John Smeaton, co-founder of Voice of the Family and the CEO of Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC), issued the request to the Pope in his keynote address at the annual Rome Life Forum.
Smeaton spoke following Bishop Athanasius Schneider, who in his speech decried growing confusion in the Church, and who has previously expressed grave concerns about the exhortation. Smeaton highlighted several concerns with the exhortation, including:
- the section about sex education, which speaks at length about sex education in schools, without reference to the rights of parents;
- references to public adultery which fail to point out the intrinsic evil of adultery;
- the suggestion that adulterous sexual acts may be justifiable; and,
- the false message that marriage is not indissoluble.
The failure to speak clearly on adultery "shows a lack of mercy" said Smeaton, "because it denies Catholics the truth about right and wrong."
"It denies Catholics the knowledge they need to exercise true freedom, freedom from sin. It also shows a lack of mercy because it sends children the false message that marriage is not indissoluble. Arguably, Your Holiness, the most effective way of destroying children is to destroy marriage as an indissoluble lifetime union of a man and a woman."
In his open letter, Smeaton tells the Pope that he personally knows “of women and men who've been deserted by their spouse for another person and either left alone with children or left alone without their children.”
“If that deserted spouse were then to see their wife or husband with a new partner, receiving the Body of Christ in Communion, that sends the message to everyone, including the children, that marriage is not indissoluble after all,” said Smeaton.
Smeaton concluded his appeal to the Holy Father by asking him to “recognise the grave errors in the recently published Apostolic Exhortation, Amoris Laetitia, in particular those sections which will lead to the desecration of the Holy Eucharist and to the harming of our children, and to withdraw the Apostolic Exhortation with immediate effect.”