we have to believe (according to Buttiglione). Rather, we would only have to believe the real teaching of AL, namely, that after proper discernment, unrepentant adulterous and homosexual couples may be admitted to the sacraments. I think, on the contrary, that what No. 303* says (and many other parts of AL imply) is the most significant doctrinal content and the main reason for the pastoral teaching of AL, which (for the reasons explained in my answer No. 1, 2 and 3, to your second Question), cannot be regarded as a “magisterial teaching” at all.

Hickson: In this context of some sinner who might be pleasing to God even though he still remains in his sin: is it Catholic to maintain a position that God might be pleased with us, perhaps because we mended some sin in our lives, while however still remaining in another grave sin? That is to say, could it be sufficient in God’s eyes to return to the state of Sanctifying Grace by making a sign of good will while yet still maintaining, for example, a sinful relationship?

Seifert: I think that God could of course be pleased by us, after a divorce from our sacramental wife, for stopping to beat up and to calumniate our only civilly married second wife or our children, even if we continue in a sinful relationship. But he cannot ever will or be pleased with the fact that we continue to live in adultery, for example. It is certainly possible that invincible ignorance or weakness of will does not make a person lose the state of sanctifying grace, even if that person lives objectively in grave sin. But I think that a) this is very rare, especially if the priest in confession discharges himself his obligation to tell the sinner the truth, and 2) that nobody can be sure of that, and 3) that to live in the state of grace is not enough to receive worthily the sacraments while living objectively in grave sin, as I have explained.

Hickson: Would God ask of any sinner at some point in his life to remain in his sin? How would you comment on this claim in light of the Council of Trent?

I think that this clearly impossible and declared dogmatically as a heresy by the Council of Trent.

Hickson: Where does Prof. Buttiglione, in your eyes, leave the solid foundation of the Catholic moral teaching, perhaps in order to maintain loyalty toward Pope Francis?

I think (1) with respect to his “two principles” that separate us, they do not correspond to sound Catholic teaching because it is Catholic teaching (and the basis for all condemnation of heresies in the history of the Church) that a) truth has priority over unity and b) that no Catholic has an absolute duty to accept everything a Pope or Council are saying if it is not dogmatic and de fide, and if he has good reason to believe that it is contrary to natural or revealed truth or to both (to claim otherwise would be papolatry). Besides, (2) I  believe that Professor Buttiglione’ s concrete and brilliant but unsuccessful efforts to reconcile the novelties of Amoris Laetitia with Familiaris Consortio, Veritatis Splendor, Evangelium Vitae, Humanae Vitae, and the Tradition of the Church all fail and put him at the risk of using overcomplicated and sophistical reasons and of contradicting dogmas of the Church such as (a) that God never commands things which we cannot obey, with the help of grace (a Lutheran heresy denied this and was condemned in the Council of Trent), or (b) that extramoral evils (such that the partner of a second “marriage” will leave me) can never be greater evils than a sin and the intention to prevent them can never justify committing a sin (VS and Trent affirmed this and condemned its negation as heretical), or (c) that weighing good versus bad effects of any action can never justify committing one of the many intrinsically evil acts (Veritatis Splendor made this very solemnly clear).

Hickson: Could you comment on the following words as expressed by Buttiglione himself? “The Pope does not say that God is happy with the fact that divorced-and-remarried continue to have sexual intercourse with each other. The conscience recognizes that it is not in conformity with the law. However, the conscience also knows that it has begun a journey of conversion. One still sleeps with a woman who is not his wife but has stopped taking drugs and going with prostitutes, has found a job and takes care of his children. He has the right to think that God is happy with him, at least in part.” [Emphasis added].

Seifert: Certainly God can be happy that a man “stopped taking drugs and going with prostitutes, has found a job and takes care of his children,” but He can never be happy with him doing this, “still sleeping with a woman who is not his wife” or agree that continuing committing what Christ himself calls adultery is the “most generous response” an adulterer can give to God in his situation. To claim this this would a) either deny the dogma that God does not command anything impossible to fulfill, or b) deny the dogma that God never wants us to sin, or both.

Hickson: Did not Martin Luther, too, teach that man sometimes has to sin? Would you discuss this matter in light of Buttiglione’s own words?

Seifert: Yes, I believe that in Buttiglione’s defense of AL there is a great danger of falling into the Lutheran heresy of the simul iustus et peccator in the sense that grace alone justifies us and that we can remain in sanctifying grace while committing mortal sins. And the recent celebration of the Luther-fest in the Vatican, the statement of high-ranking prelates that “Luther was right” and was a “gift of the Holy Spirit” to the Catholic Church, the rumor that a Catholic-Lutheran joint “mass” is being discussed, the placing of Luther’s statue in the Vatican, etc. are alarming signs that it is not only Buttiglione who starts flirting with some of Luther’s errors. This heresy is closely related to Luther’s teaching that grace is not a principle that truly transforms us morally, and allows us to “become perfect like our father in heaven is perfect” which Christ and Holy Scripture tell us is God’s will. This error is linked also to Luther’s rejection of the veneration, canonization, and invocation of Saints to intercede for us in prayers and in the liturgy, masses in their honor, etc. I do not claim of course that my friend Rocco holds these errors, but some of his remarks, for example, interpreting the story of Nero’s Christian prostitute as having been in a situation in which she was not free to refuse to have sex with Nero, and that her consent to have sexual relations with Nero allowed her to save many Christians (Buttiglione even called her a Saint for his reason), give at least the impression that Buttiglione flirts with some of Luther’s views on freedom and grace. Or that he even accepts them. The same holds true for his description of situations in which nobody can expect that adulterers can decide either to live together in abstinence, or to separate, and thus “have to sin”.

Hickson: Could you also present to us that part of the debate with Buttiglione where you deal with the question as to whether divorced and “remarried” couples, in light of the prescribed process of discernment, would still be less culpable because they might have a defectively formed subjective conscience?

Seifert: A person who suffers from invincible ignorance or an innocently deformed conscience, believing or “feeling” that his adultery is OK, of course may be less guilty than one who acts directly against the voice of his conscience. But we must never forget that the wrongness of adultery is part of the natural law written into every man`s heart, as the Apostle Paul says, such that it is extremely improbable that somebody has no knowledge whatsoever of the sin of adultery or homosexual activity. The pagan Cicero calls the person who denies that adultery is always and everywhere a grave sin “a madman”. But above all, we must understand that ethical value blindness is, more often than not, itself sinful or the consequence of sin, because we have become dull to the voice of conscience because of repeated sin, or because we make a foul compromise between our pride and concupiscence, on the one hand, and our limited will to do the good on the other hand, such that we do not see clearly the sinfulness of actions as soon as the moral law does not allow us to live out our passions or inclinations. (Dietrich von Hildebrand has analyzed these and many other forms of “guilty forms of moral value blindness” and deformation of conscience in an admirable book unfortunately not yet published in English but announced for immediate publication by the newly founded Dietrich von Hildebrand Press as Morality and Ethical Value Knowledge). A general attitude of being prone to give into the attractions of what satisfies us subjectively, while still not wanting to sin consciously and openly, will easily obscure our moral judgment, either in partial moral value blindness or in blindness of subsumption, i.e., of not subsuming our behavior under the category of “adultery”. In these and many other cases of moral value blindness we are fully responsible for the deformation of our conscience and thus the absence of consciousness that we commit a mortal sin does not make us innocent because we are guilty for our blindness itself.

Hickson: How, thus, could there be any “mitigating factors” that would render a relationship of a divorced and “remarried” couple sinless?

Seifert: Even if there could be mitigating factors that would make a relationship of divorced and remarried couples completely sinless, we must note:

(1) As soon as an adulterous couple speaks with a priest who should “discern”, this priest has a duty of telling them that their relation is objectively sinful; in that moment, however, they cease to commit adultery “completely innocently”;

(2) As long as they continue to do what is objectively gravely sinful, it does not seem possible for them or for any priest to judge that their relation is “sinless”, which would presuppose an ability to look into the depth of a soul, which we never have with respect to ourselves and even less with other persons;

(3) It is unreasonable to expect that a priest is able to judge this after a few minutes talking in the confessional;

(4) It is intolerable and would create private and public scandal if priests started to create two groups of sinners: those adulterers and homosexuals who are innocent and can receive the sacraments and those who know better and must be excluded;

(5) In praxis, the failing attempt to separate these “good” and “bad” grave sinners will inevitably lead to admitting every adulterer and homosexual to the sacraments, and many sacrileges will be committed;

(6) As Familiaris Consortio teaches, receiving worthily the sacrament of Confession or the Eucharist has objective and not merely subjective conditions. It requires that a couple does not live objectively in adulterous relations, and not only that the sinner “does not feel that this is sinful” or even not only that the sinner is not personally “losing sanctifying grace” (because God, who sees his heart, knows that he is not sinning mortally).

Hickson: Should this whole debate be led only among experts and not in public?

Seifert: Since the question of the worthy reception and dispensation of the sacraments is of crucial importance for each priest and faithful – their eternal salvation may depend on this – the claim that this matter should not be discussed publicly is absurd. Moreover, Amoris Laetitia is published and its very different and contradictory interpretations have been published. Thus the debate should be conducted publicly.

Hickson: Should we all be silent in this situation for the sake of keeping peace and unity in the Catholic Church?

I think I have answered this question already, but I wish to re-emphasize that truth has not only priority over unity and peace, but is the condition of authentic unity and peace. I might here quote Blaise Pascal, the great French philosopher whom Pope Francis apparently wants to beatify, and who expressed this in his marvelous French language that translates a bit less beautifully into English thus:

“It is as much a crime to disturb the peace when truth prevails as it is to keep the peace when truth is violated. There is therefore a time in which peace is justified and another time when it is not justifiable. For it is written that there is a time for peace and a time for war and it is the law of truth that distinguishes the two. But at no time is there a time for truth and a time for error, for it is written that God’s truth shall abide forever. That is why Christ has said that He has come to bring peace and at the same time that He has come to bring the sword. But He does not say that He has come to bring both the truth and falsehood.”  — (Blaise Pascal, June 19, 1623 – August 19, 1662)

Hickson: What would you say to people who now claim that those who oppose Pope Francis with regard to some of his public statements (even if they are not explicitly magisterial, but still have an influence on Catholic faithful) have the intention to break up the Catholic Church?

Seifert: It is of course possible that some critics of the Church have such an intention, but it is certainly absolutely false and would be calumny if it were said of the four dubia Cardinals, of Father Weinandy, of Bishop Athanasius Schneider, of Prof. Claudio Pierantoni, Prof. Carlos Casanova, and of many other persons who raised their critical voices or signed the correctio filialis. (It would also, even if my archbishop of Granada thought, said, or wrote so, be untrue of myself, I might add, who would be willing to die for “the unity of the Church in the truth” and has absolutely no intention to break up the unity of the Church). John-Henry Westen (editor of LifeSiteNews) recently pointed out in an excellent speech in Rome, on Oct. 28, in a Conference on Humanae Vitae sponsored by the “Voice for the Family,” that (1) the pope himself exhorted us to criticize him freely and not to be concerned with what the “pope would think” and (2) that the true friends of the pope and of the Church are those who are vigilant and do not praise the pope by flatteries and adulation, of which the successor of St. Peter, destined to be The Rock, has no need whatsoever.

To hold the contrary, that anyone who criticizes a word spoken by the Pope “has an intention to break up the Catholic Church” or just does break up the unity of the Church, would be to judge that the Apostle Paul had the intention to disrupt the unity of the Catholic Church when he criticized the first Pope, instituted by Christ Himself, openly and sharply during the first Council of the Apostles.

Hickson: What do you think about Cardinal Müller’s Foreword to Rocco Buttiglione’s new book, Friendly Replies to the Critics of Amoris Laetitia?

I cannot answer this question thoroughly before having seen the full text of the new book and of Cardinal Müller’s Foreword, of which I have only read a few fragments that left me pretty much perplexed. His praise of Buttiglione’s new book on Amoris Laetitia has astonished me very much: (1) first of all, because Cardinal Müller published recently a book in Spanish, in which he affirmed that no Pope or Council could change the sacramental discipline of the Church, which is, as FC 84 says, founded on Sacred Scripture itself. For writing this, the archbishop of Madrid called Cardinal Müller’s book anti-Pope and forbade him to present it in the Catholic University and Seminary San Dámaso in Madrid. The Cardinal presented it at another Catholic University in Madrid, saying that AL did not change or intend to change anything of the teaching and sacramental discipline expressed in FC 84, which is, Müller said, inseparable from perennial Church teaching. Don Livio Melina, a former student of mine in the John Paul II Institute for Marriage and Family and until recently President of the John Paul II Institute for Marriage and Family in Rome, gave the same interpretation. Our archbishop of Granada, Don Francisco Javier Martínez, sent the statement of Melina to all the clergy of Granada, obviously in agreement with it (but he later changed and espoused the Buenos Aires Interpretation of AL and first suspended me from teaching his seminarians, and then fired – forcefully retired – me from my chair of the IAP-IFES, when I published my second article on AL). I thought from the beginning that Cardinal Müller’s judgment was quite correct as far as perennial Church Teaching is concerned, but incorrect as an interpretation of AL. On this merely hermeneutical question I agreed with Buttiglione who saw from the beginning that AL says something very different than FC, but tried to explain this as purely pastoral and “complementary”: Pope John Paul II would have just spoken on the “objective side” of adultery being gravely disordered, while AL Laetitia takes into account the classical subjective conditions of mortal sin and imputability. Thus both Popes are right although they propose opposite pastoral decisions of the Church. Saint John Paul II forbids divorced and remarried Catholics (outside the Church) access to the sacraments except if they live in complete abstinence, because he just speaks of the objective sinfulness of adultery; Pope Francis allows their receiving sacramental absolution and Eucharist even if they have no intention to change their life, because he asks to discern and recognize the possible state of grace in such “good adulterers and homosexuals”.

Now, I gather from the published fragments of his Preface accessible to me that Cardinal Müller:

(1) completely switched to the Buttiglione-Buenos Aires interpretation of the text of AL being “hermeneutically correct” (on this I agree now with both; they interpret AL textually correctly).

(2) That he now also thanks Buttiglione and defends AL wholesale like Buttiglione, by not only accepting access to the sacraments of couples of whom he said a few months back that no council or pope can authorize them to receive the sacraments because the prohibition taught by FC belongs to, or is the logical consequence of, perennial Church teaching. Thus, Cardinal Müller seems now to contradict likewise his previous strong doctrinal assertion that the sacramental discipline affirmed by Pope John Paul II — namely, that nobody who lives in objective contradiction to the Church’s teaching on the indissolubility of marriage can be admitted to the sacraments is a part and perpetual logical consequence of the teachings on Christ and of the Church.

(3) Thirdly, Cardinal Müller seems to deny now as well that in AL there is (a) any trace of teleological ethics and situation ethics. Thus he answers my question: “Does pure Logic threaten to destroy the entire moral Doctrine of the Catholic Church?“[3] in the negative. Hence Cardinal Müller seems to deny that the affirmation, “conscience can do more than recognize that a given situation does not correspond objectively to the overall demands of the Gospel. It can also recognize with sincerity and honesty what for now is the most generous response which can be given to God, and come to see with a certain moral security that it is what God himself is asking amid the concrete complexity of one’s limits, while yet not fully the objective ideal” [namely to continue to live in adultery or homosexual relations] logically implies that God can approve of us committing an intrinsically evil act such as adultery in some situations, and consequently there are no more any intrinsically wrong acts in any situation. In contrast to Cardinal Müller’s view that AL does not deny intrinsically evil acts nor claim that continuing an objectively gravely sinful act can correspond to God’s will for us, Father Spadaro, friend and authorized interpreter of AL, recently attributed to Pope Francis and AL the view that Francis negates “any general rule that would make a class of human actions morally wrong” (which means denying that any human action, as a class, is intrinsically wrong, regardless of circumstances and consequences).  Thus at this point, in view of this switch of Cardinal Müller’s position, the second and third points of which I consider false, I can only confess my complete perplexity about Cardinal Müller’s statements and keep hoping that reading the full text will shed some light on the puzzle of his joining his authority to Buttiglione.

END

*Paragraph 303 of Amoris Laetitia reads, as follows: “Naturally, every effort should be made to encourage the development of an enlightened conscience, formed and guided by the responsible and serious discernment of one’s pastor, and to encourage an ever greater trust in God’s grace. Yet conscience can do more than recognize that a given situation does not correspond objectively to the overall demands of the Gospel. It can also recognize with sincerity and honesty what for now is the most generous response which can be given to God, and come to see with a certain moral security that it is what God himself is asking amid the concrete complexity of one’s limits, while yet not fully the objective ideal.”

[1] “Does pure Logic threaten to destroy the entire moral Doctrine of the Catholic Church?“ Aemaet, Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Theologie http://aemaet.de, Bd. 6 (2017), 2-9.

[2] “Amoris Laetitia. Joy, Sadness and Hopes”. Aemaet Bd. 5, Nr. 2 (2016) 160-249, http://aemaet.de urn:nbn:de:0288-2015080654.

[3] Aemaet, Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Theologie http://aemaet.de, Bd. 6 (2017), 2-9.

St. Thomas Aquinas wrote that servile fear is of the kind that a servant feels before his master — essentially, a fear of punishment. “Accordingly, ” St. Thomas writes, “if a man turn to God and adhere to Him, through fear of punishment, it will be servile fear; but if it be on account of fear of committing a fault, it will be filial fear, for it becomes a child to fear offending its father.” Elsewhere, servile fear is defined as “Selfish fear based on dread of pain to oneself that would follow if another were offended. It is the fear of punishment for wrongdoing, without being motivated by honor or a sense of duty, and least of all by love.” While servile fear “may co-exist with filial fear,” — and indeed, St. Thomas argues that “servile fear is from the Holy Ghost” — it is to be remembered that “purely servile fear, with no love of God but only self-love that fears the divine punishments, is at least in theory, inconsistent with the true love of God.”

In practical terms, servile fear is that fear which is primarily motivated by self-love. It seeks to avoid the loss of some good or goods, position, or status, or even the loss of Heaven out of the love of self — not the love of God.

It is of this species of fear to which many Catholic faithful, exasperated by the failure of leadership they perceive among their priests and bishops, accuse the clergy of falling prey. However, one thing is often overlooked when people discuss “fearful” shepherds — especially when they are quick to call them cowards — is that their first duty — after Loving God above all things and obeying Him no matter the consequences to themselves — is to love their neighbor as themselves, by forming, nourishing, and protecting the spiritual children of their particular flock.

One of the things I have spent much time on as a pastor is giving council to parents over their legitimate fears for their children (and their fears are legion.) Every good pastor has many of the same fears for his spiritual children that biological parents have for their children, and the primary fear is that they will be led astray.

There are, consequently, many pastors who may not speak out publicly in such a way that they are openly challenging the problems in the Universal Church, but this does not mean that they are not speaking out in their parishes — from their pulpits, in the confessional, or in the spiritual counsel they give to the members of their flock. They try to nourish and guide the souls entrusted to their care according to the fullness of the Catholic Faith even when their own bishops — or even the pope himself — are not, and they do so as a direct response to what those bishops and the pope are doing and saying.

They do this in order to keep their spiritual children safe from spiritual harm. And many of them have a legitimate concern that if they raised their voices in protest outside the parish walls, they might well be removed in retribution. The question that haunts them is, “If such a thing were to happen, who would be sent to replace me?” They know that the wolves and hirelings far outnumber the faithful shepherds and that if they are removed for speaking the truth to the whole world, those who would likely take their places would be chosen because they will not speak the truth to the parish, let alone to the world.

It is for this reason — a concern for what will become of their spiritual children — that many pastors of souls remain silent in the ‘press’, while they are anything but silent from the pulpit, the classroom, or the tables of the parishioners who invite them into their homes.

When I reflect on the fears that I have about being removed, excommunicated, or laicized for speaking the truth, I cannot deny that the questions of, “What shall I do? How will I live?”, arise in my mind. These are natural fears, but they are not the most pressing; these are the “servile fears”, and they are usually immediately quelled upon recourse to prayer and an act of spiritual abandonment to God. The fear that isn’t quelled so easily, is: when I am gone, what shall happen to my spiritual children?

Just recently I had several parishioners, at different times, express to me how they hoped that I would be able to stay here past the time of my current assignment because they have grown in their faith and know the wasteland that surrounds them in the various parishes in my small deanery. Their concerns were not because they thought I might be removed for speaking the truth, even though I have told the parishes I serve that this is a real possibility (I have spoken the hard truth several times at diocesan meetings with the bishop, and even with members of the laity present.) They were simply aware that even in the normal course of events, a pastor who gives bread instead of stones has become a rarity.

A priest — especially a parish priest, and most especially a pastor — is, as his title aptly suggests, a father. Thus, his natural place is in his home with his spiritual family. This is why the post-conciliar practice of shuffling the pastoral deck every few years is often so destructive to parish life. What would we say about a natural family that got a ‘new’ father every six or twelve years? Why is it considered a tragedy when an orphan is moved from foster home to foster home? This constant change in the paternal relationship is often a recipe for disaster that often begets chaos and ruin. I have expressed this concern to my bishop, and requested to be allowed to remain in my little parishes until I die, because they are my family and I am a father to them. That is not to say that tending to my spiritual family is always a picnic! Even so, I love them and desire to remain with them so that I can lead as many of them to Eternal Salvation as is possible by the Grace of God.

I have been in my assignment for several years and from the beginning had a parishioner who attacked my character and made life difficult. I prayed for him often and even rebuked him publicly and warned him of hell. After almost eight years he came to me and repented, and I absolved him and he died in a state of grace. Being a priest is the greatest blessing there is, and being separated from one’s flock, even the difficult ones, is the greatest suffering there is for a priest. This is what many of them fear because they know Hell is real and that many of their children will end there if they are not constantly guided and nourished with the Saving Truth of Jesus Christ.

What I always tell parents is what I must hear myself: God is in charge and if your children refuse your good council you must continue to pray, fast and do penance for them to merit actual graces for them so that they may repent and be saved. The vast majority of Faithful Catholics are so, because of Faithful Parents: naturally and spiritually. The fact that there are Faithful Catholics is due to the fact that there are Faithful Shepherds who taught them and nourished them with the Holy Catholic Faith, and much of that was face to face in a parish setting or at a conference or a retreat — in other words, through personal encounters, not through strongly worded essays in the paper or online. There is much to be gained through the Catholic Internet, but the people of God need shepherds of flesh and blood who will feed them the True Faith in their parishes, or they will perish.

It is my plea to you, therefore, that you resist rash judgment when it comes to the priests whom you wish would break their silence and shout the truth about the emperor’s wardrobe malfunction from the rooftops. Do not assume that their public reticence equals cowardice or consent. Please pray for the good shepherds that even now work amongst the Lord’s sheep. Pray that they are not inhibited by servile fear, and that that they will be governed instead by the Fear of the Lord and His Love above all things, but also remember that this does not necessarily mean that all of them need to preach to the whole world via the internet or the media. If, however, that is what God is calling them to, pray that they are able to discern it, and do so with Holy Boldness.

When the time comes for the majority of the good shepherds to be driven into exile — and that time seems to have already begun in some quarters — they will need to be supported by you, the faithful laity. They will need you to take them into your homes, to be succored and sheltered. They will need help with their debts and obligations, as many of them are too old or limited to be truly gainfully employed elsewhere. And they need to hear from you, the faithful laity, those face to face reassurances that, should the day come, you will support in this manner. Without such support, then the message being sent to these priests by the laity who most ardently desire their boldness is that they must go to Calvary alone.

Even Jesus went to Calvary with a faithful few who accompanied Him and remained with Him in His Holy Agony.

It seems to me that the Church at this time finds herself mystically within the following verses of Revelation (12:13-17):

So when the dragon saw that he had been thrown down to the earth, he pursued the woman who had given birth to the male child. But the woman was given the two wings of the great eagle, so that she could fly from the serpent into the wilderness, to her place where she is nourished for a time, and times, and half a time. Then from his mouth the serpent poured water like a river after the woman, to sweep her away with the flood. But the earth came to the help of the woman; it opened its mouth and swallowed the river that the dragon had poured from his mouth. Then the dragon was angry with the woman, and went off to make war on the rest of her children, those who keep the commandments of God and hold the testimony of Jesus.

The woman, of course, is Mary. But Mary is also the archetype of Holy Mother Church, who has been and is being persecuted by the dragon, who will make war upon the faithful until Our Lord Jesus Christ comes again in glory.