Quick Hits: Will Amoris Laetitia make a difference? Why Vatileaks trial is not a press-freedom case

By Phil Lawler ( bio - articles - email ) | Apr 04, 2016 | In Quick Hits

• As we await the publication of the apostolic exhortation, Amoris Laetitia, the question everyone is asking is whether or not Pope Francis will make some provision for divorced-and-remarried Catholics to receive Communion. Vatican-watcher John Allen takes an unusual approach to that question, arguing that for practical purposes, this might not make much difference in the lives of ordinary Catholics. Among the relatively few divorced/remarried Catholics who attend church regularly, Allen observes, many (perhaps even most?) are already receiving Communion, with the tacit consent of their pastors. But that’s only part of the story. If the Pope gives the green light to a practice that is now illicit, pastors who have been ignoring the rules will once again be vindicated, while priests who have been following the Church’s established discipline will be left looking backward—again. The net result will be encouragement for priests to ignore the rules and do what they want. That would be a very dangerous development for the faithful Catholic laity, for whom the rules are the only protection against the whims of their clergy.


• In an interview with the same John Allen, New York’s Cardinal Dolan argues that divorce will not be the key issue in the apostolic exhortation. Questioned about a possible change on that issue, however, the cardinal mentions: “Of course, there’s a conservative approach to the internal forum solution that most conservative canonists and theologians have defended forever.” There is? I can’t say I’m familiar with it. Of course I’m not an expert. But I don’t think King Henry VIII was familiar with that solution, either, and he had excellent canonical advice from his chancellors, Cardinal Wolsey and St. Thomas More.


• And here’s something else I hadn’t been told: Until I read this column by Vatican-watcher Andrea Gagliarducci, I was not aware that the two Italian Journalists who are defendants in the “Vatileaks II” trial were not simply passive recipients of leaked documents. According to testimony heard by the Vatican tribunal, the journalists were given passwords that enabled them to pilfer documents from Vatican computers. So this isn’t a freedom-of-the-press case, Gagliarducci concludes. As the Vatican has said all along, the defendants are being charged with stealing documents, which is universally recognized as a crime.