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MARCH 2023: Why Does Francis Focus on Migration?
Anytime I quote Ivereigh and/or Francis, I place the exact language in quotes, When I am summarizing either of them it is in regular type. When I am interpreting, commenting or questioning it is in italics. Why Does Francis Focus on Migration? “Never has a pope focused so consistently on a social issue as has Francis on migration these past ten years. What St. John Paul II did for the unborn and the ethic of life, Francis has done for migrants and the ethic of fraternity.” Why? “just as communism was personal for Karol Wojtyła, so is migration for Jorge Mario Bergoglio. As the child of Italian émigrés who remade their lives in Buenos Aires in the 1930s, he knows firsthand about the vulnerability of those who have been uprooted.” Another reasons “ is the scale and urgency of the matter. There have never been as many people on the move as there are today: the UN’s pre-pandemic estimate was an astonishing 70 million. If they were a country, it would be the fifth largest in the world, afte
JANUARY 2023 A Defense of Casuistry
Casuistry and Clericalism: A Reply to A Defense of Casuistry Casuistry doesn’t have to be rigid. By Cathleen Kaveny, Commonweal January 24, 2023 The objection to casuistry by Pope Francis is about much more than rigidity, it is about the moral elitism that underlies both casuistry and its frequent companion, clericalism. Caveny rightly locates the elaborate development of casuistry to the sacramental practice of confession. Unfortunately, she glosses over the huge change in the practice of confession from that of public penance and reconciliation for serious sinners in the first millennium to private confession of all sins for all Catholics in the second millennium. Let us take a close look at the two paragraphs of Canon 21 of the Forth Lateran Council (1215) which she mentions briefly. The first paragraph was obviously intended to universalize and regularize the practice of private confession which had developed in the preceding centuries. All the faithful of both sexes shall a