In a nutshell, Pope Francis made a pastoral and prudential judgment to change the practice of the Church that in the past absolutely, and in every situation, forbade any Catholic who had divorced and remarried outside the Church to receive Holy Communion. Let’s see if we can clear up the confusion. But, unfortunately, many seem to have overlooked the good due to the confusion caused mainly by what I argue are faulty interpretations of chapter 8.

It is packed with solid Catholic doctrine and practical application concerning our Faith. There is much in AL that is good, beautiful, and true and that helps you understand the whole document. If you have not read the rest of it, I encourage you to do so. There are nine chapters in the document, but I am going to focus on chapter 8 (though I will mention other parts as well) and the famous “footnote #351,” which has been the source of virtually all of the questions I have received. In this post I will outline the controversy. Because my colleague Jimmy Akin has already written an excellent synopsis of it, I was not planning to write about it.īut because the questions about Amoris Laetitia, which I will refer to as “AL,” seem to keep coming-some few even accusing Pope Francis of heresy-I decided to jump into the fray.

This article advances an understanding of Francis that emerges from a study of the conjuncture of affective fields, political theology, racialized aesthetics, and mediatic interface.The apostolic exhortation of our Holy Father, Pope Francis, Amoris Laetitia(Latin, “The Joy of Love”), promulgated March 19, 2016, has caused quite a stir.

Examining Francis's papacy overlapping racial and ethico-political dimensions, I identify coordinates around which the rhetorical, affective, and charismatic force of Francis as a Criollo has been actualized-between, most crucially, proximity and distance, as well as pastoral versus theological impulses. Through the mobilization of material religion, sensuous mediations, and the case of the Lampedusa crosses in particular, I engage with an anthropological analysis of Francis as a Criollo and the first-ever Jesuit pope. He is an exemplar of the longue duree of an embodied 'Atlantic Return' from the Americas to the 'heart' of Catholicism (Rome and the Vatican), with its ambivalent, racialized history. Abstract : This article explores the tension between Pope Francis as a 'trickster' and as a much-needed reformer of the Catholic Church at large.

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