Pope Francis may have indirectly answered the four “dubia” cardinals who challenged him last year over Amoris Laetitia, his 2016 teaching on family life.
In a question and answer session with members of the Jesuit order in Colombia earlier this month, Francis referred to the dubia, saying:
“I want to repeat clearly that the morality of Amoris Laetitia is Thomist, the morality of the great Thomas.”
He was referring to 13th century Dominican theologian St. Thomas Aquinas.
“I want to say this so that you can help those who believe that morality is purely casuistic,” he said.
“Help them understand that the great Thomas possesses the greatest richness – still able to inspire us today.”
The pope’s conversation with the Jesuits may help Cardinal Gerhard Müller, who is the former Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
In Müller’s view Francis is surrounded by “false friends” who are acting like “children in a boarding school by privately denouncing people they disagree with.”
Müller says this is also happening in colleges and universities, where people who question Amoris Laetitia, particularly the much-discussed Footnote 351, put their careers in jeopardy.
He says there is a climate of fear in the Curia as people worry that “spies” will bad-mouth them to the Pope.
“These people, who speak bad words and lies against other persons, are disturbing and disrupting the good faith, the good name of others whom they are calling their brothers.
Regarding the ongoing debate over Amoris Laetitia, the Cardinal called for dialogue and criticised those who try to silence their opponents, accusing them of “un-Christian behaviour”.
“It is a great danger for the Church that some ideological groups present themselves as the exclusive guardians of the only true interpretation of Amoris Laetitia. They feel they have the right to condemn all people of another standpoint as stupid, rigid, old-fashioned and medieval.”
On this point, Vatican secretary of state Cardinal Pietro Parolin is in agreement.
He says it is “important to have dialogue even within the Church” in response to last week’s ‘filial correction’ about Amoris Laetitia.
“People who disagree express their dissent, but on these things we have to reason, to try to understand one another,” he says.
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