If there is one lesson Pope Leo wants the heads of the world’s bishops’ conferences and Eastern rite church leaders whom he has gathered in Rome this week to take home, it is this: “Amoris Laetitia” is here to stay.
Pope Francis’ 2016 document was arguably his most contentious, with its openness to allowing divorced and remarried Catholics to receive Communion setting off a churning cycle of criticism in some corners of the church that would follow him for the remainder of his papacy. As has previously been described in America, last year’s conclave was seen as a referendum on Francis’ papacy, but some critics of Francis had remained hopeful that a Leo papacy would bring some reversals of Francis’ teachings and reforms. Instead, in almost every case, Leo has doubled down, as he is doing this week.
“Amoris,” and particularly its now-famous Chapter Eight on “Accompanying, Discerning and Integrating Weakness,” was revolutionary because of its pastoral emphasis on accompanying couples and individuals who do not adhere to the Catholic Church’s ideal of marriage as an eternal union between one man and one woman who are open to having children. In previous generations, people outside that norm were essentially left out of the church’s ministry; in my own family, my mother described how struck she was that her devout, remarried grandfather stayed back in the pew during Communion for her entire childhood. When he was finally re-admitted to Communion later in life, he invited the entire family to the Mass and returned from receiving the Eucharist with tears streaming down his face.
Just as “Amoris” was a response to the social changes that made marriages less common and less stable since the last papal exhortation on the family (John Paul II’s “Familiaris Consortio,” in 1981), this week’s meeting is a response to how those changes have continued and been exacerbated. In Pope Leo’s opening speech to the bishops, as well as subsequent speeches delivered by bishops and experts at the meeting, there has been a particular emphasis on the economic conditions that keep many young people from getting married.
Speaking this morning, Indian bishop Stephen Fernandes said: “Economic insecurity, employment difficulties, housing costs, migration, social instability and ecological concerns can make the future appear uncertain. For some, therefore, postponing marriage is not simply a rejection of marriage. It can reflect a crisis of confidence in the possibility of building a stable and enduring life with another person.” He and Australian Archbishop Timothy Costelloe, S.D.B., who also spoke this morning, described the challenges of war and climate change as other factors decreasing young people’s certainty in the future and their desire to have children.
The first two full days of the meeting have focused on challenges facing families and on encouraging vocations to marriage. Tomorrow, the discussion will continue to address how to support newly married couples, then turn Monday to accompanying families “in the difficulties of life” (likely the day that Communion for the divorced and remarried will be discussed), concluding with a look at families’ role in evangelization on Tuesday.
The meeting is not just a response to changing circumstances, however; it is also an “evaluation,” as one Vatican official described it at an introductory press conference, of how “Amoris” has been implemented—an implementation that was often overshadowed and shaped by debates over the document itself.
An interesting case study that may be raised in the room comes from the Czech Republic, where bishops gathered to decide how to discern with divorced Catholics a return to the sacraments and ended up abandoning the project; one bishop went ahead, developing a format in which couples would be counseled to seek an annulment and, after five years (a time in which the annulment process could very well still be dragging on), could discern returning to Communion with the help of a Missionary of Mercy. The Missionaries of Mercy were priests appointed by Pope Francis to preach forgiveness; the bishop said he chose them so divorced Catholics would meet someone “welcoming” who could accompany them and ultimately make a request on their behalf to the bishop to allow them to return to Communion.
At the same time, another Czech bishop filed a “dubia” with the Vatican requesting a yes-or-no answer on whether remarried couples had to abstain from sex to receive Communion, as had previously been taught. The Vatican said “no,” reiterating the point in “Amoris” that people could be re-admitted to Communion after careful discernment with a priest.
Other applications of “Amoris,” or lack thereof, will certainly be discussed in the meeting, though it is unlikely they will reach any conclusions. Unlike the 2023 and 2024 synods on synodality, the participants in this meeting will not vote paragraph-by-paragraph to approve a final document; rather, the synthesis document that emerges from the meeting will simply summarize what was discussed, and it is unclear what the pope will ultimately do with this document.
For Leo, it seems, there is inherent value in sitting with the questions facing couples and the church today and discussing them, even if those gathered do not reach conclusions. Speaking at the meeting’s opening on Wednesday night, the pope asked:
What are people truly seeking beneath these cultural changes? What do their joys and hopes, griefs and anxieties reveal to us? Where do our pastoral language and practices succeed in opening a path, and where do they fail to touch people’s hearts or assist their efforts to do what is good? What is the lived experience of families teaching us—an experience from which we have not yet fully learned?
Speaking about couples experiencing difficulties like divorce, Leo added, his voice growing heavier with emotion: “What kind of church…do people encounter precisely when they are most fragile? Do our communities help them discover that they still have a place, a responsibility and gifts to offer?” He asked the participants to “give such questions their full weight.”
While the layout of the meeting—participants sitting at round tables in the Paul VI Audience Hall—looks at first like the Synod on Synodality’s Roman gathering but with a greater share of bishops (which some have pointed out as an irony given that the meeting is primarily about marriage and family), a more accurate parallel may be the 2019 Vatican summit on the protection of minors.
In that meeting, the heads of the world’s bishops’ conferences were called to the Vatican for several days to listen to the testimonies of clerical sexual abuse survivors from five continents. The aim was to make them understand that sexual abuse was a pressing issue in their dioceses and to spark local actions by the bishops to reach just conclusions to abuse cases more quickly and to better accompany and assist victims. The meeting format was unusual at the time, particularly because of continued debates over the official status of bishops’ conferences in the church. Yet the invitation to this week’s meeting went, once again, to the bishops’ conference heads, and this time the meeting involved listening to 22 lay participants, mostly married couples, again from five continents.
With this parallel invitation list, it seems Leo may also have a similar intention: to get bishops from around the world to understand that, after all the debate, “Amoris” is here to stay. While an eventual follow-up may come from the Vatican, just as a series of reforms came from Pope Francis months after the 2019 summit, Leo may want the bishops to take action now based on what they have heard at the meeting to better accompany couples, listen to them, understand their circumstances and help them live out their vocations as best they can.
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