ACCOMPANYING IN DISCERNMENT: COMPLEX SITUATIONS IN “AMORIS LAETITIA”

Abstract

moris laetitia’s 8th chapter is, perhaps, the most novel of this Post Synodal Aposto-lic Exhortation. At the same time, it is the most controversial section of this Document since its promulgation. This work states that, far from straying away from the traditional teaching of the Church on Marriage and the Family, this Pontifical Exhortation rests firmly on it, confirms it and applies it. When facing a line of pastoral policy and practice characterized mainly by objective morality, the Pope strongly reminds the Church’s traditional moral doctrine, admirably synthesized by Saint Thomas Aqui-nas, that draws the necessary distinction between the baptized’s objective behavior and their subjective guilt and imputability (cf. Catechism n.1735). Following what it has already been said in Evangelii Gaudium 44 and 47, Amoris Laetitia deepens the need of discernment of personal moral responsability and the mitigating factors that might be involved. The discernment must be guided by the integrative logic which is the key to pastoral care (AL 299).