The Pastoral and Educational–Catechetical Highlights in Chapters Seven and Eight of the Post–Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia

Abstract

The article elaborates on the pastoral, educational and catechetical highlights in Chapters Seven and Eight of the Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia, whereby the authors, Jadranka Garmaz and Antun Volenik, explain the said chapters entitled respectively, Toward a Better Education of Children and Accompanying, Discerning and Integrating Weakness. These two chapters condense the catechetical and pastoral specificity of the Exhortation and pose a major challenge, for they discuss the issues of raising children, their moral and religious education, and they reaffirm some forgotten pastoral guidelines. Namely, until now not a single official document of the universal Church has devoted so many paragraphs to the concrete problem of families providing children with a religious upbringing as is evident in Chapter Seven. Chapter Eight, in the context of the Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy, pertains to the change in mentality which the Exhortation proposes in terms of depicting the Church as the Father’s House rather than a customs office.