A certain Stephen Walford has written two blog posts at
Vatican Insider criticising the stance of the four Cardinals who have asked Pope Francis for a clarification of the teaching of
Amoris laetitia.
It is difficult to criticise a request for clarification: as Cardinal Pell put it,
How can you disagree with a question? The opposition, some of it quite embittered, to the Cardinals' request reminds me of the advice given to Sir Gawain by his mother in his quest for the Holy Grail. 'Don't ask questions', she said: but it was only by the asking of a question, the seeking of the meaning of the strange vision he witnessed in the Grail castle, that the curse could be lifted. Have we come so far, as a Church, that
questions are forbidden? Are we, the children of the Church, to be reduced to silence? Did Vatican II usher in an era of - what was that phrase? - dumb spectators? Does the old clericalist motto of 'pay, pray, and obey' now apply not just to the laity but to the most senior clergy in the Church?
The
first of Walford pieces is about how we should accept the teaching of
Amoris laetitia on the basis of the teaching of previous popes on the subject of Papal authority. He correctly points out that the Ordinary Magisterium can be infallible - infallible teaching is not limited to 'extraordinary' pronouncements such as the anathema of General Councils and solemn
ex cathedra statements by Popes. He also, correctly, notes that not everything Popes say counts as Magisterial at all, let alone infallible: indeed they can teach error (he mentions Pope John XXII's sermons against the Particular Judgement). When this happens we say, obviously, that what they taught was not the teaching of the Church, but the Pope's 'private' views.
