(OnePeterFive) — Editor’s note: The following is an open letter from Father Brian Harrison, SThD, to Pope Leo XIV on Pope Francis’ 2016 apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia, originally published at OnePeterFive on August 12, 2025:
His Holiness Pope Leo XIV
22 July 2025
00120 VATICAN CITY
Europe
Most Holy Father,
I address to you this heartfelt petition regarding an urgent and practically unprecedented problem that Your Holiness has inherited from the previous pontificate. It is one which I and many other Catholics believe lies at the very heart of the mission entrusted to you by Our Lord as the Successor of Blessed Peter: that of guarding and teaching the uncorrupted doctrine of Christ that was “once and all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3).
1. I refer to the fact that Chapter VIII of Pope Francis’ Apostolic Exhortation of 19 March 2016, Amoris Laetitia (AL), teaches doctrines which none of its apologists have succeeded in reconciling persuasively with the bimillennial magisterial tradition of the Catholic Church, derived directly from Sacred Scripture.
2. The most pastorally pressing of these is the permission granted in footnote 351 to AL, article 305, for Holy Communion to be given “in certain cases” to couples living in “an objectively sinful situation,” notably, those who had been validly married but have since divorced and civilly remarried, and continue to live more uxorio. This is not indeed a ‘blanket’ permission for all such persons to receive the Eucharist. But the clear tradition of the Church has been that in no case whatsoever may persons in that situation be given Holy Communion. Therein lies the very troubling contradiction.
3. Those who try to reconcile this teaching with Catholic orthodoxy point out that it is possible to commit what is objectively a mortal sin (“grave matter”), but still be in the state of grace owing to subjective mitigating factors: lack of full consent of the will and/or lack of knowledge that one’s act is gravely immoral. That is true, but beside the point. Pope Francis’s predecessors in the See of Peter were of course well aware of such mitigating factors. But they nonetheless absolutely excluded from Communion anyone living in adultery, precisely because of their objective
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4. As Pope St. John Paul II summed up and confirmed the teaching of all his predecessors in Familiaris Consortio, no. 84:
They are unable to be admitted [to Communion] from the fact that their state and condition of life objectively contradict that union of love between Christ and the Church which is signified and effected by the Eucharist. Besides this, there is another special pastoral reason: if these people were admitted to the Eucharist, the faithful would be led into error and confusion regarding the Church’s teaching about the indissolubility of marriage.
Indeed, dozens of Scriptural passages and magisterial interventions over two millennia bear witness to the fact that withholding the Eucharist from such persons is a matter of divine law, not mutable disciplinary legislation.
5. The Catechism of the Catholic Church, too, affirms that as a consequence of their objective contravention of God’s law, civilly remarried divorcees cannot receive Communion. The clear implication is that any diminished imputability that may exist at the subjective level is insufficient to justify their admission to the Eucharist:
1650: [Divorced and civilly remarried Catholics] find themselves in a situation that objectively contravenes God’s law. Consequently, they cannot receive Eucharistic communion as long as this situation persists … Reconciliation through the sacrament of Penance can be granted only to those who have repented for having violated the sign of the covenant and of fidelity to Christ, and who are committed to living in complete continence. (emphasis added)
2384: Contracting a new union [after divorce], even if it is recognized by civil law, adds to the gravity of the rupture: the remarried spouse is then in a situation of public and permanent adultery.
In other words, the new civil marriage, while no doubt making the union more socially respectable, only renders it a more grave offence from the standpoint of divine law.
2390: The sexual act must always take place exclusively within [valid] marriage. Outside of marriage it always constitutes a grave sin and excludes one from sacramental communion (emphasis added).
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6. In short, Your Holiness has inherited a situation in which there is a dangerous self-contradiction in the Church’s own teaching documents. We are told in AL that people living in adulterous relationships may in some cases receive the Eucharist, while not only previous papal and conciliar documents, but also the Catechism of the Catholic Church allow for no exceptions whatever to their exclusion from the Eucharist. Once again, it is the objective relationship which is said to cause this exclusion from Communion.
7. Most Holy Father, in view of this scandalous incoherence between AL and the constant teaching of all previous popes and councils that is faithfully summarized in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, I respectfully request that you consider what measures may be most appropriate for overcoming this source of disunity and confusion over a matter of great doctrinal and pastoral importance, and so “confirming the brethren in the faith.”c
Yours very sincerely and respectfully in Christ,
(Rev.) Brian W. Harrison, MA, STD
Associate Professor of Theology (retired), Pontifical Catholic University of Puerto Rico
Reprinted with permission from OnePeterFive.
