The Catholic Thing

Faith & Reason Institute
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The Catholic Thing is a daily column rooted in the richest cultural tradition in the world, i.e., the concrete historical reality of Catholicism.

  1. 2h ago

    Amateur Impressions of the Odyssey

    By Joseph R. Wood A long drive recently allowed me to listen to the unabridged audiobook of Homer's Odyssey. It was worth all 780+ minutes. Hearing the poem helped me understand why it is foundational to the Western understanding of human life, and how archetypal it is of human experience. My reactions are not those of a well-versed critic, but only those of an amateur, who undertakes an activity more for love than for profit or fame. In other words, I'll keep my day job. Having fought in the Greek expedition against Troy, Odysseus must find his way home to Ithaca, where his family awaits him. Crossing the "wine-dark sea," he overcomes an array of natural and supernatural obstacles. He demonstrates the virtues of courage, perseverance, and loyalty, together with cleverness and strategic thinking, that we associate with classical heroism. The poem acknowledges implicitly that there are realities of truth, beauty, and goodness. Human excellence is to rise above mere pleasure-seeking and overcome all that obstructs us in a life that accords with those transcendentals, a life of honor. Death is always a possibility, and there are things worth dying for. Not all of the characters in the Odyssey live the virtues of Odysseus. As Aristotle would later explain, we choose to cultivate the virtues. Odysseus's son, Telemachus, does that during his father's absence. The suitors who sponge off of Odysseus's wealth and pursue his wife, Penelope, while he is away, choose differently. Our sometimes puzzling relationship with the divine is also apparent in the poem. Odysseus knows he is aided by Athena, one of the "deathless gods." But he does not always know which gods oppose him, or why. This confusion mirrors our own experience. The psalmist sometimes wonders why God seems to have withdrawn in our moments of great need. We can't understand why God doesn't seem to answer our prayers in the way we think best. Yet Odysseus does not just turn himself over to fate. He knows he must use his reason to act, even as he calls upon divine aid. The Odyssey's virtues are for all of us, not just heroes. The humble swineherd Eumaeus, who tends Odysseus's herds while the hero is many years away, shows unbending fidelity. When he must dare all to help Odysseus rid his home of the malingering parasites squatting about the place, he shows the same courage as Odysseus. That need to dare is a paradigmatic feature of human experience, and it comes up throughout the poem. Odysseus must show physical daring repeatedly. But in my listening, the most striking daring was the constant dare to hope. Penelope, Telemachus, and Eumaeus never give up hope of Odysseus's return, though the hope dims at times. Odysseus himself never loses hope of seeing Ithaca again even as disasters overwhelm his company and death looms constantly. The Odyssey presents universals of human nature. These are seen often in Scripture, where the stories of journeys move from the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Eden, to Abraham, to Jacob and his sons, to Moses and the Jews fleeing Egypt, to the Apostles told to leave all and follow Christ. God calls some to dare to voyage far from home with hope but uncertainty about the outcome. Some respond immediately, others have questions. It took Joseph, son of Jacob, many years to understand that his calling to his journey, effected by enslavement, was actually providential. Western and Christian literature often turns on journeys: Homer and Virgil; Dante's odyssey through Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise, frequently celebrated here at TCT; Tolkien and Lewis. The latter two even portray Heaven itself as a journey, as in Tolkien's "Leaf by Niggle" and Lewis's The Great Divorce and The Last Battle in the Narnian series. And that doesn't even touch the literature of pilgrimage and tramping. The call to risk the journey comes in every life. Some gain fame, but most undertake the voyage in hidden and obscure ways, in seemingly ordinary circumstances. It is follow...

    7 min

  2. 1d ago

    Becoming Relics

    By Stephen P. White As you surely know, not least because it has been mentioned repeatedly in these pages, the bishops of the United States, in preparation of the celebration for the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence have consecrated the entire nation to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. No doubt you also know, faithful readers of The Catholic Thing, that the image of the Sacred Heart was revealed by Jesus himself to a 17th-century French nun named Margaret Mary Alacoque. If you didn't know this before, you probably learned it just yesterday from Msgr. Charles Fink's wonderful reflection on how holy images, including the Sacred Heart, can captivate the imagination and so move us toward greater devotion. What you may not know, but should know, is this: the major relics of St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, the Apostle of the Sacred Heart, are coming to our nation's capital just in time for the Fourth of July. They will be available for public veneration at the Saint John Paul II National Shrine in Washington, DC, from June 29th through July 4th. I mention this for several reasons. First, I mention this because I work at the Shrine and I would like very much for everyone who is able to come venerate these relics. But I also mention it because, as Msgr. Fink observed in regard to holy images yesterday, I believe Catholic veneration of relics offers a path to deeper devotion. Venerating the holy bodies of the saints is a powerful antidote to the Gnosticism of our disembodied age. Relics are a powerful reminder that we are all, as it were, in the same story. Any ancient artifact can, on a natural level, remind us that we are all carried along in the same stream of time: you, me, George Washington, Cleopatra, and Nebuchadnezzar. We can throw in the mastodons and the dinosaurs while we're at it. But saintly relics are more than mementos, more than fossils or museum pieces – as fascinating as those objects may be. Relics remind us both of the fact of our mortality and of precious exemplars of holiness and devotion. And they remind us of the promise of resurrection. Relics remind us that the working of grace is neither sporadic nor sparse, but suffuses all of human experience across time and space. Relics remind us that we are bound together in the same great drama which has been unfolding, under God's providence, through all of history. In this way, holy relics of the saints make present to us those who share our same mortal fate and immortal destiny. Above all, relics are sacramentals, which is to say they are not merely reminders of something interesting or moving; they bring about spiritual effects in imitation of the sacraments themselves. Yes, there is something slightly weird, a little macabre, and even, dare I say, Gothic about our Catholic relics (as a recent visit to the Capuchin "bone church" in Rome reminded me). It's also the sort of thing we who claim to believe in the reality of the Incarnation ought to do. And it's precisely the sort of thing that we, who profess to "look forward to the resurrection of the dead" ought to do! The saints, of course, are not disembodied abstractions or ideas. They are neither angels nor mere memories. Saints were flesh and blood and bone – just as God himself was in Jesus Christ. They were real people who lived and died in concrete times and places. Moreover, the saints, God's holy ones, are very much alive in Christ for, as our Lord himself insisted, "He is not the God of the dead but of the living." This is why the veneration of relics is such a good thing. The bodies of the saints are the bodies of those who are united in Christ, who have died in Christ and who will rise in Christ. The saints, in their earthly lives, brought God's love into the world through their bodies. And they continue to be instruments of God's grace now that those saints have been raised to eternal life. As Jesus said to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, His work is carried on through His servants, His love is ...

    6 min

  3. 2d ago

    What Does Love Look Like?

    By Msgr. Charles Fink It's a commonplace observation that most people think more readily in pictures than in abstract concepts, and that stories move and transform us in ways that logical arguments often don't. God, who of course knows this, therefore has revealed Himself to us, as C.S. Lewis put it, by writing Himself into a part in our story – at once author of the whole and character in the play, so to speak – and over the centuries, bequeathing to us a series of vivid images that, as the saying goes, are worth thousands of words. Three of these images, or pictures, are closely related, even though great swaths of time separate the production of each by the Divine Artist. The first and most ancient is the Crucifix, depicting the death of Christ on the Cross. How odd that it adorns our churches, our homes, even our persons, symbol as it is of such tragic human inanity and brutality and a reminder of what we're all capable of in our worst moments. And yet a reminder, too, of God's willingness out of incomprehensible love to absorb all that the worst in us can dish out rather than use His infinite power to give us what we deserve. What we have here, then, is a symbol of inexpressible love and mercy on God's part and unconscionable sin on ours. Can we learn more about God and human nature by contemplating the Crucifix than by reading dozens of theology and psychology books? But God is also aware of our fathomless capacity to take even the best gifts for granted and to trivialize even things most sacred and profound, not to mention the variety of human temperaments that make one picture transformative for some, less for others. Many centuries after Christ was crucified, and with crucifixes being everywhere by then, Jesus appeared to a simple Visitation nun in 17th-century France. What he revealed to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque was the image of his Sacred Heart, ringed with thorns, cross-crowned, a gash, the result of the centurion's spear, all aflame with love. He answered the rigorism and gloom of the Jansenist heresy with a picture. It told the same story as the Crucifix, and still does, but with a different emphasis, directing our attention even more clearly to Christ's sacrifice as an act of love, taking pity on humanity's waywardness and insensibility. Our bishops just consecrated the United States to the Sacred Heart of Jesus in preparation for the 250th Anniversary of our Founding. If this leads to nothing but a renewal among our Catholic people of devotion to Jesus' sacrificial Heart and our more faithfully living out the Two Great Commandments, the Church and the nation would surely be much better off. I wonder if even our Protestant brothers and sisters might profit by adopting this visual reminder of our Lord's love. In some circles, they already seem less hostile than in the past to Catholic sacramentals, e.g., in the distribution of ashes at the beginning of Lent. Why not the Sacred Heart? How could it hurt? In between the two great wars of the 20th century, God painted a third picture revelatory of His love and mercy. In 1931, the recipient of the revelation was a cloistered nun named Faustina Kowalska, subsequently canonized by Pope John Paul II, the first saint of the third millennium. In fact, John Paul II was more than anyone else responsible for making St. Faustina's Diary widely known – and for devotion to the Divine Mercy becoming one of the most popular Catholic devotions in the contemporary world. There are five elements to it: the second Sunday of Easter as Divine Mercy Sunday, the Divine Mercy Novena, the Hour of Mercy (3 p.m., the hour Jesus died on the Cross), the Divine Mercy Chaplet, and the Divine Mercy Image. This last is the complement to the aforementioned images and the gentlest and subtlest in communicating the message of God's love and solicitation toward us – and a reminder of our desperate need for His mercy. Harsh wounds do not appear in the Divine Mercy Image, and the brutality that inf...

    6 min

  4. 3d ago

    Two Views on Just War Just-War Reflections Randall Smith Outdated or Obsolete? Luis Lugo

    By Randall Smith and Luis E. Lugo The next synod might or might not deal with the Church's "just war" doctrine. So, let me go on record as saying: I don't like war. It doesn't represent a great "profile in courage" to say that. I mean, who loves war? I suppose some tyrants do. But that poses a problem. If tyrants pursue wars in order to secure their positions of power, what are others who hate war to do? The Church has long defended the legitimacy of wars of self-defense. But recent proclamations from certain sectors of the Church seem to verge on pacifism, the view that all war is wrong. Perhaps this simply means all aggressive wars by tyrants are wrong. That would not be a new or especially troubling teaching. It would be a welcome change if we could get tyrants to abide by the principle. But I am still wondering about other possible causes of war. So, for example, the United States went to war against England in 1812 for a number of reasons, but chiefly because the British Navy would stop U.S. ships at sea, search their crews, and "press" into service on British ships anyone who couldn't prove U.S. citizenship. Attempts to escape would be punished by severe whipping or even hanging. To state the matter overly simply: the U.S. government demanded that this kidnapping of American sailors stop. The British refused. War ensued. Was going to war to stop British enslavement of American sailors immoral? War is bad, but so was essentially kidnapping American sailors and forcing them to serve on British ships. Here's another conundrum. Let's say that Adolph Hitler had not attacked Poland or France. But now let's say it became known that the Nazis were exterminating millions of Jews. Would that justify an offensive attack on Germany to stop the killing? Or would any offensive declaration of war that was not in response to an attack on one's own country be "immoral"? Now again, I don't like war, but I also want to be aware of what those who lost people in the Holocaust would likely (and legitimately) say if we insisted that, "No, going to war to save millions of Jews from extermination would not be justified." Really? Hitler marches his armies into Poland, and the world goes to war. But if he was just killing Jews, no? Reasoning of this sort seems to have prevented "civilized" countries, like the U.S., from "intervening" when Hutus in Rwanda were slaughtering millions of Tutsis. They haven't attacked us, and we don't like war, so, although we don't like it, there's really nothing we can do. Maybe that's true. But I would at least want a serious discussion of the pros and cons. Here's another quandary. Let's say Hitler had not attacked any countries in Europe (yet), but he was threatening, and it became known that he was developing an atomic bomb. Would the European powers have been justified in attacking him to stop that development? Should attacking Nazi Germany to forestall Hitler getting an atomic weapon be rejected a priori based on the notion that all offensive wars are per se immoral? Maybe. But I'm glad I'm not the one who has to make those decisions (which admittedly is a pretty cheap cop-out). As a general rule, I admire pacifists, especially when they're like Desmond Doss, the combat medic who refused to carry a weapon but became the first conscientious objector to be awarded the Medal of Honor after single-handedly saving the lives of 75 to 100 wounded soldiers under heavy fire during the Battle of Okinawa. Or when they're like the townspeople of Le Chambon in France who conspired together during the Second World War to hide and save thousands of Jewish refugees fleeing from the Holocaust. They too risked everything. What is harder to admire are the pacifists whom author Philip Hallie criticizes in an essay on Le Chambon — those who "keep their hands clean" but let the powerful tyrannize the less powerful. "Too often I had found nonviolent people to be too patient," writes Hallie, "patient with the murder of others. They...

    13 min

  5. 4d ago

    Can the Catholic Church Save Education?

    By Robert Royal There's a strange ferment underway in American education. This week, two promising Catholic initiatives emerged: a gathering at Christendom College on K-12 education that resulted in the Front Royal Principles, and a high-level consultation in Washington D.C. organized by the Cardinal Newman Society, pursuing the renewal of everything from kindergarten to college-level Catholic instruction. But in recent months, there have been similar efforts for education renewal at secular universities: one from Yale – yes, Ivy-League Yale – addressing the "lack of trust" in higher education, and another convened jointly by Vanderbilt and Washington Universities over the crisis in the humanities. Among the various aims of these studies, the common concern is that much modern education, Catholic and not, is not working and needs to be different – and better. Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Education – an unconstitutional agency (education is not among the "enumerated powers" allotted by the Constitution to the Federal government) – is downsizing and offloading various activities to other agencies. The DOE's enormous bureaucracy and budget ($250 billion a year) couldn't help doing some good over the decades, of course. But since it got "woke," it has also trespassed constitutional limits intended to prevent precisely such abuses: politicizing learning and inserting itself into everything from obsessing over racism in U.S. history to pushing LGBT activism. The Yale report (here), written by a faculty committee, provides a kind of skeleton key to everything else. Many people today lament the politicization and bias in university education. What's not so common is an actual effort to understand – and do something – about a problem that you almost have to willfully choose to ignore. The report was prompted by the need to "regain trust" at a time when high tuitions and dubious campus politics have led many to question the value of education, even at prestigious institutions like Yale. And given the "demographic cliff" – the smaller numbers of young people who are now turning college age – institutions of higher learning need all the help they can get just to survive. Yale's president emphasized several salient findings, beginning with "trust needs to be earned." She pointed out the need for a rigorous admissions process – even the best universities are finding more and more students incapable of basic reading and thinking. On campus, students often don't discover openness in classroom discussions: "echo chambers do not produce the best teaching, research, or scholarship." Self-censorship results. And grade inflation has further distorted undergraduate study. The committee rightly recommended renewed attention to the liberal arts, the "foundational wisdom. . .that will serve [students] throughout their lives." But as the Vanderbilt-Washington University study found, the liberal arts are themselves currently in crisis not least because of a "deterioration in scholarly standards." It was written by professors drawn from several distinguished institutions who were careful to point out that there's much good work still being done by their colleagues. But it allows there's some truth in the widespread complaint that standards have been: distorted within these disciplines both to privilege work on topics that are taken to be relevant to social justice, and…designed to ensure that only politically acceptable work is published, taught, and valorized. The result of this distortion…is an academic ecosystem in which much of what passes as scholarship in the humanistic disciplines is in fact a mix of tendentious, biased research, feeble academic agitprop, and jargon-laden nonsense. Both studies propose reasonable remedies, too reasonable given the depth of the crisis, whose source – and remedy – lie elsewhere. If there is a solution, it may have to come from the institution that created the university with its emphasis on the proper study...

    7 min

  6. 5d ago

    A Perfect Model of Fatherhood

    By St. Pope John Paul II Excerpted from Address of John Paul II to the members of the Pontifical Council for the Family, June 4, 1999 The theme of fatherhood, which you have chosen for this plenary meeting, refers to the third year of preparation for the Great Jubilee, dedicated precisely to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is worthwhile reflecting on this theme, since in today's family the father figure is in danger of becoming more and more hidden or even absent. In the light of the paternity of God "from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named" (Eph 3:15), human fatherhood and motherhood acquire all their meaning, dignity, and greatness. "Human fatherhood and motherhood, while remaining biologically similar to that of other living beings in nature, contain in an essential and unique way a 'likeness' to God which is the basis of the family as a community of human life, as a community of persons united in love (communio personarum)." (Gratissimam sane, n. 6) We can still hear the vivid echo of the recent celebration of Pentecost, which moves us to proclaim with hope St. Paul's affirmation: "All who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God." (Rom 8:14) Just as the Holy Spirit is the life of the Church (cf. Lumen gentium, n. 7), he must also be the life of the family, the little domestic church. For every family, he must be the inner principle of vitality and energy, which keeps the flame of conjugal love ever burning in the spouses' reciprocal gift of self. It is the Holy Spirit who leads us to the heavenly Father and enables the trusting, jubilant prayer "Abba, Father!" (Rom 8:15; Gal 4:6) to rise from our hearts. The Christian family is called to be distinguished for its atmosphere of shared prayer, in which God is addressed with the freedom of children and called by the affectionate name of "our Father"! May the Holy Spirit help us discover the Father's face as a perfect model of fatherhood in the family. For some time now, the family institution has been under repeated attack. These attacks are all the more dangerous and insidious since they ignore the irreplaceable value of the family based on marriage. They have reached the point of proposing false alternatives to the family and of calling for legislative recognition of them. But when laws, which should be at the service of the family, a fundamental good for society, turn against it, they acquire alarming destructive power. Thus, in some countries, there is a desire to impose on society so-called "de facto unions," reinforced by a series of legal effects which erode the very meaning of the family institution. "De facto unions" are marked by instability and the lack of the irrevocable commitment which gives rise to rights and duties and respects the dignity of the man and woman. Instead, there is a desire to give juridical value to a will that is far removed from any form of definitive bond. With these premises, how can we hope for truly responsible procreation which is not limited to giving life, but also includes that training and education which only the family can guarantee in all its dimensions? Arrangements of this sort ultimately put the meaning of human fatherhood, of fatherhood in the family, seriously at risk. This happens in various ways when families are not well established. When the Church explains the truth about marriage and the family, she does not do so only on the basis of the data of Revelation, but also by taking into account the demands of the natural law, which are at the foundation of the true good of society and its members. In fact, it is important for children to be born and raised in a home where parents are united in a faithful covenant. It is quite possible to imagine other forms of relationship and cohabitation between the sexes, but none of these, despite some people's contrary opinion, offers a real juridical alternative to matrimony, but rather a weakening of it. In the so-called "de facto unions," we see a more o...

    7 min

  7. 6d ago

    Of Jesus and Life at the Bottom

    By Auguste Meyrat Among the greatest challenges that Jesus poses to His disciples are His prescriptions on wealth. On the one hand, Jesus extolls poverty. He begins the Beatitudes with the declaration, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." Elsewhere in the Gospels, He tells a rich man to give away all his possessions since "it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God." On the other hand, Jesus also acknowledges the need for productivity, especially in the parable of the talents, where the third servant is punished for not generating a profit with the one talent with which the master had invested him. Jesus also recognizes the need to pay taxes to Caesar ("Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's") and even does so Himself without complaint. Christians have traditionally reconciled these two views by treating money as a means and not an end. You should indeed work and produce wealth, but must never idolize money or fall into greed. Unfortunately, instead of maintaining this balance, Catholic progressives (among others) now idolize the poor and condemn wealth. They, therefore, ignore the actual causes of poverty (social and political dysfunction, lack of education, indolence, addiction and vice, etc.), and focus their ire on the ultrawealthy and capitalism because this fits a false political "narrative." The main problem with this view, however, is that it frames poverty as a material rather than a spiritual phenomenon. In truth, behind every rich tycoon and penniless pauper is a story that involves certain beliefs, values, and perceptions, i.e., the immaterial part of themselves. To better understand this dynamic, one would do well to read Theodore Dalrymple's modern classic Life at the Bottom: The Worldview That Makes the Underclass. As a psychiatrist working in the slums and prisons of England, Dalrymple was close enough to see what really afflicts the poor. It is usually not various systems of "oppression," the lack of economic opportunities, or the rise in CO2 levels; it's more often an attitude that rejects discipline, gratitude, and personal agency. Of course, Dalrymple recognizes that this mindset does not arise spontaneously, but has been inculcated by popular media, public education, and ideologues and demagogues. Growing up in unstable households, rife with domestic abuse, alcoholism, and criminal neglect, the children who make it to adulthood are completely unequipped to cope with reality and blame others for their problems. They cannot control impulses, work a steady job, or make sacrifices. Many of them cannot read, write, or do arithmetic, and few of them are part of a religious community. As a result, hardly anyone in this class has a moral compass to guide them. When Dalrymple talks to a group of murderers in a prison where he worked, he notes they were "so convinced of the gross injustice of the world that they were convinced also that nothing they did themselves could add significantly to its sum." This distorted moral outlook also comes out in many stories of women staying with abusive and unfaithful men because they learned to equate love and commitment with lust and wrath: "In the absence of a marriage ceremony, a black eye is his promissory note to love, honor, cherish, and protect." Many souls are thus condemned to live in squalor in an otherwise developed country like England. The men end up unemployed and frequently in prison; the women have children out of wedlock and continue coupling with different partners; and the children internalize the chaos around them, forming gangs, bullying others, and committing crimes with impunity. Sadly, this situation is only made worse by the poor's supposed champions in the British upper classes. Like their counterparts in America, they call for more welfare payments, more social services, more subsidized housing, and less policing. They believe that poverty is de...

    6 min

  8. Jun 19

    Whatever Happened to Natural Law?

    By Richard A. Spinello There are many crises in the Catholic Church today, but one of the most serious is the dismal state of moral theology. That crisis has its roots in the confusion and intellectual ferment that ensued in the aftermath of Vatican II. Progressive moral theologians proposed questionable moral theories like proportionalism and the "fundamental option," while prominent scholars like Bernard Häring dissented on vital issues of received moral teaching such as the inadmissibility of contraception and the indissolubility of marriage. These dissident theologians had differing visions, but one common theme: the Church had no authority to proclaim specific, exceptionless moral norms based on natural law. The best it could do was to teach formal moral principles. Specific moral precepts such as "adultery is always wrong" are highly problematic, in their view, because there may be valid exceptions. A corollary is the autonomy of conscience along with "discernment" in making moral decisions. In place of natural law, they recommended more flexible theories that allow for moral compromise in some situations. John Paul II sought to correct these errors in his encyclical Veritatis splendor. The fundamental option, proportionalism, the sovereignty of conscience, and moral subjectivism – all the heterodox doctrines – were thoroughly refuted through principled reasoning. He also reaffirmed the Church's commitment to natural law and its anthropological premise of a common and fixed human nature that is a bridge to that law. Intrinsic goods such as life and health, marriage and friendship, constitute our human flourishing. A set of moral norms flows from the first precepts of the natural law and prohibits intrinsic evils such as adultery or the taking of innocent life. For a time, it looked like the philosopher-pope had succeeded in his herculean effort to renew moral theology. But then came the papacy of Pope Francis, which consistently sought to dethrone the principles of traditional natural law theory. Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia admits as much in his recent interview, "My Reforms with Francis." He recounts how Pope Francis dispatched him to reinvent the John Paul II Institute in Rome to overcome the rigid and moralistic natural law framework that was at the center of the curriculum. What was necessary, declares Bishop Paglia, "was the rethinking of the concept of 'nature,' which underpinned a static and immutable vision of the natural law, and with it the questioning of the essentialist and ahistorical paradigm that had supported. . .moral theology." Pope Francis' Amoris Laetitia was an attempt to move in this direction, and it replaced Veritatis Splendor as the guiding text at the JPII Institute. Pope Francis' encyclical clearly sides with the progressive wing of the Church on issues like intrinsic evil. In chapter eight, he explains: It is reductive simply to consider whether or not an individual's actions correspond to a general law or rule, because that is not enough to discern and ensure full fidelity to God in the concrete life of a human being. . . .It is true that general rules set forth a good which can never be disregarded or neglected, but in their formulation they cannot provide absolutely for all particular situations. (304) The relevant "general rule" is Jesus' prohibition against remarriage for someone divorced from his or her spouse because it is tantamount to adultery. But Amoris laetitia clearly does not consider this rule to be exceptionless, nor does it consider adultery to be an intrinsic evil, something always, objectively, wrong and harmful even if there is no subjective culpability. Since Amoris Laetitia, there have been many other assaults on traditional natural law and absolute moral norms. During an international conference on moral theology at the Gregorian University in Rome, the keynote speaker, Father Julio Martinez, spoke about the need to "untie the knots Veritatis splendor made in moral th...

    7 min
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