Some Passing Thoughts on A Couple of Essays

About a month ago, Pope Francis' letter to the Argentine bishops on the implementation of Amoris laetitia (AL) in regards to the civilly divorced and remarried was published in the Acta Apostolicae Sedis. Dr. Edward Peters, a canon lawyer, addressed this with some clarifying remarks from Fr. Z over at his blog. I had posted some thoughts over there, and so as not to lose them in the shuffle, I'll post them here as well. I mainly wanted to bring up an excellent essay that had been published in print by Fr. Brian Harrison, O.S. A couple quick points though before I post those thoughts in response to Dr. Peter's essay...

I'm getting really tired of all the bad mouthing of His Holiness in certain pockets of the interwebs. It's really disgusting to see how he is being talked about in some quarters. Until proven otherwise, I take Pope Francis' words at face value: "I am a son of the Church". As I am too, I believe that there are many people out there who are twisting the pope's words in AL, and now in this published letter. After studying the issue I agree with both Dr. Peters and Fr. Raymond J. de Souza that "it is possible to read the Buenos Aires guidelines as consistent with the Church’s traditional teaching..." I defer to these men who are experts on the situation. I simply add my thoughts to this just to bring attention to what Fr. Brian Harrison had to say. My comment follows after the jump. It'd be best to read Fr.Z's comments linked above first before continuing.

The Country Wedding- John Lewis Krimmel

I must admit, I was still a little confused after initially reading Dr. Peters’ essay, but after re-reading it with Fr. Z’s comments, it honestly made more sense. Still though, I’d like to throw the following out to you, Fr. Z, and to the other readers: Canon 915 is not “the sole bulwark against the abandonment of the Eucharist to the vagaries of individual, often malformed, consciences” who have civilly divorced and remarried, and live more uxorio. Please allow me, or rather Fr. Brian Harrison, O.S., to explain…

As I said, I was a bit confused when I was reading Dr. Peters’ essay. This was one of the portions in particular:

“[I]n its canonical sense ‘magisterium’ generally refers to the Church’s authority to issue teachings on faith and morals, not to the Church’s authority to enforce discipline related to matters of faith and morals. … 

“[T]he fact remains that the content of any Church document, in order to bear most properly the label ‘magisterial’, must deal with assertions about faith and morals, not provisions for disciplinary issues related to faith and morals.”

Now this made me pause for a second because I was recalling Fr. Harrison’s recent essay in “The Latin Mass” magazine entitled “Divorced and Invalidly Remarried Catholics: The Magisterial Tradition”. This exhaustive essay could be found divided into two parts in the Summer 2017 and Fall 2017 issues of the magazine. He notes that “this study [is] considering the dogmatic status of the traditional exclusion of those in question from the sacraments, arguing that this is in fact an infallibly proposed doctrine of the Church’s universal and ordinary magisterium.”

So as I read Dr. Peters’ essay, I was scratching my head thinking, “How can the teaching regarding civilly divorced and remarried Catholics be infallibly proposed by the ordinary and universal magisterium, as Fr. Harrison says, if Dr. Peters is claiming that withholding the Blessed Sacrament in such cases is a disciplinary matter?”

Saints and Doctors of the Church

Then I re-read Dr. Peters’ essay and noticed two things. First, it became clear to me that Dr. Peters is specifically talking about Canon 915. He is arguing that nothing in the Argentine Letter or AL has abrogated Canon 915, which not only covers those who live more uxorio, but people in many other cases. However, Dr. Peters notes that Canon 915 is the “only reason [we have] to bar reception of holy Communion in these situations”; that is, a situation in which the civilly divorced and remarried person who lives more uxorio wishes to receive the Holy Eucharist.

Second, I realized that Dr. Peters was not necessarily denying that this teaching of the Church (regarding the civilly divorced and remarried) does not fall under the umbrella of faith and morals. As Fr. Harrison notes, “the Latin term ‘mores’ includes more than just ‘morality’.

Fr. Harrison’s essay lays out many examples where the Church infallibly taught, via her ordinary and universal magisterium, that those living more uxorio were to be withheld from receiving the Eucharist. This is the other avenue, besides Canon 915, in which one can defend the Church’s practice of withholding the Blessed Sacrament from the civilly divorced and remarried who live more uxorio. He notes the following:

“The principle ‘once infallible, always infallible’ also needs to be kept in mind… [I]t should be obvious that if the requirement of agreement among bishops came to be fulfilled at any previous time in Church history, along with the other conditions for infallibility, the teaching in question then ‘passed the point of no return’; it became set in stone – infallible and irreformable – from that moment onward. Hence, any subsequent loss of consensus among the bishops about that teaching will not cause it to revert to a ‘fallible’ uncertain status.”

So is this withholding of the Eucharist to such divorced and remarried couples a matter of mere discipline, or does this teaching explicitly fall into the category of faith and morals? Fr. Harrison points out that it is the latter. Remember I mentioned that the Latin “mores” covers more than just “morals”? I’ll quote Fr. Harrison at length here:

“[I]t is important to recall that the Church’s infallibility is not limited to its primary object, which is the deposit of faith — the body of truths revealed by God (dogmas). Both Vatican Councils have made it clear that the charism of infallibility extends also to whatever teaching is necessary for ‘devoutly guarding and faithfully expounding’ this revealed deposit. … 

“In dealing with this point, the Catechism of the Catholic Church [citing Lumen gentium 25 and Mysterium Ecclesiae] add[s] a further clarification in order to rebut those recent theologians who have claimed that in questions of morality there are so many ‘grey areas’, nuances, and exceptions to ‘rules’ that the Church’s infallibility does not extend to moral teachings: 

“‘The supreme degree of participation in the authority of Christ is ensured by the charism of infallibility. This infallibility extends as far as does the deposit of divine Revelation; it also extends to all those elements of doctrine, including morals, without which the saving truths of the faith cannot be preserved, explained, or observed’ (CCC 2035). 

Pope St. John Paul II

“This explicit mention of ‘morals’ is not of course an innovation on the part of the Catechism, since the scope of the Church’s infallibility has always been taught (as is seen in the solemn definition of Vatican I) to be ‘doctrine of faith and morals’ (fides et mores). Moreover, the Latin term ‘mores’ includes more than just ‘morality’. For us English-speakers, ‘morals’ and ‘morality’ refer to ethical norms, most of which are part of the natural moral law as well as being handed down in Scripture and/or Tradition. We find them expounded, for instance, in Part III of the Catechism and in courses of ‘moral theology’. But in the context of the term fides et mores, fides means ‘faith’ in the narrow sense of speculative (purely intellectual) beliefs such as those we profess in the Creeds, while mores, in contrast, covers all practical, behavioral norms and customs that Catholics are to observe; and the Church can discern some of these customs or practices to be immutably necessary for integral Catholic living and so teach this fact infallibly. Examples of such infallibly enjoined practices that are not also part of the natural moral law would be the observance of Sunday instead of Saturday under the New Covenant, and the need for infant baptism.”

I would love to post or scan uploads of the entire essay here, but I don’t know if that would be approved of as the magazine is subscription based. Unfortunately, I haven’t seen the essay anywhere on the Internet. However, I hope this snippet at least proves that there is another avenue, besides canon 915, to defend the teaching of the Church that prevents the civilly divorced and remarried living more uxorio from receiving the Blessed Sacrament, which, in turn, also defends ministers of Holy Communion who rightfully and mercifully withhold the Eucharist to such divorced and remarried persons.


I do encourage everyone to read this essay, as many references of the ordinary and universal magisterium teaching this infallibly proposed doctrine are cited within it.