Archbishop Eamon Martin says ‘Amoris Laetitia’ warns against an out-of-touch church

The Catholic primate, Archbishop Eamon Martin, has said Pope Francis's apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia, published yesterday, is a warning against a church that could be out of touch.

“He cautions us that if the church resorts to a whole body of doctrine, moral and bioethical teaching, and fails to take account of the complexity, the difficulty in the concrete day-to-day lives of people, then the church will be out of touch,” the archbishop said.

Speaking at a press conference in Dublin yesterday, held to coincide with publication of the document, he said it was “totally in line with Pope Francis’s whole agenda about being missionary in the church. He encourages us to go out to reach out, go out to where people are at.”

‘Challenging’

“I know that even as a bishop I have found that particular demand challenging, even disturbing,” he said. “Because we are so used to the church in

Ireland

, and I imagine elsewhere, to staying put and inviting people to come to us. There’s a whole new reality that is to go out and bring the gospel to where people are at.”

The content of the document, he said, was marked by Pope Francis’s “very warm and distinctive style. He’s very grounded in the realities of family.”

Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin said of the document at the same press conference, which took place at Archbishop's House in Drumcondra, that "some will be disappointed as they will say that the pope did not seem to change doctrine and others will say that it was clear from the outset that the pope cannot change doctrine.

"The first mistake would be for one or other of the polemicists to cry victory. Pope Francis realises that we do not live in a world where everything is simply black and white, where all that is needed is either to repeat doctrinal formulations or to set these doctrines aside and be 'pastoral'."

The pope, he said, “does not set out to change doctrine. He recognises, however, the difficulties we have in understanding the teaching of Jesus in our current cultures. He says that ‘at times we have proposed a far too abstract and almost artificial theological ideal of marriage, far removed from the concrete and practical possibilities of real families’.

“He admits that ‘we find it difficult to present marriage as a more dynamic path to personal development and fulfilment rather than as a lifelong burden. We also find it hard to make room for the consciences of the faithful . . . We have been called to form consciences, not to replace them.’”

The document tried to “set out clearly the beautiful yet demanding teaching of Jesus and to teach that to men and women whose lives are lived within their own human frailties and failures,” he said.

‘Pastoral style’

“To understand it we have first of all to identify and understand that basic pastoral style of Pope Francis not just in this document, but in his entire pontificate,” he said. It was a problem too that we “live in a world where we judge things in black and white. We would like the pope to say a simple yes or no on subjects which are much more complex than we wish to admit. The secular world can be just as black and white in seeking answers as are the fundamentalists on the right or the left within the church,” he said.

Quoting the pope from the introduction to Amoris Laetitia, he said, "I do not recommend a rushed reading of the text" as it was "a document which addresses an extraordinary varied scenario".