Cardinal Schönborn Says Amoris Laetitia is Binding Doctrine

Cardinal Christoph Schönborn

Austrian Catholic website kath.net reports that on 7 July, Cardinal Christoph Schönborn published an interview in the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, in which he said that Amoris Laetitia is a binding doctrinal document. From now on, says Schönborn, all the previous magisterial texts concerning marriage and the family “have to be read in the light of Amoris Laetitia.”

Schönborn also said in this interview – a fuller excerpt of this text has now been published in English in the Jesuit journal Civiltà Cattolica – that it is “obvious” that Amoris Laetitia is an act of the Magisterium since it is an Apostolic Exhortation. Kath.net reports:

All previous magisterial statements concerning marriage and the family now have to be read in the light of Amoris Laetitia, Schönborn stressed, and just as today the First Vatican Council (1869-1870) must be interpreted in the light of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965).

Cardinal Raymond Burke had previously claimed that Amoris Laetitia did not have a doctrinally binding character; Cardinal Carlo Caffarra and Cardinal Walter Brandmüller both had insisted that Amoris Laetitia had to be read in light of the previous magisterial texts.

Cardinal  Schönborn also now says that Amoris Laetitia is “an authentic lesson of the holy teaching” which now actualizes doctrine for today’s world. He added, according to kath.net:

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, as Prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, had once told him, during that time, that one should not handle all of the cases of the remarried divorcees according to one overall general rule.