UNITED STATES
Crux
By John L. Allen Jr.
Editor April 10, 2016
To be sure, there’s plenty of text in Pope Francis’ sweeping new document on the family, titled Amoris Laetitia, which was released by the Vatican on Friday. It runs to 60,000 words and 264 pages in the English version, making it a whopper.
Yet from a news point of view, perhaps the most fascinating – and certainly the most controversial – parts of the document come not in the text, but in the footnotes.
Numbers 336 and 351 in Amoris Laetitia may go down as among the most famous footnotes in papal history, since that’s where the key language occurs about how discernment in cases of divorced and civilly remarried Catholics could lead to a change in their ability to receive the sacraments.
If the devil is always in the details, in the case of Amoris Laetitia, one might say, the fireworks are in the footnotes. …
Abuse scandals
Given the way that clerical sexual abuse scandals in various parts of the world have damaged the Church’s image and moral authority, precisely in terms of its care for children and families, it’s striking that there’s only one clear reference to those scandals in Amoris Laetitia.
“The sexual abuse of children is all the more scandalous when it occurs in places where they ought to be most safe, particularly in families, schools, communities and Christian institutions,” the pope writes in paragraph 45.
Sexual exploitation of children comes up five other times in the document, but in the context of abusive parents or wider social ills rather than anything specifically to do with the Church.
Critics already skeptical of Pope Francis’ resolve on the anti-abuse front may find that a worrying omission.
Others, however, may conclude the pontiff is indirectly suggesting that abuse hardly occurs only in the Church, and that an undue focus on its failures can become a distraction from addressing the wider social challenges.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.