BEFORE THE PUBLICATION OF THE Apostolic Exhortation, Amoris Laetitia, Pope Francis called an extra-ordinary synod on the family. It was after that extra-ordinary synod that he called for the proper synod itself. Amoris Laetitia is the product of all these activities; which were all very interesting to follow, by even very lay people like me but who in spite of our many deficiencies try to understand, to love and to follow the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church and her leaders, as faithfully as one ever can.

Many conferences, meetings, writings, discussions and debates, even movements, have arisen in anticipation and following these events, both within and outside the Catholic Church exactly because of these "family" activities of the present papacy. It is still a mystery to me that many - even very educated and widely read Catholics - are not aware of these movements and related issues in these regards. Because of these, many discussions, writings and even debates about these issues remain very shallow indeed, even as brilliant as many of them have been or would seem to be. It is exactly because of this situation that even less brilliant and rather very ordinary people like me would dare to also add to these writings.

Before the election of Pope Francis, the very quiet and most cerebral Pope Benedict XVI, the former no-nonsense Cardinal Ratzinger, had resigned the papacy on account of his failing physical health.Many close watchers of the Vatican had seen and worried about the growing physical health of the pope for over one year before that retirement, seeing how frail and nearly collapsing he had seemed during that past one whole year while conducting public liturgy as the Pope! His voluntary resignation (or really, more appropriately, retirement from active papacy) on account of his physical health on the very Day of the Sick in the Catholic Church, was a most accurate, symbolic and spiritually profound thing to do! I personally rejoiced and thanked God for the deeply spiritual courage that enabled him to do so! Many people who spiritually and very closely followed the Papacies of Paul VI, John-Paul II and Benedict XVI would know how decidedly, systematically and most vibrantly (even if clandestinely) the enemies of God, especially the section thereof denoted in the expression of "the World" and "the prince of this World", did so. Pope Paul VI described the ferocity of those attacks severally in his time, Pope John-Paul knew them and in his very terribly spiritually and charismatically powerful ways confronted and fought with them all through his papacy, even in terminal illness! It was obviously the consistent spiritual and clandestinely social attacks of these people on Pope Benedict XVI that many close followers of the secrete happenings at the Vatican have come to assume, as having lead to the Pope's growing physical weakness in the year before he finally resigned the office of Pope. In that way, he went on retreat as all good soldiers do, in order to keep fighting those enemies of the Church and of her Christ, in an intense prayer warfare, as he has done ever since then!

So, when Pope Francis was elected, many had alleged that these same "people of the world", those of them who have found their ways into the Church physically had stage-managed the election of this pope for these long going plans and intentions of ruining the church. Thus, at once at his election and immediately following it till lately on his international aeroplane travels, these same people - in various world mass media - started to tell everybody how wonderful the election had been and how this pope was going to undo all the undesirable "hard-liner" creations of Popes Paul VI, John-Paul II and Benedict XVI in the church. One noted atheist (Secular Humanist and frequent interviewer friend of the Pope, one Eugenio Scalfari, had been the most well-known of these open agents.They were all the time interviewing him on the work and teachings of these three popes on the family, divorce, on contraception, abortion, homosexuality and all the other aspects of the Secular Humanist (SH) Religion. The church usually refers to SH as "the language and culture of death" by the now virtually euphemistic language of the official church in that regard; obviously in her effort to be seen not to be confrontational with that religion!The pope was going to do these for them even if on the surface only, he would seem to be (merely) affirming these immediate past papal teachings by only word of the mouth; while the clandestine work of undermining and ruining them goes on steadily.

In Nigeria, for example, I know one diocese/archdiocese in which one fellow in one of the many movements that has arisen in their hope to help protect the church from the effects of these Secular Humanist people - pope, clergy and otherwise - writes REGULARLY in their Sunday weekly newspaper on these matters! People will also know that some topmost clergy in the church had addressed a letter called the "dubia" (translated as doubtes) to the pope in these regards; urging him to do otherwise. Currently since March, many electronic documents are now circulating saying that Pope Francis plans to rewrite the Bible; and we are all discussing whether it is true or not. Cardinal Burk in early April 2018 has returned to these confusions from the pope.

Now, the bottom line of these things concerning the Amoris Laetitia apostolic exhortation are as follows: 1. The "Office of Peter", according to Jesus Christ himself is to affirm the faithful. Why is the person now holding that office, ever since the beginning, converted it to the office of raising doubts among the faithful and having an army of "experts" doing their very best to try to explain to us what the pope actually means, but he himself keeps mum on those continuously raising spiritual doubts? 2. Aristotle and the many philosophers (and theologians) since his time had explained to us that when we talk of LOVE, we may be speaking of FOUR primary things all properly called loves, or combinations thereof. These, in their order of superiority start with the first two covenantal ones of Agape and Filia/Charity/Storge, always covenantal in themselves. Then, the third love which truly must proceed from the two first inherently covenantal loves for it to be genuine and true, to make the Trinity of Godly loves in whose image and likeness God created us, namely Platony or Philia.Please refer to the Nicene Creed on this matter! Finally comes the last, least and most troublesome "love" of Eros/Amoris or carnal/beastly/sexual love; which though given by God to man for a specific purpose, is NOT of the essence or nature of God, nor were we created for or in that image and likeness! 3. During the sex-revolution era, the Secular Humanists leading it produced a book titled "the joy of sex"; which can be translated as "the joy of (sexual) love", and with which they had carried out the sex revolution that has now very nearly ruined the whole world so completely with their language and culture of death! So why does this apostolic exhortation prefer to use the same name for itself? Why is it Amoris Laetitia and not Agape Laetitia, Caritatis Laetitia, etc?

Now, those three points as well as the problems of the obviously Secular Humanist clergy and "the world" claiming that the present pope is there to do their wishes, "to reform the church" and now to re-write the Bible, are the real problems behind all these matters. Those who are trying to explain these things to us, rather than the pope himself teaching exactly what he intends openly and unequivocally in order to affirm the brethren, should help all of us in the church in these ways.