From The Catholic Thing today:
Footnotes are humble things and do their best work in relative obscurity. When footnotes are newsworthy and are talked about for months – such as Amoris Laetitia #351 – the evidence suggests the note has missed its calling. Prominent assertions belong in the text, themselves in need of clarifying footnotes...
So even if any churchman solemnly proclaims a change in Church teaching to persuade you, for example, that divorce and remarriage or same-sex unions should be recognized as holy by the Church, he would have to distract attention from the footnotes of countless Church documents. Even a major book burning would be useless in eliminating the footnotes (now that we have the Internet).
