Legalistic Neutralization of the Teaching on Intrinsically Evil Acts and Absolute Moral Prohibitions in the Exhortation Amoris laetitia

Abstract

The Catholic Church’s traditional teaching on intrinsically evil acts and absolute moral prohibitions is clearly problematic for the pastoral and disciplinary solutions proposed in the eighth chapter of Pope Francis’s Apostolic Exhortation Amoris laetitia. Yet this teaching is a part of the moral doctrine of the Church, and it is impossible to contradict this teaching without coming into conflict with that doctrine. This article thus discusses major elements of the strategy of argument that seems to be applied in the Exhortation, in order to neutralize and relativize the traditional doctrine without causing evident contradictions within it. One of these strategic efforts consists of making use of the traditional concept of mitigating circumstances that lessen the negative moral evaluation of a human act. However, this traditional concept seems to be used in the Exhortation to promote a legalistic approach to morality. A so-called ‘laxist’ variant of legalism makes use of a certain interpretation of moral norms in order to defend people against the charge of their infringement. This approach does not take into account the influence that human acts have on the realization of the true human good, which is the goal of morality and the reason that norms exist. Legalism, therefore, does not help people to achieve their true end, which is fulfilment and happiness, but leads them into harmful moral minimalism. Another way to neutralize the teaching on intrinsically evil acts and absolute moral prohibitions consists in a legalistic reinterpretation of the law of gradualness, which is the concept taught by John Paul II. In order to carry out this reinterpretation, the binding norm of the indissolubility of marriage is substituted in the Exhortation Amoris laetitia with the ideal of indissolubility, which by its very nature is supererogatory (i.e., something ‘above the call of duty’). Yet another strategic method of neutralizing the traditional teaching on intrinsically evil acts and exceptionless moral prohibitions is a certain skepticism concerning the very possibility of the application of general norms to certain particular cases. The text makes an impression that these cases may be unique to such an extent that general norms cannot apply absolutely to them. Yet this skepticism consequently denies to the human mind the ability to uncover moral essence of some human acts, or even situates these acts wholly outside the domain of morality. In support of this skepticism, the Exhortation employs a statement of Saint Thomas Aquinas that has been taken out of context, skipping over the places where Saint Thomas explicitly teaches that there are absolutely morally forbidden acts that are deemed so because of their objective intrinsic disorderedness. Finally, the article looks at the concept of mercy, which is attenuated in the Exhortation probably in order to make possible this legalistic neutralization of the teaching on intrinsically evil acts and absolute moral prohibitions. In the Exhortation, mercy seems to be deprived of its status as a virtue and appears instead to be reduced to something akin to pity, which is a purely emotional reaction that has no relationship to the broader horizon of objective human good. Apparently following this strategy of argument, Pope Francis seems to demonstrate that the pastoral and disciplinary solutions he presents are coherent with traditional doctrine. Yet, while invoking certain elements of moral doctrine, he invents for these elements new meanings that explicitly differ from those they had until now.