I am collecting here my comments on Querida Amazonia and its aftermath and implications. Originally I posted these things on Facebook, but I need to have them in one place for future reference.
The time leading up to Humanae Vitae was traumatic, and like all serious trauma, the effects are long-lasting and reappear at odd times. We now approach papal documents to see whether they meet the lowest bar of not going against Church teaching. Amoris Laetitia only reinforced the syndrome (and some still have not confronted the fact that it does not uphold Church teaching).
Thus, people anticipated Querida Amazonia (and feared what it might say) the way a beaten child reacts to a sudden noise. The fact that the apostolic exhortation did not explicitly call for the ordination of women came as a huge relief to many, though they did not quite read it for what it does not say; and they didn't read it carefully at all. They simply checked the box labeled "does not call for women's ordination or even married priests in the Roman Rite" and moved on, full of gratitude for a fight avoided.
Finding the document free of radical change gave rise to a lot of scolding of the fearful, which was not only an uncharitable and unjust reaction -- it was wrong. Where the approach to Querida Amazonia was binary -- "celibacy vs. married priests" -- that reader was not paying attention and was perhaps focused on scoring points, instead of defending the splendor of what has been handed down by nature and revelation.
In a mild article in the Catholic Herald entitled Is this Pope Francis’s ‘Paul VI moment’? C.C. Pecknold optimistically wrote,
"After months of agitation around the Amazonian Synod, the Holy Father’s post-synodal Apostolic Exhortation Querida Amazonia was received with relief by many.
Pope Francis simply ignored the radical reforms demanded by rich, bourgeois liberals in Germany."
He ended his piece thus:
"By saying that Querida Amazonia is the closest thing to a Paul VI moment yet, I only mean that it is a moment in the pontificate of Francis in which you can hear a certain “click”— both in those relieved and those disappointed — the “click” of false expectations adjusting. It’s a moment to trust that the Holy Spirit never disappoints."
I wrote in response to this well meaning but misguided opinion:
"If this is Pope Francis' Paul VI moment, then those of us who cleave to the teachings of the Church should pray all the harder and be all the more wary."
The reality is that Humanae Vitae contains within it the seeds of its own denial in Church practice, and coupled with the instantaneous subversion of its core restatement of Catholic teaching by whole bishops' conferences, this weakness prevented it from being the panacea we hoped for*.
Yes, HV held the line in terms of doctrine. But let's face facts: 50 years on, the vast majority of Catholics practice contraception with their pastors' blessing (if they even seek it) -- that fix was in early on, thanks to Cardinal Suenens.
Humanae Vitae has nothing approaching the *positive* teaching and vision of Casti Connubii on the deep meaning of the sacrament of marriage for all mankind. Its tone is regretful and apologetic (and in this way, Querida Amazonia differs, in having a "joyful" tone). It established a fatal legalism that we have yet to confront.
*panacea afterwards, when the relief that it wasn't a betrayal subsided, and we tried to make the best of it. Now it has reached the status of holy writ; I suggest re-reading it in a less ultramontanist light.
The truth is that we have a right to expect more from a papal document than not outright promoting a false teaching.
