What's the take-away from the following statement and its footnote?

In the context of the document, in your view, would this represent

1) an acknowledgement of presumptive inculpability per the law of graduality?

2) a change in form or degree of a canonical law via a gradualism of law?

3) a moral proportionalism?

4) a moral probabilism?

5) a moral analysis integrating some combination of these approaches?

QUOTE:

One thing is a second union consolidated over time, with new children, proven fidelity, generous self giving, Christian commitment, a consciousness of its irregularity and of the great diffculty of going back without feeling in conscience that one would fall into new sins. The Church acknowledges situations “where, for serious reasons, such as the children’s upbringing, a man and woman cannot satisfy the obligation to separate”. 329

Footnote 329 John Paul II, Apostolic Exhortation Familiaris Consortio (22 November 1981), 84: AAS 74 (1982), 186. In 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” (second vatican ecumenical council. Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World Gaudium et Spes, 51).

END QUOTE

Does that statement follow, also, from the one below?

QUOTE:

“Yet conscience can do more than recognize that a given situation does not correspond objectively to the overall demands of the Gospel. It can also recognize with sincerity and honesty what for now is the most generous response which can be given to God, and come to see with a certain moral security that it is what God himself is asking amid the concrete complexity of one’s limits, while yet not fully the objective ideal”

END QUOTE:

To be more concrete, while one may have properly discerned via the internal forum that one's first marriage was invalid, there still exists the reality that the remarriage was not sacramental.

So, in certain cases, even without a celibate relationship, there may be no grave sin due to _______?

presumptive inculpability? proportionate reasoning? pastoral solution? relaxation of canon law? reinterpretation of divine law?

In other words, what's the pathway back to the sacraments?

After digging deeper, the answers seem to me to be: a) pastoral solution based on b) presumptive inculpability.

The citations (in Footnote 329) of Familiaris Consortio & Gaudium et Spes, read in their contexts, don't support the view that Pope Francis has changed doctrine.

I suspect the proper takeaway, instead, can be found in the phrase "great difficulty" in the sentence which was footnoted.

To wit:

One thing is a second union consolidated over time, with new children, proven fidelity, generous self giving, Christian commitment, a consciousness of its irregularity and of the GREAT DIFFICULTY of going back without feeling in conscience that one would fall into new sins. The Church acknowledges situations “where, for serious reasons, such as the children’s upbringing, a man and woman cannot satisfy the obligation to separate”. 329

end of quote

The Pope was employing neither

1) a moral probabilism with some novel interpretation of either natural or divine law, nor

2) a gradualism of positive law nor

3) a proportionalist calculus to justify a given moral object.

Instead, in keeping with the tone and tenor of the exhortation, he was only citing another mitigating factor that might weigh against subjective culpability per a 4) law of graduality.

The internal forum pastoral solution did change a discipline that relied on objective states, alone, to bar the faithful from communion.

RE: It is hard to see why a person needs the grace of the sacrament of confession, and hence the Lord’s mercy, if, as Francis suggests here, that person is doing the will of God.

CCC: Venial sin weakens charity; it manifests a disordered affection for created goods; it impedes the soul's progress in the exercise of the virtues and the practice of the moral good; it merits temporal punishment. Deliberate and unrepented venial sin disposes us little by little to commit mortal sin.

Without being strictly necessary, confession of everyday faults (venial sins) is nevertheless strongly recommended by the Church. Indeed the regular confession of our venial sins helps us form our conscience, fight against evil tendencies, let ourselves be healed by Christ and progress in the life of the Spirit. By receiving more frequently through this sacrament the gift of the Father's mercy, we are spurred to be merciful as he is merciful. <<<

RE: And yet in AL 303 and 305, he suggests that a person not only may be doing the best that he can, but also that such acts therefore are not sinful and hence are right for that person, because the person, in his mitigating circumstances, fulfills the ideal as applied by that individual in those limiting circumstances. This way of thinking was unavoidable because throughout AL Francis apparently emphasizes the “ideal” nature of the normative order of marriage and family life.

But how can God be asking one to do X when X is contrary to his will? The pope must think that X is not contrary to the will of God in that specific circumstance, but only contrary to God's ideal will which the person is inculpable for not attaining. <<<<

Nowhere in the exhortation did I interpret the Pope to be stating that any given act was not objectively sinFUL, only that a person, for manifold and various reasons, may not be sinNING.

Your X, the act, facilely conflates the Y, the intention, and Z, the circumstances. The partial fulfillment of the ideal, objectively, while laudable, does not establish one's inculpability, as if it's a new prescription or form of precept (lowering of the bar). One's subjective state, rather, determines innocence. X remains objectively contrary to God's will even though an innocent subjectively remains in God's grace.

“Yet conscience can do more than recognize that a given situation does not correspond objectively to the overall demands of the Gospel. It can also recognize with sincerity and honesty what for now is the most generous response which can be given to God, and come to see with a certain moral security that it is what God himself is asking amid the concrete complexity of one’s limits, while yet not fully the objective ideal” <<<<<

In a failure to fully cooperate with grace, I interpreted the exhortation as drawing a distinction between a culpable refusal and an inculpable inability, which could be due to manifold and varied reasons.

As far as interpreting the exhortation in light of the Ignatian Degrees of Humility and AMDG, the presumption would be that no one would will to commit a grave evil but would either be invincibly ignorant (in not assessing it properly) or otherwise unable for whatever reasons.

Because the Holy Father explicitly denies engaging a gradualness of law and the overall tone and tenor of the exhortation places great emphasis on the law of graduality and conscience, I try not to construe any ambiguity against him. This is to recognize that, at least on the surface, ambiguity does exist and Professor Echeverria's construals don't seem wholly unreasonable to me.

This is to say that, where the Holy Father speaks of one's most generous response, I take

that as a reference to following one's conscience, which might vary from church teaching regarding divine and natural laws, but willing to deferentially explore why it may not conform to church teaching with a disposition to have one's moral vision changed and moral actions amended, if that's where the pastoral discernment process leads.

"What God wills" refers, then, to the following of one's conscience with a disposition to form and re-form it, if necessary, seeking oneness with church teaching.

"What God wills" does not refer to the moral object but to the moral subject. It does not refer, then, to any action contrary to divine or natural law. The moral advancement refers to the subjective state and intention and not the objective action or norm.

I am saying this in agreement and not over against your interpretation. I also appreciate Professor Echeverria's teasing out of ambiguities, which are open to reasonable but competing interpretations.

moral probabilism, proportionalism, law of graduality, gradualness of law, internal forum, Amoris Laetitia, Footnote 329, divorced and remarried, conscience formation