Ghosts from the past
That several key passages of Amoris Laetitia, the Pope’s recent exhortation on marriage and the family, may have come from articles written by an Argentinian theologian appears to agitate some commentators and even lead them to challenge the authority of the exhortation.

Have they forgotten that modern popes often had their ghostwriters: for instance, Pius XII for his ground-breaking 1941 encyclical on the Scriptures (Divino Afflante Spiritu) and his equally important 1947 encyclical on worship (Mediator Dei)? He regularly used one or two German professors to write what he wanted to say and publish. Likewise, many of the texts published by St John Paul II also had their ghostwriters.

Had commentators used the role of ghostwriters as an excuse for belittling the authority of the encyclicals and other documents in question, this would have rightly surprised and even outraged those two popes. Beware of the ghostwriter fallacy.