In his exhortation ‘Amoris Laetitia’ Pope Francis invites us to a process of discernment that varies from one person to another, but is always guided by the teaching and wisdom of the Church on the nature of love

I WAS introduced to a stranger at a party in New York as “the family priest”. For the next 15 minutes I heard how disappointed the man was because he had failed to get a Church annulment. Having finally managed to extricate myself from his monologue, I was introduced to someone else who proceeded to have a go at me because his wife had been given an annulment.

Comparing notes with others about annulments is not always helpful. It reminds me of what a nurse told a group of us who had just had heart surgery. She warned us about sharing our experiences and discussing our treatments. Although we all had what looked like the same operation to us, she reminded us that our bodies are all very different and our needs are different – and that meant that we were all on different courses of medication, or different doses of the same medication.  And she advised us not to think of altering our medication just because someone we talked to was on something different.

I mention these two scenarios because they may help to give us some insight into what is going on in the recent exhortation of Pope Francis, Amoris Laetitia (“The Joy of Love”). We all come to the Pope’s words with different expectations, formed by our personal experience, the media, our theological training or lack of it, or even our personal temperament.