In July 2023, the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF) received ten dubia (formal questions) from Cardinal Dominik Duka, Archbishop Emeritus of Prague, on behalf of the Czech Bishops’ Conference, regarding the proper interpretation of Amoris laetitia on the question of eucharistic communion for divorced and civilly remarried Catholics.
On September 25, Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernández, the new prefect of the DDF, published in Italian his reply (hereafter Risposta) to the ten dubia. His Risposta confirms that Amoris laetitia, interpreted according to the will of Pope Francis, teaches that divorced persons who have entered into a second civil union, who do not refrain from sexual intercourse with their new partners, sometimes may be allowed access to the sacraments of Reconciliation and the Eucharist. This was confirmed, Fernández says, when Francis replied favorably to a letter in September 2016 by the bishops of the Buenos Aires region to their priests setting forth that precise interpretation.
Francis responded enthusiastically to the Argentine bishops’ letter with his own letter of approval, privately addressed but made public at the time, stating, “The text is very good and thoroughly explains the sense of chapter VIII of ‘Amoris laetitia.’ There are no other interpretations. And I am sure it will do much good.” Recognizing that the authoritative status for the whole Church of this private letter might be questioned, Francis reprinted both letters in October 2016 in the Acta Apostolicae Sedis (AAS), the official organ of the Holy See, accompanied by a “rescriptum” that apparently elevated them to the status of magisterial documents. This brief history is rehearsed in Fernández’s Risposta.
On October 13, Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Müller, former prefect of the DDF (called CDF at the time—Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith) published an open letter to his friend Cardinal Duka criticizing Fernández’s Risposta to the ten dubia. Müller’s reply is sobering and cogent, although not easy reading, and perhaps for that reason it has not garnered much attention. Yet a former prefect’s careful explanation of why he thinks the present prefect is requiring “of the faithful a submission of mind and will to truths contrary to Catholic doctrine” surely deserves our attention.
This matter should be carefully considered and discussed by thoughtful Catholics, not least by those who have questions about the authoritative status of the teaching found in Amoris laetitia. Since a proper discussion is impossible unless we first understand what is at stake, we offer the following summary of Müller’s concerns along with a few of our own observations.
Cardinal Duka’s ten dubia ask in particular whether the above interpretation of Amoris laetitia is a teaching of the ordinary magisterium of the pope. Duka’s question is not simply theoretical but eminently practical. For if the teaching permitting divorced and civilly remarried Catholics into eucharistic communion is magisterial, then it would seem to require of the faithful, as Lumen gentium 25 teaches, a “religious submission of mind and will.”
In his Risposta, Fernández, after stating that Amoris laetitia is itself a magisterial document “toward which all are called to offer the submission of mind and will,” asserts that Francis’s letter to the Argentine bishops is indeed also a teaching of the authentic papal magisterium, because the pope indicated as much when he included it in the Acta Apostolica Sedis.
Cardinal Müller has deep misgivings about this reply. He says if the interpretation set forward by the Argentine bishops is magisterial, it puts the faithful in an untenable position for at least three reasons.
The first is that both Fernández’s Risposta and the Buenos Aires text are “theologically ambiguous.” The Risposta is ambiguous because it says that Amoris laetitia teaches that the Eucharist may be given to a divorced and remarried person “even when [that person] does not succeed in being faithful to the continence proposed by the Church.” Müller says this can be interpreted in two ways. The first understands the people in question as being unwilling to commit themselves to refraining from sexual intercourse; the second, to people who try to refrain but sometimes sinfully give in out of weakness. The latter interpretation would pose no problem because admitting such persons to the Eucharist after they confess those sins with a firm purpose of amendment is perfectly consistent with previous Church teaching.
But Müller points out that “this ambiguity is resolved in the Buenos Aires text” in favor of the interpretation which understands the remarried divorcees as unwilling to commit themselves to live in continence. For the Argentine bishops speak of admitting to the Eucharist those for whom “it has not been possible to obtain an annulment” and for whom trying to live in continence “may not in fact be feasible.” The text thus suggests that some divorced and remarried people cannot reasonably be expected to refrain from having sexual intercourse with their new partners, and teaches that in some cases they should be admitted to the Eucharist despite their unwillingness to commit themselves to live in continence.
A second ambiguity surrounds the Argentine bishops’ reference to those for whom “it has not been possible to obtain an annulment.” It certainly seems to refer to those who are already validly married, but it does not say that, and some have interpreted it, albeit improbably, as referring to people in a situation in which “although the marriage is not valid for objective reasons, these reasons cannot be proven before the ecclesiastical forum.” And Francis’s enthusiastic endorsement of the Buenos Aires text—“There are no other interpretations”—does little or nothing to erase the ambiguity.
Müller objects that it is problematic to demand submission of mind and will to a text of a “partial episcopal conference (the Buenos Aires region),” that lends itself to contradictory interpretations, and that seems to entail a conclusion “whose coherence with the teaching of Christ (Mk 10:1-12) is in question.”
The second reason Fernández’s Risposta puts the faithful in an untenable position is that affirming that the divorced and civilly remarried who are unwilling to commit themselves to live in continence may sometimes return to Holy Communion contradicts the ordinary magisterial teachings of two recent popes, namely John Paul II (Familiaris consortio 84) and Benedict XVI (Sacramentum caritati 29). Those popes explicitly reaffirm the ancient Church practice—based on Sacred Scripture—of refusing eucharistic communion to persons in this situation. To these teachings, which “bear witness to the Word of God,” the faithful already owe a religious submission of mind and will.
And thirdly, the interpretation apparently defended by the Risposta contradicts at least four propositions definitively taught by the Council of Trent: that the faithful are required to sacramentally confess all grave sins; that living in a sexually active relationship with someone other than one’s valid spouse while that spouse still lives is a grave sin of adultery; that a necessary condition for absolution is the penitent’s sorrow for sin committed and resolution to sin no more; and that it is possible for all the baptized to keep the Commandments. These teachings, Müller says, belong to divine revelation and therefore require of the faithful, not merely a religious submission of mind and will, but divine and Catholic faith.
How then should the faithful respond? Müller states that Catholics who reject the obvious interpretation of Amoris laetitia contained in the text of the Argentine bishops and in Fernández’s Risposta “cannot be accused of dissent.” For they are not exalting private opinion above what the magisterium teaches. Rather, they have found a contradiction between two sets of magisterial teachings and have chosen, quite rightly, to give assent to the one that has already been infallibly affirmed.
This point is worth underlining, not only regarding problems posed by Amoris laetitia, but in approaching Church teaching in general with its differing degrees of authoritativeness. The deposit of faith—the teaching of divine revelation—is always the norm for Catholic faith and practice and for the pronouncements of Church authority. All Catholic life—all teaching and practice—is to be judged in its light. If one suspects some discontinuity between an instance of putatively authoritative teaching and a truth of divine revelation (or a teaching already proposed definitively by the magisterium as pertaining to divine revelation, whether explicitly or as necessary for its articulation), one should first question one’s understanding of the authoritative teaching to see if the discontinuity is only apparent, arising because of some misunderstanding on one’s own part.
Indeed, one should do whatever one reasonably can to see if the apparent discrepancy can be resolved while maintaining continuity between the two teachings. If even after that good faith effort one remains convinced that they cannot be reconciled, then one is warranted in questioning—indeed one ought to question—the Catholic integrity of the non-infallible teaching and should not assent to it. Far from being an expression of “cafeteria Catholicism,” this is a mature expression of commitment to divine and Catholic truth, to which the faithful have a duty to submit themselves and in the light of which they should “take every thought captive” (2 Cor. 10:5).
Müller ends by saying that given the contradictory interpretations to which the Buenos Aires text and the Risposta lend themselves, a clear answer to a very precise dubium is needed. The question that must be answered is whether sacramental absolution may sometimes be given to a sacramentally married person who is unwilling to refrain from having sexual relations with a person with whom he or she lives in a second union. A related dubium also requires an answer: whether sacramental absolution may sometimes be given to a person who is unwilling to refrain from having sexual relations with a person who is sacramentally married to someone else. So long as these dubia are not resolved with clarity, the precise meaning of the Argentine and DDF documents remains in doubt.
All indications seem to indicate that the pope thinks that these questions must be answered in the affirmative, but he has thus far been unwilling to answer them. The problem with a positive response, Müller says, is that “such a response would be contrary to Catholic doctrine” and therefore one that the faithful “would not be obliged to accept.” One might even say that they would be obliged not to accept it.
We should hope for a negative response, which, as Müller points out, would be helpful primarily to the teaching authority itself by preserving its credibility, “since it would no longer require of the faithful” what cannot rightly be required, namely, “a submission of mind and will to truths contrary to Catholic doctrine.”