So Long, Wojtyla and Caffarra. Here Comes the Francis Family

Dv, 22/09/2017 URL article: http://magister.blogautore.espresso.repubblica.it/2017/09/19/so-long-wojtyla-and…

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The earthquake that has changed the face of the Pontifical Academy for Life has also struck the institute for studies on marriage and the family created by John Paul II and first headed by the theologian and then cardinal Carlo Caffarra.

As of today this historic institute has been eliminated and replaced with another institute, with a different name.

As is in fact stated in article 1 of the motu proprio “Summa Familiae Cura” published this morning, with which Pope Francis “has put his signature” to the transformation:

“With the present motu proprio I institute the John Paul II Pontifical Theological Institute for Marriage and Family Sciences, which, associated with the Pontifical Lateran University, succeeds, replacing it, the Pontifical Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family, established by the apostolic constitution ‘Magnum Matrimonii Sacramentum’, which therefore comes to an end.”

All of the professors of the defunct institution have therefore also been dismissed, while there remain in office the current grand chancellor, Vincenzo Paglia, and the dean, Pierangelo Sequeri, whose appointment by Pope Francis had been, one year ago, the prelude to the current cataclysm.

1 The two accompanied the publication of the motu proprio with a note that emphasizes the “direct involvement” of the pope, who - they are careful to say - “entrusts the task of crafting the rules, structures, and operations of the new theological institute” to the same “academic authorities of the historic John Paul II Institute,” meaning precisely to those two and to none other.

In describing the “wider horizons” in which the institute will now have to move, Paglia and Sequeri refer, naturally, to “Amoris Laetitia,” but also to “Laudato Si’” and to the “care for creation.”

It now remains to be seen who will be the professors of the new heading, who will be reconfirmed and who not, both in Rome and in the other branches all over the world.

As it also remains to be seen what will become of the last publications of the defunct institute, especially that “Handbook” on the correct interpretation of “Amoris Laetitia” which is looked on as the plague by the paladins of communion for the divorced and remarried.

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