Sir, – Brendan Butler falls into deep fallibility in his analysis of Pope Francis's apostolic exhortation (April 12th).
For a start, Mr Butler errs in placing dispositive weight on a document which, by its very nature, is not where definitive teaching is traditionally found. The verb exhort comes through French from the Latin "exhortari", meaning to encourage or stimulate. The document is an encouragement to reflection, and as the pope says himself "this Exhortation could [not] be expected to provide a new set of general rules, canonical in nature and applicable to all cases" (paragraph 300).
In any case, the snippet Mr Butler selects cannot support the reading he gives to it. First, Mr Butler assumes that the pope’s reference to “irregular situations” means marriage.
This is not evident, and indeed the pope elsewhere in the text irregularity is more expansive (paragraph 297). On a more serious level, Mr Butler is doubly mischievous, for his chosen basis for a seismic change in marriage teaching is taken from a section where the word is not mentioned at all. The snippet Mr Butler excises occurs in a more general section where the pope posits approaches to pastoral discernment (paragraph 301, “Mitigating factors in pastoral discernment”).
Third, Mr Butler forgets the pope’s lengthy preambular qualification to the citation (“...it can no longer simply be said ...”). Without being lawyerly, it is plain that the pope is simply confirming that a “one size fits all” judgment cannot be made. This interpretation fits with the thrust of the entire text.
Finally, popes do not propose definitive doctrinal changes by “implication”.
If Mr Butler can only find a clear teaching by dragging it from the text’s language, suffice to say it is probably not there to begin with. – Yours, etc,
Dr SEÁN
ALEXANDER SMITH,
Sandyford,
Dublin 18.