What the document Querida Amazonia of Pope Francis actually says

Pope Francis has a lot to say, but none of what journalists expected

Much of the early news on Querida Amazonia focused on whether the door of the "married priests" was open or closed. It is comprensible. Indeed, it was inevitable after all the time and energy spent on the question - before, during and after the Amazon synod - by observers and journalists, synod participants and managers. However, the “Door Open / Door Shut” frame of the problem is not helpful.

The door - so to speak - is the one that opens and closes with a fair degree of regularity. Even in the Latin Church, where there is a tradition of preference for celibate clerics of all grades and states of life that dates back to the first millennium of Christianity. Celibacy for priests and bishops has been the universal discipline of that Church for a thousand years.

The point is: the door is the one that the Latin Church guards with care. The Latin Church opens it only in very particular and exceptional circumstances. Some of the Synod Fathers wanted to ask Pope Francis to consider expanding the list of exceptional circumstances in which the door could be opened. Some other Synod Fathers were firmly opposed to such expansion. In the end, the Synod Fathers divided the difference, noting in their final document that some of them wanted to ask him the question.

In any case, Pope Francis' post-synodal apostolic exhortation does not mention the specific disciplinary question. It doesn't even use the word "celibacy" or any of its kindred. Instead, Francis proposes a recovery of attitudes that were an ordinary expense and pivotal points of Catholic life until recently: prayer for the vocations of lay people and bishops who favor the generosity of the spirit and practice what they preach.

The title of the CNA sums it up well: "the Pope asks for holiness, not married priests".

This is in line with the declared purpose of Pope Francis in the exhortation: "[T] o propose a brief framework for reflection that can concretely apply to the life of the Amazon region a synthesis of some of the greatest concerns that I have previously expressed this can help us to receive a harmonious, creative and fruitful reception of the entire synodal process. “It is an invitation to pray and think together with the mind of the Church, and it is difficult to imagine that no one is on board when it is put just like that.

Presenting the document to the press office of the Holy See on Wednesday, the undersecretary in charge of the migrants and refugees section of the Department for Integral Human Development, Cardinal Michael Czerny, stressed that the exhortation "is a magisterial document". He went on to say: “It belongs to the authentic magisterium of the Pope”.

When asked what it means more specifically, Cardinal Czerny offered: "It belongs to the ordinary magisterium." Pressed further, particularly with regard to how the document is to inform our understanding of changing issues, some of which may not be objects of faith of their own - such as sociological circumstances or scientific consensus - Cardinal Czerny said: “The finally, the right object is to follow Jesus Christ and to life outside the Gospel - and of course, in our life outside the Gospel, we adapt to the changing circumstances of our world - therefore, I think the authority of Querida Amazonia is, as I "said, as part of the ordinary magisterium of the successor of Peter, and we are happy to embrace it as such".

Cardinal Czerny went on to say, “[Lo] we are applying it to our changing and troubled world, and we are doing it with all the gifts that God has given us - including our intelligence, our emotions, our will, our commitment - and I think therefore we are not in doubt about the gift we have received from Pope Francis in this document. "

Querida Amazonia is short - at 32 pages, about the eighth dimension of Amoris laetitia - but it's also dense: more than a synthesis, it's a distillation of thoughts that have been with Pope Francis for quite some time.

They are thoughts at the same time concerning an area of ​​the world with which he is familiar - the Amazon - and an institution that he knows and loves deeply - the Church - offered, Francis says in the introduction of the document, in order to "enrich the whole Church is challenged by the work of the synodal assembly. "Pope Francis offered these thoughts to the participants in the Synod and to the entire Church, in the hope that" the pastors, consecrated men and women and the lay faithful of the Amazon region strive to apply it "and that" somehow it inspires every person of good will. "

After the press conference, the Catholic Herald asked Cardinal Czerny why he was addressing the subject of the authority of the exhortation and the magistral state. "I raised these things because I thought people like you would be interested." Asked about the spirit in which he hopes people will approach Querida Amazonia, Czerny said: "in prayer, openly, intelligently and spiritually, as we do all documents".

In his remarks prepared during the press conference, Cardinal Czerny had also spoken of the final document of the synod fathers. “New paths for the Church and for an integral ecology”, he affirmed, “is the final document of a special assembly of the synod of bishops. Like any other synodal document, it is made up of proposals that the synod fathers voted to approve and which they entrusted to the Holy Father ”.

Czerny went on to say: “[Pope Francis], in turn, immediately authorized its publication, with the vote expressed. Now, at the beginning of Querida Amazzonia, he says: "I would like to officially present the Final Document, which sets out the conclusions of the Synod", and encourages everyone to read it in full ".

Thus, Cardinal Czerny declared: "Such official presentation and encouragement lend a certain moral authority to the final document: ignoring would be a lack of obedience to the legitimate authority of the Holy Father, while finding a difficult point or other point could not be considered a lack of faith. "

Armchair theologians and professional academic varieties will continue to discuss precisely what the magisterial weight of an apostolic exhortation is. The opinion of a curial official on the moral authority of a final synodal document will have less and less. This is one of the reasons why, from a rigorous messaging standpoint, his statement is baffling: why did he bother to say this?

There is so much food for thought in the exhortation - better engaged in a spirit of critical docility - that one wonders why the man of the Vatican's message risked hiding the discussion right outside the door.

In any case, here are three issues raised by the exhortation, which are already attracting attention and are almost guaranteed to occupy more.

Women: In the midst of five dense paragraphs dedicated to the "strength and gift of women", Pope Francis says: "The Lord has chosen to reveal his power and his love through two human faces: the face of his divine Son has made the man and the face of a creature, a woman, Mary. ”He continued to write:“ Women give their contribution to the Church in a way that is their own, presenting the tender strength of Mary, the Mother ”.

The practical result, according to Pope Francis, is that we should not limit ourselves to a "functional approach". We should rather "[enter] into the innermost structure of the Church". Pope Francis went on to offer a description of the service that women have rendered to the Church in the Amazon which is - whatever else it is - functional: "In this way," he says, "we will basically accomplish because, without women, the Church is breaks and how many communities in the Amazon would have collapsed had the women not been there to support them, keep them together and take care of them.

"This demonstrates the kind of power that is typically theirs," wrote Pope Francis.

Right or wrong, that understanding of things has serious implications for ecclesiology and ecclesiastical governance, which must be crumbled. Francis called for precisely this kind of discussion when he wrote: “In a synodal church, those women who indeed have a central role to play in the Amazonian communities should have access to positions, including ecclesial services, that do not involve Holy Orders and which can better signify the role that is theirs ".

If an Order of Deaconesses could be restored, which would be inside the Kleros / Clerus taxis and at the same time unequivocally created outside the one Sacrament of Holy Orders, it is a reasonable question and one that the summary declaration of Francis absolutely does not rule out, although he strongly suggests that such restoration in the Amazon or elsewhere will not happen on Francis' watch.

Another is the way it actually treats compact societies organized according to cosmological myth. “Compact Societies Organized According to Cosmological Myth” is a technical language borrowed from the 20th century political philosopher Eric Voegelin. It describes the societies that find and express the common idea of ​​order that unites them in the stories they tell to illuminate the world with meaning. It takes something to break the compactness of the myth and what happens to societies when their organizational principles are broken is inevitably traumatic. The social structures of indigenous peoples in the Amazon have undergone tremendous tension over the past five centuries and have seen significant fragmentation. Therefore, the work that Francesco proposes is at the same time of recovery and transformation.

Expect this to be a bigger problem for academics in a wide range of fields, from philosophy to anthropology, sociology to linguistics, as well as for missiologists.

If they listen to Francis' call to "esteem the indigenous mysticism that sees the interconnection and interdependence of the entire creation, the mysticism of gratuitousness that loves life as a gift, the mysticism of a sacred wonder before nature and all his forms of life ", at the same time," transforms [ing] this relationship with God present in the cosmos into an increasingly personal relationship with a "You" who sustains our life and wants to give them a meaning, a "You" who he knows us and loves us ”, then they should all be in conversation with each other, with true missionaries and with the peoples of the Amazon. It's a lofty order - easier said than done, but it's worth every effort to do well.

A third problem is how people outside the Amazon can help.

“The Church”, wrote Pope Francis in the conclusion of his third chapter on ecology, “with her vast spiritual experience, her renewed appreciation of the value of creation, her concern for justice, her option for the poor, her educational tradition and her story of incarnating in so many different cultures around the world, also wishes to contribute to the protection and growth of the Amazon region. "

Pope Francis has a lot to say about specific areas of activity, from education to law and politics, which all deserve attention and consideration, in view of a practical direction characterized by what has been called “hard-nosed idealism”.

It would be a mistake to claim Pope Francis' approval of any specific policy. His purpose in the exhortation is to focus attention and articulate a way of thinking about complex problems that will not soon vanish, the window of opportunity for effective address that is not widening.

It cannot hurt to listen to him or try his frame for reflection.