Unnecessary burdens

 I found this post at Where Peter Is a thoughtful read: They Lay Heavy Burdens on the Shoulders of Others. I think it usefully indicates the consequences that can be experienced as a result of the existence of a kind of "alternative teaching authority" alongside that of the established hierarchy of the Church. It also gives a suggestion, in its use of the term "reactionary", of the possible merging of a (conservative) political stance with a Traditionalist ecclesial stance. 

What I think is most useful in the post is its account of how the activity of the proponents of this alternative teaching impacts on ordinary people who follow them, and in ways that are quite unnecessary. Very often we are looking at situations that are matters of prudential choice and not religious imperative, as, for example, with the question of home schooling.

I am a little unsure of the suggestion that the need to keep a job constitutes a "grave reason" in terms of allowing the taking of a COVID-19 vaccine:

Since the Church has spoken, they should be free to receive a vaccine, if only to keep their jobs. In my opinion, this could be considered a “grave reason,” particularly when a job is necessary to support the family.

Since the Church's teaching on the matter has been made clear, certainly Catholics should feel free to receive a vaccine in order to keep their job and support their family , without any concern that they are taking part in an immoral action. But in another context, the need to support a family would not justify taking part in something that is taught by the Church as being morally unlawful. Hence, my hesitations here.

I have more difficulty with some of what the writer says about Amoris Laetitia, most particularly this sentence:

Pope Francis taught that under some circumstances, divorced and remarried Catholics can be admitted to Communion.

I think it is more accurate to say that Pope Francis allowed a possibility in the well known footnote in Amoris Laetitia. This possibility, however, is only a part of a wider programme of how the Church should help those in irregular marriage situations to grow in the life of grace and charity (cf the very sentence in n.305 to which the footnote is applied). I think the writer also misses the point that it is the manifest (ie publicly visible) and persistent (ie a public situation that may not change in the immediate moment) that leads to a canonical ruling that remarried people cannot receive the Sacraments of Penance and the Eucharist. 

I see three fundamental aspects to Pope Francis' teaching in Chapter 8 of Amoris Laetitia: 

Firstly, a recognition that a person living in an objective state of sin through an irregular marriage situation may be living to an extent a life of grace, and that they can grow in that life of grace (cf n.305). The post on Where Peter Is recognises this in a slightly different way in its account of mortal sin.

Secondly, there is a key place in the discernment of a particular situation for an examination of conscience, and the suggested path of this examination of conscience does involve "humility, discretion and love for the Church and her teaching" (cf. n.300). This examination of conscience is not a soft touch if the pattern suggested by Pope Francis is followed.

Thirdly, the key focus of the discernment is not that of reception or not of the sacraments but of how a person might engage with the Church's mission of charity in order to thereby grow in the life of grace. This is strongly argued in Amoris Laetitia n.306, and followed up by Pope Francis' observation in n.309 that it is providential that the Apostolic Exhortation is wirtten during the Year of Mercy, when the renewed practice of the works of charity was proposed to the Church. 

In other respects, though, I think the post at Where Peter Is has usefully given an account of the experience that can result from the unhelpful activity of some clerics and commentators.