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Pope calls on clergy to show compassion for divorced, gays

Pope Francis on Friday issued a much-anticipated document on family that overturns no major teachings of the Catholic Church, but calls on its clergy to be compassionate and to welcome divorced-and-remarried couples, gays, and those who live in an "imperfect manner."

Pope Francis stressed sensitivity.
Pope Francis stressed sensitivity.Read moreAndrew Medichin / AP

Pope Francis on Friday issued a much-anticipated document on family that overturns no major teachings of the Catholic Church, but calls on its clergy to be compassionate and to welcome divorced-and-remarried couples, gays, and those who live in an "imperfect manner."

The church and its clergy have been "wasting pastoral energy on denouncing a decadent world without proactively proposing ways to finding true happiness," Francis wrote in the document, titled "Amoris Laetitia," or "The Joy of Love." Known as an apostolic exhortation, it does not carry the weight of an encyclical but is viewed as a major teaching of the church.

More than two years in the making, it was shaped in part by two gatherings of bishops from around the world, who discussed many of the controversial topics at their synods before presenting their own report to Francis in October.

Philadelphia Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, who participated in last year's Synod on the Family in Rome, on Friday called Amoris Laetitia "a serious and extensive reflection on Christian marriage."

"While it changes no church teaching or discipline," Chaput said, "it does stress the importance of pastoral sensitivity in dealing with the difficult situations many married couples today face."

A priest in the Camden Diocese, the Rev. Phillip Johnson, said he was "moved" by the document, but found himself asking how Francis' exhortation would work.

While some Catholics had hoped Amoris Laetitia might reverse the church's ban on artificial birth control, allow the divorced-and-remarried to receive Holy Communion without an annulment of their first marriage, or open a door to same-sex marriage, Francis made no such moves, saying such a document is not the place to alter canon law.

Instead, he vigorously affirmed all the church's traditional teachings on these and other topics. However, he exhorted the clergy not to scold and hector those who do not live up to those standards, but to listen closely to their stories, hear their pain, and welcome those who feel marginalized into church life.

Francis also appeared to offer clergy greater discretion in allowing some people in "irregular" relationships to receive Communion, although the language on how to do so was somewhat ambiguous.

"On the question of access to Communion for the divorced and civilly remarried, Francis has made no new law and changed no doctrine," said papal biographer Austen Ivereigh. "But he has insisted on an approach that is all about distinguishing between different situations, and giving priests flexibility to apply the church's exclusion from the sacraments with discretion."

DignityUSA, an organization of Catholics committed to LGBT equality, called Amoris Laetitia a "tremendous disappointment" to LGBT Catholics and their families.

Executive director Marianne Duddy-Burke of Boston said Francis continued the characterization of LGBT people as unable to fully reflect the fullness of God's plan for humanity."

Jay Lassiter, a gay activist and political organizer in South Jersey and Pennsylvania who grew up Catholic, said it seemed Francis had taken a step in the right direction. "I'm glad he's brought the rhetoric about sexuality and families out of the dark ages," he said.

"His tenor on these issues is welcome, but it's hard to give him a gold star for it. It's overdue and it's not enough."

How Francis' guidance to clergy pastoring to homosexuals might play out also seems unclear, although he appears to be more accepting of their committed relationships than his recent predecessors, Popes Benedict XVI and John Paul II.

"Only the exclusive and indissoluble union between a man and a woman has a plenary role to play in society as a stable commitment that bears fruit in new life," he wrote, but he added that the church must also acknowledge that "a variety of family situations can offer a certain stability."

He followed that by saying "de-facto or same-sex unions may not simply be equated with marriage," but later said, "The Church turns with love to those who participate in her life in an imperfect manner; she seeks the grace of conversion for them, she encourages them to do good, to take loving care of each other and to serve the community in which they live and work."

The exhortation does not alter the church's long-standing ban on artificial contraception. But Francis observed that in the past, the church's teachings on marital love and mutual assistance had been "overshadowed by an almost exclusive insistence on the duty of procreation," without consideration of a young married couple's "timetables, their way of thinking, and their concrete concerns."

Johnson, who studies papal teachings on the family, said he was "very moved in reading it in many places."

"Some of it is very lyrical in its tone and obviously very pastoral," Johnson said at his office at St. Thomas More parish in Cherry Hill. "Its great theme is mercy, obviously, but it also calls us to draw closer to those we serve, to travel with them, integrating them with others in the life of the faith.

"But I find myself asking, 'How is this going to work?' "

Johnson, a former Lutheran pastor and a self-described conservative, says he converted to Roman Catholicism five years ago because he admired the consistency of its moral teaching.

Chaput on Friday cautioned against hasty or permissive interpretations of the new document, and said he would be studying it closely before issuing further comment.

"Happily, the kind of pastoral discernment called for in Amoris Laetitia is already happening in many of our parish communities," Chaput wrote, "and the Holy Father's encouragement, coming just months after the World Meeting of Families in Philadelphia, is a great gift."

doreilly@phillynews.com 856-779-3841