Pope to Jesuits: Help Critics of Amoris Laetitia to See Its Morality Is Thomist

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I tried to find it, and could see nothing… at least not connect to paragraph 145 which Fr. Crean referenced in the context of pointing out the citing of an objection. The closest that I can find connected to that paragraph is actually the Reply to Objection 3, which would, strictly speaking, be Aquinas’s own teaching since it’s actually his response to the specific objection.
 
so speak clearly for all our benefit - are you saying that his comment have little or no value? - or do I misunderstand the intention of your comment?
 
ha ha - yes I agree - but we can’t do anything about that - can we? what we can do is seek God’s Truth which may or may not be reflected by our Holy Father the Pope. Discussion is good as long as it remains constructive - we all have something to learn - it helps keep our faith alive and active. Where our church is headed is a matter only God knows. Our job is to remain active and keep our hearts open to our error - which is something we all have - the hard part is uncovering it - God is happy when we try.
 
I think the concern is that Paragraph 145 of AL opens with “Experiencing an emotion [passions or passion of the soul] is not, in itself, morally good or evil” which then references Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 24, art. 1. However, this is actually articulated as Objections 1 and 3 to which Thomas replies to the contrary. Part of Thomas Aquinas’ answer to the objection is as follows: ipsae passiones, secundum quod sunt voluntariae, possunt dici bonae vel malae moraliter. Dicuntur autem voluntariae vel ex eo quod a voluntate imperantur, vel ex eo quod a voluntate non prohibentur (“The emotions themselves, inasmuch as they are voluntary, can be called morally good or bad. And they are said to be voluntary inasmuch as they are commanded by the will, or else because they are not checked by the will.”) This is where Father Thomas Crean states that there exists a serious mistake in the text of Amoris Laetitia, since certain emotions [passions] can rise by themselves to the level of mortal sin, for example, certain kinds of deliberate anger and sexual desire. It is dangerous to give the impression that only outward acts can be morally good or evil. AL does not clarify that Aquinas rejected the statement made in the opening of 145.
 
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Also, AL 301 misuses or misapplies Aquinas when it states that “St. Thomas Aquinas himself recognized that someone may possess grace and charity, yet not be able to exercise any one of the virtues well”, which comes from Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 65, art. 3 ad 2; De Malo, q. 2, art. 2. Dr. Joseph Shaw points out that this quotation is “irrelevant to the question of whether one can be excused from obeying the divine law by an ability to see its value, or whether one can be obliged to disobey it to avoid some other sin. St. Thomas is simply talking of people who have repented of past sins, and who now live virtuously, but do so with some difficulty because of the effect that those past sins have left behind.”

Dr. Shaw goes on: “Aquinas is simply pointing out that impediments are more likely when the virtue has not been acquired by a process of training and habituation over time, but by an infusion of grace from God. This abstruse issue is completely irrelevant to the matter at hand, and makes me wonder about the intellectual integrity of the people advising Pope Francis at this point in the document.” A more relevant passage from the Summa would have been found in 1a 2ae 19, 6: “If erring reason tell a man that he should go to another man’s wife, the will that abides by that erring reason is evil; since this error arises from ignorance of the Divine Law, which he is bound to know.”
 
The issue that I take with Fr. Crean’s interpretation of Amoris Laetitia here is that he seems to presume that the emotion Pope Francis is talking about is one of those emotions that were either “commanded by the will, or else… not checked by the will.” But even Aquinas admits that an emotion can be a movement of the “irrational appetite,” and therefore neither intrinsically good or bad because nothing is done with it in the reason or will.

Fr. Crean also seems to interpret Pope Francis’ “what is morally good or evil is what we do_emphasized text_ on the basis of, or under the influence of, a given passion,” as applying only to external action. But the Pope makes it very clear in paragraphs 91, 103, 104, and 105 at the very least that it’s a matter of whether we choose to engage or not a passion - particularly a disordered passion - when it arises. Once the will is engaged (not just once a passion is acted upon) is when a passion takes on moral implications.

This, by the way, is actually completely in line with the mystical tradition, particularly the mystical tradition of the Desert Fathers and the Eastern Christian Fathers - who have heavily influenced Pope Francis.
 
Ok, I agree with you here, but then why cite Aquinas’ objection as a positive assertion in 145. That is what appears to be misleading, especially since the footnote cites precisely where AL obtained this statement. Also misleading if the qualifiers for the emotions or passions are ~40 paragraphs earlier than the citation.
 
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The footnoted text in AL (footnote 140) isn’t a direct quote from the Summa, but only a summary. The footnote itself references the entirety of the passage in the Summa: I-II, q. 24, art. 1. Pope Francis doesn’t narrow it down to a particularly quote within the article. That was where I got confused with Fr. Crean’s understanding of this particular passage of AL itself.

As to the other passages he mentions, I’ve not yet had the time to look at them more in-depth.
 
While it is not a direct quote (but nearly so), it footnotes the single sentence that opens 145 with the designation cf, which means to compare the text with the reference cited.

From Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 24, art. 1
Objection 1. … Therefore no passion of the soul is morally good or evil.

Objection 2. … Therefore they [passion of the soul] have no connection with human, i.e. moral, good or evil.

Objection 3. … Therefore the passions are not morally good or evil.

These are all objections!

Compare the opening sentence of AL 145: “Experiencing an emotion [passion of the soul] is not, in itself, morally good or evil.”

See the problem?
 
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I see the problem. However, Aquinas then goes on to elaborate in the “I Answer That” that there is a sense in which passions in themselves are neither good nor evil, and a sense in which they can be, or have the potential to be depending on how we react to “the first stirrings” (as Pope Francis calls them) of the passion/emotion. Given other comments that Pope Francis makes about the passions in AL, he has the former sense in mind.
 
And, since it seems relevant, this is what Aquinas has to say in his Reply to Objection 3:

The Philosopher says that we are neither praised nor blamed for our passions considered absolutely; but he does not exclude their becoming worthy of praise or blame, in so far as they are subordinate to reason. Hence he continues: "For the man who fears or is angry, is not praised . . . or blamed, but the man who is angry in a certain way, i.e. according to, or against reason."

Note that he mentions passions can become worthy of praise or blame. It would seem to me that even according to Aquinas this would mean that a passion can “arise” within a person without that passion necessarily being good or bad. Again, it’s a matter of how we engaged that passion/emotion.
 
Well, we have probably beat this one to death, Phillip. As I noted previously, it is misleading to cite a single line in reference to an objection without qualifying the statement. Yes, it may be qualified elsewhere within the document, but that is not attributed to Aquinas. The footnote itself points to an unqualified statement that reads more as an absolute since the footnote ONLY refers to the first sentence of 145. That would almost be like me citing the pope as stating that abortion can be morally licit in certain instances, and I cite a reference where the full quote attributed to the pope was his refuting an objection where OTHERS proposed that abortion can be morally licit in certain instances, but I only quote the pope as uttering the objection making it sound as if the objection came from him.

Any thoughts on what appears to be Aquinas misapplied in 301 that I noted earlier in this thread?
 
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Perhaps you’re right and we have beaten this horse to death. I appreciate the conversation, though. I’ve greatly enjoyed it and learned a great deal from you.

In terms of the other areas where it seems Aquinas was misapplied, I haven’t been able to dig into those yet, although I do plan on doing so.

In all honesty, I’m still trying to get my head around the text of AL itself. I’m working my way through it for the sixth time, trying to get a better sense of what Pope Francis is getting at. I don’t want to become an apologist for the pope, I just want to try (if possible) to understand the document within its own context and within the context of Tradition itself.
 
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