Pope Francis’ Apostolic Exhortation, Amoris Laetitia (“The Joy Love”), earlier this month. It is a profound and lengthy document which addresses a vast array of subjects: from family stability to child trafficking, from the beauty of marital love to marital breakdown, from children’s education to pornography, and much, much more in between.
Reactions to Amoris Laetitia have been mixed, both within the Church and within the media. Here I’m more concerned with the latter, in particular as an indication of general media attitudes towards Catholic teaching on family and marriage.
Probably the two themes most prominent in the media reaction to the Exhortation are the Exhortation’s seeming “opening of the door” so divorced and remarried persons can receive communion and its endorsement of aspects of feminism. The latter issue is treated in passing by the document. Rightly, Pope Francis recognises the vital, emancipatory work done on behalf of women’s dignity; rightly, also, he sounds a cautionary note about “certain forms of feminism” (54), in particular those that demand uniformity and negate motherhood (173).
The issue of divorced and remarried persons receiving the Eucharist is certainly a prominent part of the exhortation: much of chapter 8 is devoted to it. These sections raise as many questions as they answer and will no doubt prove the object of much reflection, discernment and debate over the coming years. It is easy to see why the media would be interested in the topic.
But they’re not. Or at least they’re not interested in the precise topic Pope Francis addresses, under the description he addresses it. The Exhortation is motivated by an acute pastoral concern for the full participation of the faithful in the Body of Christ. The grand narrative is that of the saving grace of God and the necessity of bringing persons into greater communion with Christ and his Church. The media, on the other hand, are interested in what they perceive as the first signs of fissures within magisterial teaching on family and marriage. The grand narrative is that of the liberating force of secular individualism finally pulling at the heart strings of a rigid institution.
Media attention hasn’t gravitated towards the other eight chapters of Amoris Laetitia. On one level this is surprising because many themes treated therein would seem considerably more pressing from a secular, public policy perspective. One could count among these themes the importance for children of having contact with their fathers, the importance of a healthy marriage culture for a stable society, the lack of State interest in facilitating strong family life, how gender ideology denies the distinctiveness of human sexual embodiment as male and female, the commercialisation of the body through prostitution, surrogacy and trafficking, the meaning of authentic sex education for children, the threat that narcissism and an excessive concern for autonomy poses for individual and communal well-being, the value of forgiveness for good family relationships, and so on.
This media oversight is typical and predictable, however, and for two reasons. First, the liberal media establishment is only comfortable treating religion when religion is under pressure from a liberal or secular viewpoint. When religion poses a significant challenge to liberalism and makes a compelling case against its core presuppositions, the media don’t want to know. This certainly is the case when Pope Francis questions liberal mores concerning family breakdown, the commercialization and technocratic exploitation of the human body, the sexualisation of childhood, self-obsessed egoism, and a utilitarian attitude towards the perceived disposability of relationships and very young children.
Second, the liberal media establishment is obsessed with defending absolute sexual autonomy. Of course, it charges the Church with obsession over sex generally; but out of the vast, vast array of official Church moral teachings covering everything from environmental ethics to business ethics, the media only ever gives a platform to discussions over the Church’s sexual and bio ethics, and almost always only to aggressively cross-examine what it portrays as the perennial (and doomed) defendant.
Taken together, these two reasons mean that Church moral teaching is only ever a media topic when it is (a) on the issue of something to do with sex, and (b) being challenged, on the defensive and under pressure. That’s why a lot of people will think that Amoris Laetitia is only about remarried divorcees and feminism.
