Yes. That is an important correction to my previous answer. I should not have presented Leo the Great as though he were a straightforward papal precedent for Francis's magisterial teaching. The key distinction is between: a particular pastoral action or accommodation by an individual Father , and an authoritative teaching of the papal magisterium establishing a doctrine or universal sacramental discipline. Joseph Ratzinger's 1998 CDF text makes precisely this distinction. He says that some Fathers, including Leo the Great , apparently sought pastoral solutions in rare borderline cases. But he immediately says that the Fathers had a clear consensus concerning the indissolubility of marriage , and that the Church of the Fathers did not officially admit divorced-and-remarried Christians to Communion after penance. Even more directly, the 1994 CDF document says that analogous pastoral solutions proposed or practiced by some Fathers never achieved the consensus of the Father...
Not as a historical blanket statement. I would not agree that every pope in history disagreed with Francis, because that would require evidence about every pope and every relevant aspect of Francis's teaching. But on the specific question we've been discussing—divorced-and-remarried Catholics and Eucharistic Communion—there is a demonstrable discontinuity between Francis's approved Buenos Aires interpretation and the explicit teaching/discipline articulated by John Paul II and reaffirmed by Benedict XVI. John Paul II, Familiaris Consortio 84 (1981): divorced Catholics who have entered another union are not admitted to Eucharistic Communion because their state objectively contradicts the Eucharistic sign of Christ's union with the Church. Reconciliation leading to Communion requires a way of life no longer contradicting marital indissolubility, concretely including continence when separation is impossible. Benedict XVI, Sacramentum Caritatis 29 (2007): explicitly says the Synod confirmed the Church's practice of not admitting divorced-and-remarried persons to the sacraments because their state objectively contradicts the Eucharistic sign. Francis's interpretation: the 2023 Vatican response explicitly says that Francis permits, in some cases after adequate discernment, reconciliation even when a person has not succeeded in maintaining the continence proposed by the earlier discipline. So I would sharpen what you are arguing rather than make the much broader claim about all popes: Francis introduced a significant change in the application of Eucharistic discipline for divorced-and-remarried Catholics that is difficult to reconcile with the explicit formulation of John Paul II and Benedict XVI. That is a much stronger claim historically because we can put the relevant papal texts side by side. And this is exactly where Rist's argument becomes more interesting: the issue isn't simply whether Francis used ambiguous language. There is an identifiable conflict between an earlier formulation that says the objectively contrary state itself excludes Communion and Francis's later framework in which discernment of diminished culpability can, in some circumstances, lead to sacramental reconciliation despite failure to live in continence. Whether that constitutes heresy, however, remains a separate theological question. The crucial step is establishing that the proposition Francis changed is itself a divinely revealed doctrine, rather than a disciplinary rule or a prudential application of broader doctrine. That is the point Rist would have to establish to get from “Francis departed from previous papal teaching” to “Francis is a heretic.” would any pope in history agree with your statement: The crucial step is establishing that the proposition Francis changed is itself a divinely revealed doctrine, rather than a disciplinary rule or a prudential application of broader doctrine No—not in the sense that I can legitimately attribute that exact methodological statement to any particular pope in history. I was stating a theological distinction of my own, and I should not have presented it as though it were necessarily the framework a pope would accept. More importantly, the documents themselves make the issue sharper than my earlier wording suggested. John Paul II did not describe the prohibition simply as a changeable disciplinary rule. In 1997 he said that the Church's pastoral response presupposes recognition of the doctrine and that the Church “does not have the power to contravene this disposition of divine wisdom.” He then reaffirmed that divorced-and-remarried persons cannot receive Communion, invoking the authority of Christ. The 1994 CDF letter under John Paul II likewise described the practice as binding, founded on Scripture, and said that it could not be modified merely because circumstances differ; it explicitly grounded the matter in divine law from which the Church has no power to dispense. Benedict XVI reaffirmed the practice in Sacramentum Caritatis, saying that the Synod confirmed the Church's practice, based on Scripture, of not admitting the divorced-and-remarried to the sacraments because their state objectively contradicts the Eucharistic sign. So I would revise my previous statement: It is not enough simply to call the pre-Francis rule “disciplinary” and therefore subject to papal modification. The pre-Francis sources themselves give the rule a theological foundation in Scripture, divine law, the nature of marriage, and the Eucharist. That doesn't by itself prove that Francis is a formal heretic. But it does mean that the burden on someone defending continuity is considerably heavier than I made it sound. And there is an important textual fact on Francis's side: the 2023 Vatican response explicitly says that Amoris Laetitia is authentic magisterium and that Francis's interpretation permits sacramental reconciliation in some cases even when continence has not been achieved. So the real theological question is no longer merely: “Did Francis change a discipline?” It is: “Can the Francis interpretation be reconciled with the earlier claim that the exclusion follows from divine law and from the objective incompatibility between the new union and the Eucharistic sign?” That is a much more difficult question for the continuity thesis—and it is precisely where Rist's argument deserves to be examined in detail rather than dismissed as simply confusing discipline with doctrine.
Not as a historical blanket statement. I would not agree that every pope in history disagreed with Francis , because that would require evidence about every pope and every relevant aspect of Francis's teaching. But on the specific question we've been discussing—divorced-and-remarried Catholics and Eucharistic Communion—there is a demonstrable discontinuity between Francis's approved Buenos Aires interpretation and the explicit teaching/discipline articulated by John Paul II and reaffirmed by Benedict XVI. John Paul II, Familiaris Consortio 84 (1981): divorced Catholics who have entered another union are not admitted to Eucharistic Communion because their state objectively contradicts the Eucharistic sign of Christ's union with the Church. Reconciliation leading to Communion requires a way of life no longer contradicting marital indissolubility, concretely including continence when separation is impossible. Benedict XVI, Sacramentum Caritatis 29 (2007): explic...
