Obviously, my answer is "no." If it were otherwise, I have no idea why anyone would stay Catholic, because that would be just as absurd (from my view) as changing the meaning of the Eucharist. When the Anglicans did that, we said their orders were no longer valid. If the Pope likewise changed the meaning of the Sacrament of Penance, we would be in the same situation.
The Council of Trent, speaking on justification, says the following concerning the commandments (my emphasis in bold):
THE OBSERVANCE OF THE COMMANDMENTS AND THE NECESSITY AND POSSIBILITY THEREOF
But no one, however much justified, should consider himself exempt from the observance of the commandments; no one should use that rash statement, once forbidden by the Fathers under anathema, that the observance of the commandments of God is impossible for one that is justified.
For God does not command impossibilities, but by commanding admonishes thee to do what thou canst and to pray for what thou canst not, and aids thee that thou mayest be able.
His commandments are not heavy, and his yoke is sweet and burden light.
For they who are the sons of God love Christ, but they who love Him, keep His commandments, as He Himself testifies; which, indeed, with the divine help they can do.
For though during this mortal life, men, however holy and just, fall at times into at least light and daily sins, which are also called venial, they do not on that account cease to be just, for that petition of the just, forgive us our trespasses, is both humble and true; for which reason the just ought to feel themselves the more obliged to walk in the way of justice, for being now freed from sin and made servants of God, they are able, living soberly, justly and godly, to proceed onward through Jesus Christ, by whom they have access unto this grace.
For God does not forsake those who have been once justified by His grace, unless He be first forsaken by them.
...
Canon 3.
If anyone says that without the predisposing inspiration of the Holy Ghost and without His help, man can believe, hope, love or be repentant as he ought, so that the grace of justification may be bestowed upon him, let him be anathema.
...
Canon 18.
If anyone says that the commandments of God are, even for one that is justified and constituted in grace, impossible to observe, let him be anathema.
...
Canon 22.
If anyone says that the one justified either can without the special help of God persevere in the justice received, or that with that help he cannot, let him be anathema.
Trent follows the Second Council of Orange on these matters:
CANON 6.
If anyone says that God has mercy upon us when, apart from his grace, we believe, will, desire, strive, labor, pray, watch, study, seek, ask, or knock, but does not confess that it is by the infusion and inspiration of the Holy Spirit within us that we have the faith, the will, or the strength to do all these things as we ought; or if anyone makes the assistance of grace depend on the humility or obedience of man and does not agree that it is a gift of grace itself that we are obedient and humble, he contradicts the Apostle who says, "What have you that you did not receive?" (1 Cor. 4:7), and, "But by the grace of God I am what I am" (1 Cor. 15:10).
...
CANON 7.
If anyone affirms that we can form any right opinion or make any right choice which relates to the salvation of eternal life, as is expedient for us, or that we can be saved, that is, assent to the preaching of the gospel through our natural powers without the illumination and inspiration of the Holy Spirit, who makes all men gladly assent to and believe in the truth, he is led astray by a heretical spirit, and does not understand the voice of God who says in the Gospel, "For apart from me you can do nothing" (John 15:5), and the word of the Apostle, "Not that we are competent of ourselves to claim anything as coming from us; our competence is from God" (2 Cor. 3:5).
Likewise the conclusion states:
According to the catholic faith we also believe that after grace has been received through baptism, all baptized persons have the ability and responsibility, if they desire to labor faithfully, to perform with the aid and cooperation of Christ what is of essential importance in regard to the salvation of their soul. We not only do not believe that any are foreordained to evil by the power of God, but even state with utter abhorrence that if there are those who want to believe so evil a thing, they are anathema. We also believe and confess to our benefit that in every good work it is not we who take the initiative and are then assisted through the mercy of God, but God himself first inspires in us both faith in him and love for him without any previous good works of our own that deserve reward, so that we may both faithfully seek the sacrament of baptism, and after baptism be able by his help to do what is pleasing to him. We must therefore most evidently believe that the praiseworthy faith of the thief whom the Lord called to his home in paradise, and of Cornelius the centurion, to whom the angel of the Lord was sent, and of Zacchaeus, who was worthy to receive the Lord himself, was not a natural endowment but a gift of God's kindness.
Both councils use the objective language of "the commandments of God," "to do things as we ought," and the like. In this immediate context of the loss of salvation, it pertains specifically to two things (which Veritatis Splendor will later call the "lower limit" of the objective commandment) : (1) violating any negative commandment in a way that would objectively break the commandment, or (2) violating any positive commandment in a way that would objectively not be excused by another positive commandment. This not does pertain to culpability; it is not saying that the baptized are able, with the help of God's grace, to remain inculpable for mortal sins. Rather, it is saying that they are capable, with God's grace and the illumination of the Holy Spirit dwelling within them, to avoid objectively breaking the commandments. This is why Pope St. John Paul II in Reconcilatio et Paenitentia would say "Considering sin from the point of view of its matter, the ideas of death, of radical rupture with God, the supreme good, of deviation from the path that leads to God or interruption of the journey toward him (which are all ways of defining mortal sin) are linked with the idea of the gravity of sin's objective content. Hence, in the church's doctrine and pastoral action, grave sin is in practice identified with mortal sin." This is so even though "there can occur situations which are very complex and obscure from a psychological viewpoint and which have an influence on the sinner's subjective culpability."
Pope St. John Paul II summarizes the constant teaching of the Church on hope in Veritatis Splendor 103 (my emphasis in bold):
Man always has before him the spiritual horizon of hope, thanks to the help of divine grace and with the cooperation of human freedom.
It is in the saving Cross of Jesus, in the gift of the Holy Spirit, in the Sacraments which flow forth from the pierced side of the Redeemer (cf. Jn 19:34), that believers find the grace and the strength always to keep God's holy law, even amid the gravest of hardships. As Saint Andrew of Crete observes, the law itself "was enlivened by grace and made to serve it in a harmonious and fruitful combination. Each element preserved its characteristics without change or confusion. In a divine manner, he turned what could be burdensome and tyrannical into what is easy to bear and a source of freedom".
Only in the mystery of Christ's Redemption do we discover the "concrete" possibilities of man. "It would be a very serious error to conclude... that the Church's teaching is essentially only an "ideal" which must then be adapted, proportioned, graduated to the so-called concrete possibilities of man, according to a "balancing of the goods in question". But what are the "concrete possibilities of man" ? And of which man are we speaking? Of man dominated by lust or of man redeemed by Christ? This is what is at stake: the reality of Christ's redemption. Christ has redeemed us! This means that he has given us the possibility of realizing the entire truth of our being; he has set our freedom free from the domination of concupiscence. And if redeemed man still sins, this is not due to an imperfection of Christ's redemptive act, but to man's will not to avail himself of the grace which flows from that act. God's command is of course proportioned to man's capabilities; but to the capabilities of the man to whom the Holy Spirit has been given; of the man who, though he has fallen into sin, can always obtain pardon and enjoy the presence of the Holy Spirit".
It is within this context, that the ability to confess one's sins is itself a result of grace, in which the teaching of Trent on the Sacrament of Penance must be understood.
First, Trent defines the element of contrition as follows:
Contrition, which holds the first place among the aforesaid acts of the penitent, is a sorrow of mind and a detestation for sin committed with the purpose of not sinning in the future. This feeling of contrition was at all times necessary for obtaining the forgiveness of sins and thus indeed it prepares one who has fallen after baptism for the remission of sins, if it is united with confidence in the divine mercy and with the desire to perform the other things that are required to receive this sacrament in the proper manner. The holy council declares therefore, that this contrition implies not only an abstention from sin and the resolution and beginning of a new life, but also a hatred of the old, according to the statement: <Cast away from you all your transgressions by which you have transgressed, and make to yourselves a new heart and a new spirit.> And certainly he who has pondered those lamentations of the saints: <To thee only have I sinned, and have done evil before thee; have labored in my groanings, every night I will wash my bed; I will recount to thee all my years in the bitterness of my soul,> and others of this kind, will easily understand that they issued from an overwhelming hatred of their past life and from a profound detestation of sins.
All of this is objective; the "purpose of not sinning in the future" is exactly the the promise "to do things as we ought" made by the grace of the Holy Spirit. This is, by inner grace, the profession of hope that one will thereafter be able "to do things as we ought," i.e., in objective conformity with the commandments.
From which it is clear that all mortal sins of which they have knowledge after a diligent self-examination, must be enumerated by the penitents in confession, even though they are most secret and have been committed only against the two last precepts of the Decalogue; which sins sometimes injure the soul more grievously and are more dangerous than those that are committed openly. Venial sins, on the other hand, by which we are not excluded from the grace of God and into which we fall more frequently, though they may be rightly and profitably and without any presumption declared in confession, as the practice of pious people evinces, may, nevertheless, be omitted without guilt and can be expiated by many other remedies. But since all mortal sins, even those of thought, make men <children of wrath> and enemies of God, it is necessary to seek pardon of all of them from God by an open and humble confession. While therefore the faithful of Christ strive to confess all sins that come to their memory, they no doubt lay all of them before the divine mercy for forgiveness; while those who do otherwise and knowingly conceal certain ones, lay nothing before the divine goodness to be forgiven through the priest; for if one sick be ashamed to make known his wound to the physician, the latter does not remedy what he does not know. It is evident furthermore, that those circumstances that change the species of the sin are also to be explained in confession, for without them the sins themselves are neither integrally set forth by the penitent nor are they known to the judges, and it would be impossible for them to estimate rightly the grievousness of the crimes and to impose the punishment due to the penitents on account of them. Hence it is unreasonable to teach that these circumstances have been devised by idle men, or that one circumstance only is to be confessed, namely, to have sinned against another. It is also malicious to say that confession, commanded to be made in this manner, is impossible, or to call it a torture of consciences; for it is known that in the Church nothing else is required of penitents than that each one, after he has diligently examined himself and searched all the folds and corners of his conscience, confess those sins by which he remembers to have mortally offended his Lord and God; while the other sins of which he has after diligent thought no recollection, are understood to be in a general way included in the same confession; for which sins we confidently say with the Prophet: <From my secret sins cleanse me, O Lord.> But the difficulty of such a confession and the shame of disclosing the sins might indeed appear a burdensome matter, if it were not lightened by so many and so great advantages and consolations, which are most certainly bestowed by absolution upon all who approach this sacrament worthily.
It is sometimes noted here that Trent is using the older sense of venial and moral sins in terms of objective conduct without regard to later developments concerning subjective culpability and the requirements of full knowledge and consent for guilt of mortal sin. That is true, but in the older language of Trent, it is referred to as "those circumstances that change the species of the sin," meaning in this context from subjectively mortal to subjectively venial. Note that this has nothing to do with the ability either to refrain from sin in the future or, through divine grace, to form the firm purpose of amendment required for integral contrition. Rather, this statement requires that if the penitent is appealing to circumstances concerning what is now called imputability of guilt, then those sins cannot be confessed integrally without a description of such circumstances. Even if those sins are determined by the priest-confessor to be only venially culpable (as may be the case), considerations of mitigated imputability are to be submitted to the judge in the internal forum, not judged on one's own. This is part of the examination that Trent requires to partake of the Eucharist: "Now, ecclesiastical usage declares that such an examination is necessary in order that no one conscious to himself of mortal sin, however contrite he may feel, ought to receive the Sacred Eucharist without previous sacramental confession.""Mortal sin" in this context is objective conduct; if there are exculpatory factors concerning imputability of guilty, they should be explained, not simply relied upon.
Granted, this is still subject to knowledge of the commandments themselves and the recollection that one's conduct objectively violated it, matters on which the priest-confessor is entitled to leave the penitent in "good faith." But with respect to matters of which the person did have knowledge of the commandment at the time, imputability due to lack of full consent would be an exculpatory factor that could "change the species of the sin" that must be subject to the judgment of the priest-confessor to be confessed integrally. Those who do not approach the Sacrament with the intent to make such an integral confession are not approaching it worthily.
The full moral teaching of the Church with respect to this moral teaching concerning objective morality may be found in Veritatis Splendor by Pope St. John Paul II. By articulating morality from the perspective of the acting person, it does not change one iota of the teaching of Orange or Trent concerning objective morality. The commandments may always in principle be kept objectively, in the sense of the objective "lower limit," not merely exculpation due to lack of full knowledge or consent. From VS 52:
On the other hand, the fact that only the negative commandments oblige always and under all circumstances does not mean that in the moral life prohibitions are more important than the obligation to do good indicated by the positive commandments. The reason is this: the commandment of love of God and neighbour does not have in its dynamic any higher limit, but it does have a lower limit, beneath which the commandment is broken. Furthermore, what must be done in any given situation depends on the circumstances, not all of which can be foreseen; on the other hand there are kinds of behaviour which can never, in any situation, be a proper response — a response which is in conformity with the dignity of the person. Finally, it is always possible that man, as the result of coercion or other circumstances, can be hindered from doing certain good actions; but he can never be hindered from not doing certain actions, especially if he is prepared to die rather than to do evil.
The Church has always taught that one may never choose kinds of behaviour prohibited by the moral commandments expressed in negative form in the Old and New Testaments. As we have seen, Jesus himself reaffirms that these prohibitions allow no exceptions: "If you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments... You shall not murder, You shall not commit adultery, You shall not steal, You shall not bear false witness" (Mt 19:17-18).
The point of this teaching is to cultivate hope not to cause despair. This is why the teaching concerning the ability to follow the commandments by God's grace, at least in terms of remaining above the objective lower limit, is prospective and not retrospective. The fact that one has fallen does not mean that God has forsaken that person entirely or that the person is beyond the hope of grace. Indeed, in many circumstances, one might not be culpable for the lapse, even though it might have been avoided entirely. But we must recognize that the retrospective and subjective judgment concerning culpability is not then misused to modify the prospective and objective resolution to sin no more. As VS 63 says:
In any event, it is always from the truth that the dignity of conscience derives. In the case of the correct conscience, it is a question of the objective truth received by man; in the case of the erroneous conscience, it is a question of what man, mistakenly, subjectively considers to be true. It is never acceptable to confuse a "subjective" error about moral good with the "objective" truth rationally proposed to man in virtue of his end, or to make the moral value of an act performed with a true and correct conscience equivalent to the moral value of an act performed by following the judgment of an erroneous conscience. It is possible that the evil done as the result of invincible ignorance or a non-culpable error of judgment may not be imputable to the agent; but even in this case it does not cease to be an evil, a disorder in relation to the truth about the good. Furthermore, a good act which is not recognized as such does not contribute to the moral growth of the person who performs it; it does not perfect him and it does not help to dispose him for the supreme good. Thus, before feeling easily justified in the name of our conscience, we should reflect on the words of the Psalm: "Who can discern his errors? Clear me from hidden faults" (Ps 19:12). There are faults which we fail to see but which nevertheless remain faults, because we have refused to walk towards the light (cf. Jn 9:39-41).
It is doubtless no coincidence that the sainted Pope cites the same Scriptural passage as Trent does. This is why Trent teaches that "those circumstances that change the species of sin are also to be explained in confession" -- to avoid "feeling easily justified in the name of our conscience." There is no suggestion here either that one ever ought to rely on lack of full consent as exculpatory based on one's own judgment and far less to rely on lack of full consent prospectively. This would deny the dogmatic teaching that "God ... by commanding admonishes thee to do what thou canst and to pray for what thou canst not, and aids thee that thou mayest be able." Again, this is not taught to put the blame on the person who falls so as to cause despair but to encourage hope in the grace of God.
Similarly, the objective teaching that one is always capable in principle of refraining from breaching a negative commandment has been of extraordinary service toward the patience of the martyrs, especially in times of persecution. It is difficult to conceive of greater duress than the threat that one's family will be tortured and killed if one does not offer a pinch of incense. In the earliest days of the Church, it was nonetheless understood that this was a grave sin, albeit one from which a person could repent. The extraordinary penance required was a testament to the hope in God's grace not to do this thing, even under the most extreme duress one could suffer. This is not to say that it was strictly impossible that someone could be subjectively inculpable for this objective violation, but the direct denial of God and the teaching that one could always choose not to breach a negative commandment was so clear that it was essentially impossible for this claim to be made in good faith. Likewise, the possibility that one could return into God's mercy was not denied, but the penance was made appropriate for the severity of the violation.
Pope St. John Paul II thus teaches in RP:
In a text of his First Letter, St. John speaks of a sin which leads to death (pros thanaton), as opposed to a sin which does not lead to death (me pros thanaton). Obviously, the concept of death here is a spiritual death. It is a question of the loss of the true life or "eternal life," which for John is knowledge of the Father and the Son, and communion and intimacy with them. In that passage the sin that leads to death seems to be the denial of the Son or the worship of false gods. At any rate, by this distinction of concepts John seems to wish to emphasize the incalculable seriousness of what constitutes the very essence of sin, namely the rejection of God. This is manifested above all in apostasy and idolatry: repudiating faith in revealed truth and making certain created realities equal to God, raising them to the status of idols or false gods. But in this passage the apostle's intention is also to underline the certainty that comes to the Christian from the fact of having been "born of God" through the coming of the Son: The Christian possesses a power that preserves him from falling into sin; God protects him, and "the evil one does not touch him." If he should sin through weakness or ignorance, he has confidence in being forgiven, also because he is supported by the joint prayer of the community.
...
With the whole tradition of the church, we call mortal sin the act by which man freely and consciously rejects God, his law, the covenant of love that God offers, preferring to turn in on himself or to some created and finite reality, something contrary to the divine will (conversio ad creaturam). This can occur in a direct and formal way in the sins of idolatry, apostasy and atheism; or in an equivalent way as in every act of disobedience to God's commandments in a grave matter. Man perceives that this disobedience to God destroys the bond that unites him with his life principle: It is a mortal sin, that is, an act which gravely offends God and ends in turning against man himself with a dark and powerful force of destruction.
Again, this does not put an excessive burden on the sinner, as if falling into weakness or ignorance somehow made the sinner being irredeemable and beyond God's grace. The community still prays for the forgiveness of the lapsed, and they will not turn away or exclude those who seek such forgiveness. But one cannot deny either that it is objectively required that the seek forgiveness. Speaking of this "weakness," VS 104 says:
In this context, appropriate allowance is made both for God's mercy towards the sin of the man who experiences conversion and for the understanding of human weakness. Such understanding never means compromising and falsifying the standard of good and evil in order to adapt it to particular circumstances. It is quite human for the sinner to acknowledge his weakness and to ask mercy for his failings; what is unacceptable is the attitude of one who makes his own weakness the criterion of truth about the good, so that he can feel self-justified, without even the need to have recourse to God and his mercy. An attitude of this sort corrupts the morality of society as a whole, since it encourages doubt about the objectivity of the moral law in general and a rejection of the absoluteness of moral prohibitions regarding specific human acts, and it ends up by confusing all judgments about values.
This is reiterated in Pope Pius XII's exhortation against situational ethics given in his remarks on April 18, 1952 (my emphasis in bold):
We oppose with three considerations or maxims against situation ethics. The first is We concede that God wants above all and always, an upright intention; but this is not enough. He wants also good action. The second is that a bad action is not permissible in order for good to come from it (Rom. 3:8). The third is that there can be given circumstances, in which a man, especially a Christian, must remember that it is necessary to sacrifice everything, even his life, in order to save his soul. All the countless martyrs even in our time, remind us of this. But would the mother of the Maccabees and her children, Saints Perpetua and Felicitas without regard for their babies, Maria Goretti and thousands of other men and women, venerated by the Church, against the circumstances, have faced in vain and even wrongly a sanguinary death? Certainly not; and they remain, with their blood, the most eloquent witnesses to the truth, against the new morality.
Recent attacks against the teaching of the Pope St. John Paul II
It should be apparent that at no time every was John Paul II's accommodation to human weakness every intended to suggest even remotely, and contrary to the teaching of the Church, that subjective lack of culpability was ever intended to be prospective. The prospective view is based on "the capabilities of the man to whom the Holy Spirit has been given" and likewise in view of the objective teaching that it is always possible to refrain from acts that break the negative commandments, to the point that it may be necessary for the Christian "to sacrifice everything, even his life, in order to save his soul." This affirms the constant teaching that every Christian, with the help of God, can keep the commandments (i.e., never to fall below the objective lower limit of the positive or negative commandments).
Yet progressives have taken to not only brazenly denying the sainted Pope's adherence to this traditional teaching but also pretending that his teaching on subjective culpability actually denies it. Pope Francis has recently appointed one such progressive wolf, Archbishop Victor Manuel Fernandez as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Fernandez was notoriously the likely ghostwriter of Amoris Laetitia, and while the document itself was orthodox, Fernandez himself was using it as a Trojan horse for his own progressivism (though, thank God, none of that was made binding).
Part of this progressive abuse relates to John Paul II's comments on the "law of gradualness" for contraception in Familiaris Consortio 34:
But man, who has been called to live God's wise and loving design in a responsible manner, is an historical being who day by day builds himself up through his many free decisions; and so he knows, loves and accomplishes moral good by stages of growth.
Married people too are called upon to progress unceasingly in their moral life with the support of a sincere and active desire to gain ever better knowledge of the values enshrined in and fostered by the law of God. They must also be supported by an upright and generous willingness to embody these values in their concrete decisions. They cannot, however, look on the law as merely an ideal to be achieved in the future: they must consider it as a command of Christ the Lord to overcome difficulties with constancy. And so what is known as 'the law of gradualness' or step-by-step advance cannot be identified with 'gradualness of the law', as if there were different degrees or forms of precept in God's law for different individuals and situations.
The "gradualness of the law" is what John Paul II describes in VS 104 as "compromising and falsifying the standard of good and evil in order to adapt it to particular circumstances" and making the sinner's "own weakness the criterion of truth about the good, so that he can feel self-justified, without even the need to have recourse to God and his mercy." By contrast, the law of gradualness is described in VS 64:
The words of Jesus just quoted also represent a call to form our conscience, to make it the object of a continuous conversion to what is true and to what is good. In the same vein, Saint Paul exhorts us not to be conformed to the mentality of this world, but to be transformed by the renewal of our mind (cf. Rom 12:2). It is the "heart" converted to the Lord and to the love of what is good which is really the source of true judgments of conscience. Indeed, in order to "prove what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect" (Rom 12:2), knowledge of God's law in general is certainly necessary, but it is not sufficient: what is essential is a sort of "connaturality" between man and the true good. Such a connaturality is rooted in and develops through the virtuous attitudes of the individual himself: prudence and the other cardinal virtues, and even before these the theological virtues of faith, hope and charity. This is the meaning of Jesus' saying: "He who does what is true comes to the light" (Jn 3:21).
These are the "stages of growth" that John Paul II has in mind: development of virtues and the resulting connatural performance of the good and avoidance of evil. This is not remotely to suggest that the "law of gradualness" is some sort of adaptation of the negative commandments for circumstances, which is exactly the assertion of "different degrees or forms of precept in God's law for different individuals and situations." The law of gradualness simply acknowledges that the novice in the practice of virtues will likely fail more often than the veteran of spiritual combat, so it does not judge failures due to weakness as an indication that the person has abandoned the path of spiritual growth or lacks purpose of amendment. The objective law is in the person's knowledge but not yet connatural to the person, which will come through practice and greater conversion of the heart. But this does not mean that the person must not firmly intend to abjure sin. As the Vadamecum issued after Familiaris Consortio clearly states, "[t]he pastoral 'law of gradualness', not to be confused with the 'gradualness of the law' which would tend to diminish the demands it places on us, consists of requiring a decisive break with sin together with a progressive path towards total union with the will of God and with his loving demands." The progressive interpretation would not require the decisive break with sin characterized by the hope that God only commands what can be done.
Fernandez contradicts this explicitly in his own explanation of Amoris Laetitia:
The absolute norm in itself does not admit exceptions, but that does not imply that its succinct formulation must be applied in every sense and without nuances in all situations. "Thou shalt not kill" does not admit exceptions. However, it raises this question: should taking life in self-defense be included within the term "killing" prohibited by the norm? Should taking food from others to feed a hungry child be included within the term "stealing" prohibited by the norm? No one would doubt that it is legitimate to ask whether these concrete cases are actually included within the narrow formulations of the negative precepts "Thou shalt not kill" or "Thou shalt not steal."
For this reason, it is also licit to ask if the acts of a more uxorio cohabitation should always fall, in its integral meaning, within the negative precept of “fornication”. I say, “in its integral meaning,” because it is not possible to hold that those acts in each and every case are gravely immoral in a subjective sense. In the complexity of particular situations is where, according to St. Thomas, ‘uncertainty increases.’ Indeed, it is not easy to describe as an ‘adulteress’ a woman who has been beaten and treated with contempt by her Catholic husband, and who received shelter, economic and psychological help from another man who helped her raise the children of the previous union, and with whom she had new children and cohabitates for many years.
...
But [Pope Francis's] emphasis is rather on the question of the possible diminution of responsibility and culpability. Forms of conditioning can attenuate or nullify responsibility and culpability against any norm, even against negative precepts and absolute moral norms. This makes it possible not always to lose the life of sanctifying grace in a “more uxorio”cohabitation.
The key distinction here is the use of the term "acts" of a more uxorio cohabitation (which Fernandez also refers to as "intimate acts"). Amoris Laetitia never once uses this term and never once refers specifically to such acts. The only time a similar expression is used is the out-of-context citation of Gaudium et Spes in FN 329, which says "[i]n such situations, many people, knowing and accepting the possibility of living 'as brothers and sisters' which the Church offers them, point out that if certain expressions of intimacy are lacking, 'it often happens that faithfulness is endangered and the good of the children suffers'." Therefore, at no time ever does AL endorse this view of Fernandez; it is strictly his own characterization of what he (and allegedly Pope Francis) had in mind, but that intention is not objectively manifested.
Fernandez has conflated (probably deliberately) two separate species of adulterous acts, remarriage itself and adulterous sex, and misclassified both sins under the heading of "fornication," which neither is. Adulterous sex, as contrasted with fornication, is a sin against marriage on account of the sexual faculty having been consecrated to one's spouse. Contracting a second marriage and remaining in it through cohabitation is, in and of itself, another sin against marriage, regardless of whether any kind of sexual activity is taking place. So within the one absolute moral norm -- do not commit adultery -- there are still different species of violation (for example, if one has already remarried, then the commandment is positive to rectify the situation, as opposed to a purely negative precept). There is certainly relevant knowledge of the absolute moral norm here; there must have been a previous valid marriage, and if someone is morally certain that the person never validly married before (despite perhaps being unable to prove this), then that person would be ignorant of the conduct being objectively sinful. We might call this objective ignorance of the rule, which is covered by the traditional "good faith" pastoral exception. But we are talking specifically about the case where "more is involved here than mere ignorance of the rule," by Fernandez's own admission, and he likewise says "[f]orms of conditioning can attentuate or nullify responsibility and culpability against any norm." So we are dealing here with exactly the case of mitigated culpability due to lack of full consent.
In those cases, John Paul II's Magisterial guidance governs: "Hence, in the church's doctrine and pastoral action, grave sin is in practice identified with mortal sin." But this does not deny in any way that "there can occur situations which are very complex and obscure from a psychological viewpoint and which have an influence on the sinner's subjective culpability." In that respect, we can agree with Fernandez (and, objectively, Pope Francis in saying the following:
In any event, the specific and principal proposal of Francis, in line with the Synod, is not concerning the considerations on the formulation of the norm. Why then is this question part of his proposal? Because he calls for much attention to the language that is used to describe weak persons. For him, offensive expressions such as "adulterer" or "fornicator" should not necessarily be deduced from the general norms when referring to concrete persons.
This is the basis for the change in discipline concerning public reception of the Eucharist. Because it is far less likely in many places that we will know whether someone culpably entered the marriage and because there are inculpable reasons for remaining in the marriage, it may be inappropriate to judge that the person is culpable merely by virtue of cohabitating. This is the matter left to the judgment of the bishops (viz. whether cohabitation in and of itself gives scandal in the reception of the Eucharist in the particular diocese). It can, obviously, lead to some unusual situations of inconsistency between dioceses, but there were already such unusual situations with the remoto scandolo exception for continent couples under FC. On the whole, this pastoral accommodation is reasonable.
But if we apply it to the obligation to remain continent itself, then we squarely contradict the moral teaching of John Paul II, which says that "in the church's doctrine and pastoral action," the distinction between grave and mortal sin is practically irrelevant. This is precisely because firm purpose of amendment does not depend at all on this consideration of subjective culpability. With respect to the public action of remaining unmarried, we can licitly draw the distinction based on (1) whether the person is culpable for the person's state of being remarried and (2) whether there are proportionate reasons for not following the positive commandment to rectify one's marital state. If those conditions are met (and we can charitably assume they are) and if the societal conditions are such in the diocese that these conditions are well-known so as to avoid scandal, then Fernandez's point is apt. But the obligation to remain continent is not like culpability for being remarried in the first place; it is a prospective moral obligation. With respect to those prospective moral obligations, "grave sin is in practice identified with mortal sin." And there is a very simple reason for this to be the case: for purpose of the "decisive break" from sin, retrospective considerations of culpability are simply irrelevance. The Church says what Jesus says: "Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more" (John 8:11).
This is precisely why the conservative bishops at the Synod were willing to accept AL only when this concept was omitted. This is why the document itself never says that there is any exception to the obligation to remain continent, only that the teaching may be difficult to follow (which is exactly what FC says about contraception, while still affirming the exceptionless moral norm). This is why subjective culpability is only applied to the state of remarriage itself in AL and never to acts of more uxorio union. Fernandez is trying to sneak in through interviews and footnotes what never would've been accepted by the Synod, and the truly despicable thing about this knavish behavior is that it is working. There are now so-called conservative Catholics, including "frenemies" like Rocco Buttiglione, who are willing to toss the philosophical brilliance of Karol Wojtyla into the garbage. But the late Pope's Magisterial pronouncements in RP, FC, and VS are not so easily discarded.
When Fernandez treats the obligation to remain continent as subject to gradualism in its personal demands, an absolute moral obligation that cannot be excused and that it is "necessary [for the Christian] to sacrifice everything" up to and including life itself to avoid breaking the commandment, he distinguishes grave sin from mortal sin in exactly the same way that John Paul II says that the doctrine and practice of the Church cannot do. Given his equivocation between the state of more uxorio and the acts of more uxorio, this makes his claim that "[t]his makes it possible not always to lose the life of sanctifying grace in a 'more uxorio' cohabitation" materially heretical, because he means this prospectively and specifically with respect to intimate acts. It draws a pastoral distinction in "discernment" between grave and mortal sin, which is condemned by the dogmatic moral teaching of John Paul II. When Fernandez asserts that "it is also licit to ask if the acts of a more uxorio cohabitation should always fall, in its integral meaning, within the negative precept," it is most emphatically not, and to assert that there is such a possibility is to impermissibly distinguish between grave and mortal sin.
In this respect, the claim of Rocco Buttiglione that Fernandez favorably cites completely misrepresents that moral teaching:
John Paul II, however, does not want at all to nullify the role of the subjective conscience. The objective aspect of the act determines the goodness and the seriousness of the act. The subjective aspect of the action determines the level of responsibility of the agent ... Pope Francis sets himself on the ground, not of the justification of the act, but of the subjective attenuating circumstances that diminish the agent's responsibility. This is precisely the balance of Catholic ethics and distinguishes the realistic ethics of St. John Paul II from the objectivistic ethics of some of Pope Francis's opponents. ... Familiaris Consortio, moreover, when it formulates the rule, does not tell us that it does not tolerate exceptions for a proportionate reason. The rule that no one who is not in grace God ought to receive Eucharist by its very nature does not tolerate exceptions. Whoever receives the Body and the Blood of Christ unworthily eats and drinks his own condemnation. The rule according to which persons in God's grace are excluded from communion as the canonical penalty for the counter-witness which they have given, however, may be subject to exceptions, and this is exactly what Amoris Laetitia tells us.
This completely disregards the fact that John Paul II said that, according to his "realistic ethics," "in the church's doctrine and pastoral action, grave sin is in practice identified with mortal sin." Buttiglione and Fernandez both insist on this confusion between the state of more uxorio and the acts of more uxorio. The state might be excused for lack of culpability, but the acts can never be for purposes of Sacramental discipline without violating John Paul II's repeated injunctions to the contrary (which were themselves based on the objective moral teaching of Second Orange and Trent). This is a direct attack on the fundamental moral theology of the Catholic Church in itself, not merely some disciplinary issue on which the practice might change (contrary to Fernandez's assertion).
What we have seen is that even when Fernandez's conclusions are right; they are right for the wrong reasons. It is right to say that we should not judge culpability for the state of more uxorio if there are reasons that the person might not be culpable. It is right to say that the general awareness of those mitigating circumstances may mitigate the public scandal of such a state. But it is wrong to introduce a distinction between grave sin and moral sin in the pastoral practice and discipline of the Church. It is wrong to apply a gradualness of the law that would excuse the resolution not to commit grave sin (because, for these purposes, grave and mortal sin are identical).
That Fernandez comes to right conclusions for wrong reasons is based on his own citation of the Buenos Aires guidelines on AL.
After discussing the possibility that the divorced in a new union live in continence, they say that "in other, more complex circumstances, and when it is not possible to obtain a declaration of nullity, the aforementioned option may not, in fact, be feasible." They then add that "nonetheless, it is equally possible to undertake a journey of discernment. If one arrives at the recognition that, in a particular case, there are limitations that diminish responsibility and culpability (cf. AL 301-302), particularly when a person judges that he would fall into a subsequent fault by damaging the children of the new union, Amoris Laetitia opens up the possibility of access to the sacraments of Reconciliation and the Eucharist (cf. footnotes 336 and 351)." (Bishops of the Pastoral Region of Buenos Aires, "Criterios básicos para la aplicación del capítulo VIII de Amoris laetitia" [Basic criteria for the application of chapter VIII of Amoris Laetitia], Buenos Aires, September 5, 2016, 6))
In discussing the practicality of asking one's spouse to remain continent, which is the feasibility consideration cited above, Fernandez says:
This becomes particularly complex, for example, when the man is not a practicing Catholic. The woman is not in a position to oblige someone to live in perfect continence who does not share all her Catholic convictions. In that case, it is not easy for an honest and devout woman to make the decision to abandon the man she loves, who protected her from a violent husband and who freed her from falling into prostitution or suicide. The "serious reasons" mentioned by Pope John Paul II, or the "objective circumstances" indicated by Benedict XVI are amplified. But most important of all is the fact that, by abandoning this man, she would leave the small children of the new union without a father and without a family environment. There is no doubt that, in this case, the decision-making power with respect to sexual continence, at least for now, has serious forms of conditioning that diminish guilt and imputability.
Fernandez is exactly right here; with respect to acts of sexual continence, this person may either be subject unwillingly to intimate acts (being a so-called "martyr for love" who suffers what she would not herself will for the sake of her children) or may have compromised decision-making and moral weakness. Yet ending the cohabitation itself ("abandoning this man"), the state of more uxorio, would not be morally feasible either. But for purposes of the resolution "from now on sin no more," she cannot make her own weakness the standard of the commandment against the intimate acts and thus apply gradualness of the law, nor can the priest-confessor in his pastoral guidance distinguish between grave and mortal sin based on diminished culpability. They must both affirm, in hope, that she will be able to remain through grace pure in this intent, even if a fall is foreseeable or if she will suffer through what she does not will.
Pope Francis, whatever he may have had in mind in private conversations, has therefore never actually collapsed this distinction between the state of more uxorio and the acts of more uxorio as Fernandez has. Why the Pope tolerates people who make that mistake, despite never actually giving it any official endorsement, seems to be the same Hegelian approach that he takes with the Church more broadly. What he seems to think is that by allowing both the progressive and conservative position (even those he considers erroneous) to be vented that the absolute chaos between completely irreconcilable positions will somehow resolve into a practical synthesis. But when conservatives aren't willing to play this game, as with the dubia or the Liturgy Wars, the Pope chastises them severely. That being said, the way that this game is played is to claim the authority of your own faction (such as the conservative bishops at the Synod) and point out that this is what the document should be interpreted to say (i.e., to claim your interpretation as what the document authoritatively means for tradition). And from my perspective, no matter how many progressive voices the Pope brings to the table, his authoritative voice as the Vicar of Christ has never said what any of them said.
