Amoris laetitia, footnote 351, is a kind of resurrection of the German Catholic bishops policy regarding their government’s idea, some years ago, which was that if a woman wants to have an abortion, she has to get some sort of counseling first, even religious counseling, at the completion of which, if she still wants to have an abortion, she is to be given a certificate, an admission ticket, if you will, to be handed in to the ticket master at the local abortion mill. So, the bishops, incredibly, jumped on the idea, and had “counselors” all lined up ready to hand a woman her abortion admission ticket, thus formally participating in her abortion instead of actually seriously trying to make the rescue. And they did formally cooperate. And the image of Jesus was put to death. The Holy See finally put a stop to this abuse of the German bishops amidst the protests for and against in the highest levels of the Roman Curia.
A ticket to… what…?
But here we are again, with Amoris laetitia, footnote 351, in paraphrase: if you really can’t stop yourself, go ahead and go to Communion, and use that as a kind of admission ticket to do whatever it is that “forces” you to be unrepentant and not to have a firm purpose of amendment, regardless of which I’ll just go ahead and absolve you of your sin, which, anyway, isn’t really sin, but just the sign of a worthy life which just needs to be, you know, more worthy, but we’ll work on that.
Or is it all just ambiguous and I’m reading into it? If that were the case, it would certainly be deadly ambiguity. Deadly ambiguity, as deadly as it is, is deadly, and that’s not good, is it? It basically says amidst all the ambiguity, and, indeed, because of the ambiguity, that people are stupid, have no moral capacity, are determined by their circumstances, and that the person of our Lord, His grace, has no power to save, no power to bring someone into love, no power to convert the most hardened sinner.
But, be of good cheer. There is also this:
I love that. Whatever is going on, there is one constant, it’s all about Jesus.
We want Jesus! Because Jesus wants us!
ARISE! LET US BE GOING! 
What an enormous sorrow. Is this why the bishops (most, not all of course) did nothing to promote ProLife activities in the parishes? They say there is smoke in the Vatican? I’d say it’s more like a towering inferno.
I have one question – unrelated – but gnawing at my mind – what caused the great exodus of priests and nuns after the second Vatican council? Can you tell us what happened?
July 25, 1968, the day Humanae vitae was published, is what happened. A full page ad was taken out in the New York Times either the next day, or very soon thereafter, a bazillion names of priests and religious rebelling against Paul VI and his teaching on contraception, abortion and family life. Many of them left. Some stayed, and caused enormous trouble, with 1975 being the height of the horror.
Wow. So that was it. Thank you for answering. Much to think about and pray about.
In the great history of the changes in the Jesuit Order in the US “The Re-Formed Jesuits” the conclusion about why so many left is twofold, both related to the huge surge in a spirit of “question everything/change everything” that began in fact before Vatican II especially with questioning and dispatching with ascetical practices of many sorts (this was going on throughout society but to me it is reasonable to think that in this case it had a lot to do with the amount of young marxists who had gone into the priesthood and religious life, however I don’t recall the book, which is low key in its presentation, discussing the possibility of communist infiltrators). In the Jesuit book most of those who left, left because they were change-agitators and the order, although it was changing rapidly wasn’t changing fast enough or radically enough for their liking, and often these kept on actively working to change the order even while they were in the process of leaving it. A significant minority of the ones who left were faithful Catholic men who left because what the order was changing into no longer matched their expectations of religious life. The possibility of living the vocation they had signed up for seemed to no longer exist.
That book shed some light and made an impression on me that later helped lead to writing my own book on the dissident religious sisters in my diocese. My general impression is that somewhat similar dynamics happened in that group, the chaos exploded in the period of “experimentation” (I think this may have also begun in 1968) that was called for by the Congregation for Religious following Vatican II, that was meant to explore how to reform the constitutions in keeping with Vatican II’s teaching on the updating of religious life. Needless to say, without reasonable boundaries to the experimentation and discussions and under so much marxist influence it pretty much went haywire.