Yes, Amoris Laetitia Paragraph 303 Really Undermines Catholic Moral Teaching

Yes, Amoris Laetitia Paragraph 303 Really Undermines Catholic Moral Teaching

This is no surprise to readers of this website. But it is great news that more Catholics are waking up.

September 28, 2017 (LifeSiteNews) — Two Catholic theologians published an article earlier this week arguing that a major criticism of Pope Francis’ exhortation Amoris Laetitia (AL) is based on a faulty Vatican-rendered translation into English from Latin.
In their La Stampa article titled Does Amoris Laetitia 303 Really Undermine Catholic Moral Teaching?, Drs. Robert Fastiggi and Dawn Eden-Goldstein provide what they say is a more accurate translation of Amoris Laetitia paragraph 303. They argue that critics have raised alarm “precisely upon what the Latin text does not say.”
They have used their translation to cast doubt on the Filial Correction made public on the weekend that accused Pope Francis of propagating heresy. The Filial Correction lists AL 303 among the dozen passages found in the exhortation that the signers say serve to propagate heresy.
Paragraph 303 is where Pope Francis speaks about “irregular couples” living in a situation that does not “correspond objectively to the overall demands of the Gospel.”
The official Vatican English translation reads:

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. In any event, let us recall that this discernment is dynamic; it must remain ever open to new stages of growth and to new decisions which can enable the ideal to be more fully realized.

Catholic philosopher Dr. Josef Seifert logically deduced from this paragraph that if Pope Francis believes that adultery — to quote the exhortation — “is what God himself is asking” of couples in “irregular” situations, then there is nothing stopping any other intrinsically evil act, such as contraception and homosexuality, from eventually being justified.
It was for this reason that he called Amoris Laetitia a ticking “theological atomic bomb” that has the capacity to destroy all Catholic moral teaching.
Dr. Christian Brugger also argued that AL 303 implies that God is “asking” some people “to live in a life-state in which they are objectively violating grave matter.”
But Drs. Fastiggi and Eden-Goldstein believe that critics “misread and distort” what Pope Francis is actually saying in AL 303. They write:

Our translation from the Latin shows that Pope Francis is clearly not saying that conscience may rightly discern that an objectively immoral act is not immoral. Instead, he is noting that in some complex and irregular situations a person’s conscience will recognize that God is asking for a generous response, indeed an oblationem, or offering, that moves in the right direction even though it does not completely rectify the objective irregularity of the situation.
…It is very clear from the Latin text of Amoris laetitia 303 that Pope Francis is describing how conscience can discern that God himself is asking for a small step in the right direction in the midst of a mass of impediments and limitations. The Holy Father is not saying that God himself is asking certain people “to continue to commit intrinsically wrong acts such as adultery or active homosexuality.” This is a most unfortunate reading of the text by Seifert. Instead Pope Francis is saying that in certain difficult situations God is asking for a “generous response” (liberale responsum), an offering (oblationem)—that is, a step in the right direction.

LifeSiteNews asked Dr. Christian Brugger, Senior Fellow of Ethics at the Culture of Life Foundation in Washington D.C., for an analysis of Fastiggi and Eden-Goldstein’s proposed translation. He responded with a small treatise that he asked be published in full.
He concluded after a detailed examination of the Latin text that Fastiggi and Eden-Goldstein’s proposed translation that would render AL 303 in a more orthodox light “is not justified by the text.”
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