In a sweeping document on family life that opened a door to divorced and civilly remarried Catholics, Pope Francis insisted Friday that church doctrine cannot be the final word in answering tricky moral questions and that Catholics must be guided by their own informed consciences.
Francis didn't create a churchwide admission to Communion for divorced and civilly remarried Catholics as some progressives had wanted. But in the document "The Joy of Love," he suggested that bishops and priests could do so on a case-by-case basis in what could become a significant development in church practice.
The pope also strongly upheld the church's opposition to same-sex marriage.
The 256-page document, two years in the making and the product of an unprecedented canvassing of ordinary Catholics and senior churchmen, is a plea from Francis' heart for the church to stop hectoring Catholics about how to live their lives and instead find the redeeming value in their imperfect relationships.
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