A Less-Discussed But No Less Serious Error in “Amoris Laetitia”

Where Pope Francis errs in regard to marriage and virginity

On 19^th March, 2016, Pope Francis signed an Apostolic Exhortation called Amoris laetitia (often translated as “The Joy of Love”). The document was published on 8^th April of the same year. In its English translation, it runs to two hundred and fifty-four pages.

This ‘Exhortation’ caused an immediate furore. It is well-known that four cardinals submitted dubia to Rome asking the pope whether he wished to overturn the teaching of the Church about universal moral truths, intrinsic evils, and the impossibility of receiving Holy Communion if one is living in an adulterous relationship. It is also well-known that these questions were left unanswered. Some people may also remember a theological critique signed by around 45 pastors and scholars and sent privately to the college of cardinals and the Eastern Catholic patriarchs, which proposed varying theological censures of no less than nineteen propositions drawn from the ‘Exhortation’.¹

There is, however, a paragraph in this ‘Exhortation’ which has not been much discussed, even though it was touched on in the study just mentioned. This is paragraph 159. Here, Pope Francis raised the question of the relative merits of marriage and virginity.

Now, the Church has a teaching on this subject which has been dogmatically defined. The Council of Trent, faced with Protestant denials, was obliged to reaffirm the Church’s faith on this point. It did so on 11th November 1563, in its twenty-fourth session. Even though the bishops in this session were concerned mainly to uphold the holiness and sacramental nature of Christian marriage against the Reformers, they wished also to guard against an exaggeration of their teaching which would favour attacks made by these same Reformers upon religious vows and the religious life.

Accordingly, the council Fathers made the following definition: “If any one says, that the marriage state is to be placed above the state of virginity, or of celibacy, and that it is not better and more blessed (melius ac beatius) to remain in virginity, or in celibacy, than to be united in matrimony; let him be anathema.” That is the 10^th of Trent’s 12 canons on matrimony.

The bishops here were of course not inventing a new doctrine. One hundred years earlier, the Council of Florence had said much the same in its Decree for the Jacobites. Trent, in fact, was declaring by solemn judgment that which had been held and taught by the Church from the beginning in a more diffuse way. In the 4^th century, for example, St Jerome, St Ambrose and St Augustine had been eloquent in praising Christian virginity against innovators such as Jovinian and Vigilantius. St Augustine, in particular, had warned of the need to avoid two opposed errors: either condemning marriage as bad or else equating it with virginity consecrated to Christ, “as though either the good of Susanna be the lowering of Mary: or the greater good of Mary ought to be the condemnation of Susanna” (On Holy Virginity, 19). Underlying the statements of the Fathers, of course, was the teaching of St Paul to the Corinthians: he who marries does well, and he who refrains from marriage does better (1 Cor. 7:38).

As with all the definitions of Trent or of any other ecumenical council, this one remains binding on the Christian conscience for all time. Pope Pius XII noted in his encyclical Sacra virginitas that the Tridentine definition sets forth “a dogma of the faith” (SV 32). Hence, anyone who obstinately doubts or denies that it is better and more blessed to remain in virginity, evidently for the sake of the Kingdom of God, than to be united in matrimony loses the faith, falls under anathema and is separated from the Church. Accordingly, the 2^nd Vatican Council, in its Decree on Priestly Formation, required that clerical students be taught not only “the duties and dignity of Christian matrimony”, but also “the surpassing excellence (praecellentiam) of virginity consecrated to Christ” (Optatam totius, 10).

With all this in mind, we can look at paragraph 159 of Amoris laetitia, where Pope Francis asks about the relative value of marriage and virginity.