Pope promotes radical tenderness

The first question the document poses to the reader is less about what it says than about what is going on within it. Recognising its shape helps to i

Apr 15, 2016

By Fr Dr Andrew Hamilton SJ
The first question the document poses to the reader is less about what it says than about what is going on within it. Recognising its shape helps to identify the threads running through it.

We can understand its size and expansiveness when we remember that it responds to a Synod of Bishops drawn from all parts of the world, each with its own cultural and economic challenges for families. This diversity means that the document is not organised around the pressing questions asked in particular cultures.

As a result, it may bewilder a reader with preconceived ideas of what it should contain. When it describes the social contexts and challenges facing marriage, the document enumerates what the bishops have seen, with little attempt to weigh the relative importance and depth of their perceptions. It speaks of their fears, as well as of the realities they face.

In a document responding to a Catholic synod, too, the Pope writes as a member of the synod, sharing a commitment to the Catholic tradition as established in the history and life of the Catholic Church. He sets his own reflections in a positive restatement of the tradition and does not go beyond it.

In doing this, he also reveals the struggle of Catholics to articulate their faith in the face of new challenges from cultural change. The marital relationship between men and women, for example, is described in terms of masculine and feminine characteristics, but later it is acknowledged that these qualities are shared by both men and women. More work clearly needs to be done.

The document is described as an Apostolic Exhortation, and its most attractive sections have the conversational and encouraging tone of a good homily.

“The Pope returns again and again to the need to focus on faces when thinking of family and responding to people, and not to hammer them with abstract ideals or rules.”

Unlike most Vatican documents which reward reflection but demand that readers wrestle with them, The Joy of Love (Amoris Laetitia) could spark good conversation. Realistic sketches of the challenges facing married couples, accompanied by pithy and homely advice, such as commending ‘Please,‘ ‘Thank you’ and ‘Sorry’ as the three keys to good relationships, abound.

Pope Francis sketches an attractive view of marriage as a gift that Christian faith has to offer. The document’s title, The Joy of Love (Amoris Laetitia) is embodied in its tone.

His most succinct and focused argument comes when he recognises the importance of doctrine and law in Catholic conversations about marriage, and, simultaneously, insists on respecting the priority of people’s conscience in deciding how they should act. And they should always be met with compassion.

Catholics need ‘to avoid judgements which do not take into account the complexity of various situations’ and ‘to be attentive, by necessity, to how people experience distress because of their condition.’

I was struck by Francis’ frequent evocation of tenderness as a central quality of marriage and family life. It underlines the centrality of love in his description of marriage and his insistence on the beauty and attractiveness of the Christian ideal of marriage. He gives this priority over the laws and expectations with which it is often identified.

The appeal to tenderness also illuminates the pastoral approach he expects Catholics to take to people in difficult situations. It points to the threads that join personal relationships in families with relationships within churches and relationships to the environment. -- Eureka Street

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