Vatican newspaper article: Pope’s apostolic exhortation is magisterial teaching

August 24, 2016

Writing in the Vatican newspaper, a Spanish ecclesiology professor said that Pope Francis’s apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia is part of the non-definitive ordinary Magisterium of the Roman Pontiff to which the faithful owe religious submission of intellect and will.

Father Salvador Pie-Ninot examined the exhortation in light of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s 1990 instruction on the ecclesial vocation of the theologian, as well as the Second Vatican Council’s Dogmatic Constitution on the Church.

Without mentioning Cardinal Raymond Burke by name, Father Pie-Ninot appears to disagree with the cardinal over the interpretation of Pope Francis’s words in the third paragraph of the exhortation.

In April, Cardinal Burke told The National Catholic Register that “Pope Francis makes clear, from the beginning, that the post-synodal apostolic exhortation is not an act of the Magisterium.” Father Pie-Ninot, on the other hand, believes that Pope Francis is referring to prudential judgments that are often included in documents of the ordinary Magisterium.

 

---

For all current news, visit our News home page.

---

 
Further information:

• Magistero da accogliere e attuare (L’Osservatore Romano, p. 7)
• Vatican newspaper: 'Amoris Laetitia' is authoritative church teaching (CNS)
• Cardinal Burke: papal document does not-- and cannot-- change Church teaching (CWN, 4/11)