A CRITIQUE

What could have been a great exhortation is flawed by some ideological 1970's thinking. It is sad that something that is so good and practical is tainted by these 70's kinds of thinking on some issues, such as situational ethics and sideswipes by name calling towards those who have some legitimate concerns about the direction the Holy Father is leading the Church. Press the red title for the entire National Catholic Register story by Edward Pentin:

Claudio Pierantoni: ‘Gaudete et Exsultate’ Appears to Support Error of Situational Ethics

Patristics scholar Claudio Pierantoni takes a more critical view of Pope Francis’ new apostolic exhortation which the Register has learned was given to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith only a very short time before publication. 

An excerpt of the article:

Soon after the publication on April 9 of Pope Francis’ apostolic exhortation on holiness, Gaudete et Exsultate (Rejoice and Be Glad), various scholars were invited to give their responses to the document for this Register article that was published last week.

One of them was Professor Josef Seifert, the Austrian Catholic philosopher, whose positive take on the document has been published in full on this blog here.

Another was Professor Claudio Pierantoni, a patristic scholar of medieval philosophy at the University of Chile, who takes a more critical view and whose entire contribution is now published below.

Pierantoni says the document has “beautiful and useful pages about holiness,” but on the passages that equate abortion with other social justice issues such as the suffering of migrants, he reminds readers that abortion is an “intrinsically evil action, monstrously justified” by legalization, whereas issues such as immigration are matters of “prudential judgment.”

On the section on Gnosticism and Pelagianism, he considers this to be “central” to the exhortation and its “weakest and most dangerous” part. He sees it as directed at those who adhere to “orthodox doctrine and commandments” — a “counterattack” against the cardinals who issued the dubia (a requested clarification of parts of Amoris Laetitia) and against those who issued the filial correction last year, accusing the Pope of spreading heresy, especially through Amoris Laetitia and its interpretations.

Pierantoni says such attacks on defenders of orthodoxy serve to “support the error of situational ethics,” which denies the existence of intrinsically evil acts — something he believes is the “principal heresy of our times.”

According to reliable sources, Gaudete et Exsultate was shown to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith only a very short time before it was published, so the dicastery was unable to provide few if any recommendations or amendments to the text.