The Supreme Destiny of Man
From October 7 to 14, 2026, the announced gathering will take place at the Vatican between Pope Leo XIV, the heads of the Eastern Catholic Churches sui iuris, and the presidents of the Bishops' Conferences. The event is conceived with the aim of "proceeding, in mutual listening, to a synodal discernment on the steps to be taken to proclaim the Gospel to families today, in the light of Amoris Laetitia and taking into account what is being realized in the local Churches."
In preparation for the assembly's work, on July 6th the General Secretariat of the Synod of Bishops and the Dicastery for Laity, Family and Life published a thematic itinerary sent to the local Churches. The fourth point of the text, entitled "In Life's Difficulties: Accompanying and Supporting. Walking with Families in Complex Situations," takes up, in these words, the central argument of chapter eight of the post-synodal exhortation Amoris Laetitia: "What steps have been taken to support those living in situations of fragility or difficulty? What resistances emerge? How do we build Christian communities in which those who have experienced suffering, abandonment, separation, and divorce can feel truly listened to, participating, and co-responsible? What concrete experiences already show today the face of a Church ever more capable of closeness, discernment, accompaniment, and appreciation, helping persons and families to rediscover trust, to recognize themselves as part of the community, and to experience the mercy of God?"
According to the exhortation Amoris Laetitia of March 19, 2016, in the face of the suffering of those who have experienced a failed marriage, the Church must commit itself pastorally, showing itself as a welcoming and merciful home. But how far can this welcome extend? Is it possible to admit to the sacraments those who live permanently in an objective situation of grave sin — such as the divorced and remarried — without contradicting natural and divine law?
Amoris Laetitia appears to answer this question affirmatively when it states, at n. 301, that "it is no longer possible to say that all those who are in some so-called 'irregular' situation are living in a state of mortal sin, deprived of sanctifying grace." At n. 305 it adds: "Because of conditioning or mitigating factors, it is possible that within an objective situation of sin — which is not subjectively culpable, or not fully so — a person can be living in God's grace, can love, and can also grow in the life of grace and charity, receiving the Church's help to this end."
It is true that Catholic moral theology has always distinguished between the objective gravity of an act and the full subjective imputability of the one who performs it. Ignorance, fear, violence, ingrained habits, and other conditioning factors can diminish personal responsibility. But the problem posed by Amoris Laetitia does not concern only the judgment on the individual conscience, which in the final instance belongs to God. It concerns the possibility of transforming a prudential evaluation by the confessor into an ecclesial practice that permits access to the Eucharist for those who continue publicly to live in a condition contrary to a divine commandment, without the intention of abandoning it.
For this reason, in 2016 four cardinals — Raymond Leo Burke, Walter Brandmüller, Carlo Caffarra, and Joachim Meisner — submitted five dubia to Pope Francis, asking, among other things, whether, after Amoris Laetitia n. 301, it was still possible to affirm that "a person who habitually lives in contradiction to a commandment of the law of God, such as the one that prohibits adultery (cf. Mt 19:3–9), finds himself in a situation of objective grave habitual sin." Neither this question nor the other dubia formulated by the cardinals have ever received a response.
Will the October gathering promoted by Leo XIV reaffirm the errors and ambiguities of Amoris Laetitia, or will it seek to reinterpret Pope Francis's document in an orthodox sense, reaffirming that those who find themselves in an objective situation of grave sin cannot receive the Eucharist without repentance, sacramental absolution, and the resolve to change their lives?
As Father Claude Barthe observes in a recent lucid article, "this gathering could represent a providential occasion for some courageous pastors to bring to light the considerable damage caused by the post-synodal apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia to natural and Catholic morality, and consequently to the salvation of souls." No pastoral practice, in fact, can be authentically Catholic if it contradicts, even indirectly, the doctrinal truth it is meant to make visible.
The fundamental problem, however, lies upstream rather than downstream. The deep reason for so many matrimonial failures — with the consequent development of situations of difficulty, suffering, and sin — resides in the loss of the meaning of marriage and, more generally, in the obscuring of natural and divine law. Still further upstream lies the absence, on the part of many pastors of the Church, of a coherent and systematic preaching that reminds man what the end of his life is and what his supreme destiny is.
The Church is not simply a refuge in which those who are spiritually or psychologically wounded may recover their equilibrium through fellowship with their brothers. She is certainly a mother who welcomes and heals wounds, but she is above all the divine institution founded by Jesus Christ to safeguard the truth, administer the sacraments, and offer men the means necessary for eternal salvation. Her task is not to guarantee a purely earthly serenity, but to lead souls to God. If she forgets this supernatural purpose, even pastoral accompaniment is reduced to a form of psychological or social assistance.
Our destiny does not end with earthly life. There exists a future life in which perfect sanction of the merits and demerits of each person will take place. As Saint Thomas Aquinas teaches, no sooner has the soul separated from the body than a ray of light penetrates it to the depths, and "illuminated by this light regarding its own merits or demerits, the soul goes of itself, as it were, to the place of its eternity, like those light or heavy bodies which rise or fall to where their motion must terminate" (Summa Theologiae, Suppl., q. 69, a. 2).
Heaven — the ineffable fullness of happiness in the eternal possession of God — and hell — the eternal privation of God and the immense presence of every evil — are our supreme destinies. To recall this truth means to look at reality with the eyes of faith. And this is the task of the Church.
The despair that awaits in eternity those who die impenitent, having gravely transgressed the divine law, is infinitely more terrible than the passing suffering of those who, on earth, struggle to respect that law. The response to the crisis of the family does not consist in adapting the law of God to human weaknesses, but in restoring to men their trust in the power of grace — which can do all things, even what seems humanly impossible. These are the words of life and hope that one may rightly expect from an ecclesial assembly dedicated to the proclamation of the Gospel.
