The pope’s new encyclical

You’ve probably heard all the stir it’s been raising.

The Wall Street Journal says the new encyclical (Amoris Laetitia — “The Joy of Love”) opens the door to a local priest letting a divorced and remarried couple take communion.  This would not have been possible in most parishes until this encyclical.

And what about other contentious issues, such as gay unions?  Could a priest permit a gay couple take communion without their repenting of gay sex?  Russell Shaw, former spokesman for the US Catholic Conference of Bishops, says, “If you can discern this way when it comes to marriage questions [the remarried hetero couple], what about almost any other moral question?”

Veteran Vatican-watcher George Weigel thinks pundits like Shaw are making much ado about nothing: “Various pre-exhortation Catholic spin machines have set a context for the reception of Amoris Laetitia that the world media will find irresistible, by focusing almost exclusive attention on the question of whether the pope would endorse one or other of Walter Cardinal Kasper’s proposals for admitting divorced and civilly remarried Catholics to holy communion (quick preview: Francis doesn’t).”

Weigel points out that the encyclical sharply condemns abortion and gay marriage.

But the astute Anglican theologian Michael McClymond points out a disturbing claim in the encyclical: “No one can be condemned forever, because that is not the logic of the Gospel!”

The suggestion is that no one would ever be finally lost or condemned.  Is the Pope implicitly rejecting the historic Catholic doctrine of hell?

McClymond, whose The Devil’s Redemption (Baker Academic, forthcoming) is a blockbuster history of the doctrine of universalism, warns that this would fly in the face of what the Apostle Paul teaches in 2 Thessalonians 1: “And these will pay the penalty of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and the glory of his power.”

We all need to read the full text of this 250+ page encyclical.  Many wonder if it is yet another sign that Francis is the most liberal pope in the Church’s history.