The Kettle Is Boiling

Pope Francis on his way into the
Synod

 Well the Synod on the Family, Part II is underway and the kettle has come to a boil.  Several Cardinals have written a letter to Pope Francis complaining that the Synod is “stacked” to get pre-determined results in favor of the “Kasper Proposal” for greater inclusion in the life of the Church of the divorced/remarried and the LGBT community. 

The Cardinals expressed three specific complaints about the processes of the synod.

1.   In the past, Synodal documents contained a series of propositions which could be voted up or down according to the mind of the Synod to give an adequate reflection of where the Synod members stood on the concrete issues at hand.   The current Instrumentum Laboris—the Synod agenda—lacks this structure of propositions and makes it difficult to draw the lines of approval/disapproval of the final text.

2.   The Committee which drew up the Synod’s Instrumentum Laboris—was not elected by the Synod members but appointed (presumably by the Pope) and thus the agenda does not reflect the ideas of the Synod but ideas being imposed on the Synod from above. 

3.   The real agenda at work behind the scenes is not about the spiritual welfare of the Family but about communion for those in irregular unions (divorced and remarried, same-sex couples) and this involves doctrinal principles which, if shifted, put the Catholic Church more in line with the cultural trends espoused by the liberal Protestant Churches who are facing extinction as they move away from sound biblical and doctrinal principles.  (To be precise, the letter only mentioned the “divorced and civilly remarried.”)

Frankly, I think the objecting Cardinals have some interesting points, especially the final one.  However, anyone familiar with the Synod process knows that for decades now the conservative curiae of Saint John Paul II and Benedict XVI had extremely tight control on the previous synods and the documents were pretty much pre-determined.  The Synods have rarely, if ever, been the truly open discussion forum for the bishops of the world to give honest and open advice to the Popes.  It was always ok when the conservatives did it; but now some people are smelling a rat. 

The strange thing about the letter is that when it was leaked to the press (through the anti-Francis Italian journalist, Sandro Magister) it was alleged that thirteen Cardinal-delegates had signed it.  (There are thirteen Cardinals in the faction determined to block the Francis Agenda, and the Synod is “stacked?”  I am missing something here.)  Four of the alleged signers have, however, denied ever seeing the letter, much less having signed it.

Pope Francis gave a rather strong address to the Synod during the first week condemning a “hermeneutic of conspiracy”—a perspective on the Synod that suspects there is a lot of back-room/back alley pushing and pulling for one agenda to win out over the other.  Signing Cardinals’ names to a letter they had never seen sure sounds to me like there is a conspiracy, but not a conspiracy to push the alleged Francis/Kasper agenda, but rather one to block any significant change in Church practice.  

Konspiracy Theories and The Things We Waste Time About

Well, the Krazies are all atwitter with their undies in a bunch (aren’t they always) over a “secret” colloquium held at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome this past week to discuss various topics that will be addressed in the upcoming October Synod II on the Family.   The blog Rorate Caeli, the Krazies version of L’Osservatore Romano, was just spitting nails (or s*itting bricks) about this “Vatican II style Rhineland coup.” I must admit that I am a bit baffled that Cardinals Burke, Bradmüller, Müller, Caffarra, and others can collaborate on a book to push their agenda, but other members of the hierarchy can’t sit down with a group of theologians and prepare their arguments for sound debate.   A university colloquium is far less influential on public opinion—and on the Synod Delegates—than a published book, especially one that has received such publicity as Remaining in the Truth of Christ.  Frankly I think it is a great idea for the Synod delegates on either side of the issues to do some serious theological research and reflection so as to be prepared for good discussion and wise discernment at the October meeting. 

The Conference at the Gregorian University was not an attempt to rally bishops to the banner of an Eucharistic olly-olly-in-free for everyone from the LGBT community to multiply married Hollywood film-stars and members of the Kennedy Family.  The Presidents of the German, Swiss, and French Conferences of Bishops were there but with only six other bishops.  There were seventeen theologians representing a variety of disciplines from Scripture to moral theology to canon law.  There was an auditor of the Sacred Roman Rota (the Roman “Court of Appeals” that deals with, among other things, marriage cases).  The President of the Sant’Egidio Community, a prestigious lay association tightly connected to the Vatican was also there.  All in all, no more than five of six participants are likely to be members of the upcoming Synod, but it did provide a good forum in which the theologians could advise the bishops what options for the future lay open to them for a more inclusive approach to Eucharistic participation by people who now feel “shut out” of the Church’s life.  A handful of journalists from Catholic media outlets were also invited to be present which is typical for such academic colloquia at the Gregorian or other Pontifical Universities. 

Why are the krazies so frightened of a change in Church discipline? Do they really think that Christ has deserted his Church and that it is fallen on them to guard the Deposit of Faith in his absence?  Actually, I think the agenda is far different and has little direct reference to the upcoming Synod or to the issues of Holy Communion for the divorced and remarried or people in same-sex marriages.  I think this has a lot to do with a fundamental shift in ecclesiology.

I have written about this before.  Avery Dulles in his book The Catholicity of the Church, makes the—I believe prophetic—claim that the in the first millennium the papacy was concerned with spreading the faith; in the second with power, and in the third will be with service.  This means that we are at a cusp where the institutional model of the Church will be giving way to another emphasis—the Church as Servant. In an earlier book, Dulles speaks of five models of the Church: Institution, Communio, Sacrament, Servant, and Kerygma.  We do see the power waning and a serious shift away from the Institutional model.  While there are those prelates like Cardinal Burke and Archbishop Cordileone who still like to parade around in glad rags that would make Marie Antoinette embarrassed, there has been an attempt to de-princify (or princessify) the Church.  I am not sure that I like the current CEO model any more than I liked the Renaissance Prince model of the olden years, but it does send a message.  Similarly, the liturgical reforms of the Second Vatican Council have restructured  the Mass to emphasize its communal nature rather than the priestly emphasis of the old Liturgy.  Religious women have dropped the pseudo-medieval garb of the last two centuries as well as found new ways to live together without the faux-monasticism of convent life.  All this drives the Krazies even krazier because it undermines the institutional model to which they are clinging. 

While I think that that the model of the next millennium will emphasize the servant nature of the Church, I think it will also, by necessity, revive the kerygmatic emphasis.  It is increasingly clear that European and North American societies are a challenge for a “New Evangelization.”  And I think this is the neuralgic point for the krazies.  A “New Evangelization” needs a different face on the Church as Evangelizer than the Institution.  Today’s world is distrustful of Institutions.  The International Football Association (FIFA) is plagued by scandal.  Dennis Hastert, the “born-again evangelical” Republican  former speaker of the House whose smarmy holier-than-just-about-everyone-else attitude led him to be so self-righteous in regards to President Bill Clinton, is now accused of paying hush money to a man whom Hastert sexually abused when Hastert taught high school in Illinois.  Speaking of sex-abuse: it is no longer just a Catholic problem, or even Dennis Hastert’s issue: Boy Scouts of America, Little League, public and private high schools across the country.  And of course there is the sexual harassment issues that plague the military, correction institutions, private industry, professional sports.  And we have domestic violence just about everywhere you look.  And just to bring matters back home: once Pope Francis cleaned up the Vatican Bank, profits multiplied 20 times over.  20 times over!!!  Where was that money going before???  How will Gamarelli’s stay in business now that the graft has been exposed?  Who can afford to buy a cappa magna out of his own pocket?  Hopefully the Knights of Malta will pick up the tab for you know who. 

No, we have to let the Institution of the Church morph into something less powerful and certainly not the public face of the Church.  We’ve got to get those nuns on the bus back out there while they can still walk.  We need that 85 year old Sister Megan Rice who poured blood on the wall of a nuclear weapons plant to get out there in front.  C’mon Dan Berrigan—you’ve still got work to do.  Father Warren Hall—ok, so the Bishop doesn’t want you at Seton Hall for you asking why we can’t all get along (LGBT themed agenda, but a good question none the less) but hey, the students believe in you.  We need you up front, man, you got "street cred."  And you Missionaries of Charity, yeah you’re pretty traditional but that isn’t the issue: you get down and dirty with the poor.  You’re solid gold with this evangelization thing, ladies, and we need you.  You see, our task isn’t to preserve the Church—let God take care of the Church—our task is to bring the Good News of the Kingdom of God.  The Kingdom/Gospel is our end; Church is only the means.  Let’s not worry about the Synod and who can and who can’t go to communion.  That is simply Rome fiddles while the world burns.  We are just wasting our time trimming the Christmas Tree when we get caught in these endless arguments.  People who are in the state of grace know that they are in the state of grace; those who know that they have some remedial work to do before coming to communion know that they have some remedial work to do.  We need to call one another to be honest—brutally honest—about the state of our souls but not to waste time making judgments about others. God has more important work for us to do.   

Maybe If They Took Off Those Silly Hats, Bishops Could Listen Better

John Henry Newman,
now here is a Cardinal
for you!

Frank Bruni had an interesting editorial in this morning’s New York Times where he points out in light of last week’s Irish referendum on same-sex marriage, that Catholic countries are in the vanguard of societies that are coming to extend the benefits of marriage to gay couples.  He also makes this comment on American Catholics and the battles over same-sex marriage.

Catholics in the United States appear to be more, not less, progressive about gay rights than Americans in general are. In an especially ambitious survey conducted over the course of 2014 by the Public Religion Research Institute, about 60 percent of Americans who called themselves Catholic said that they approved of same-sex marriage, versus about 30 percent who didn’t. The spread among all respondents was 54 to 38, and the group that clearly stood in the way of same-sex marriage wasn’t Catholics. It was evangelical Protestants.

He waters down the link between Catholic faith and the battle for marriage equality however as he points out that “Catholics” include not only regular church-goers but all those who for ethnic or cultural reasons identify themselves as Catholics regardless of their worship patterns.  He points out—and I believe truthfully—that regular worshippers would tend to be more conservative on this and other social issues than those whose Catholicism is a more abstract participation in heritage than a concrete commitment to faith.  On the other hand, as a regular church-goer myself and one whose social circle is drawn pretty heavily from regular church-going Catholics, I don’t think one can say that “good Catholics” (those who attend Mass regularly) are any less supportive of human rights—and access to marriage is at least perceived as a human right—than the larger self-identifying Catholic population.  What I mean to say here is that when one looks at the basic issues of sexual morality, I think Church-going Catholics tend to a more traditional view of what is right and what is wrong than the more secularized segments of American society, but when it is framed in a question of “rights,” I think Church-goers are just as avid, and perhaps even more avid, for social justice than the larger American society.  As long as there are legal and economic benefits to marriage, access to marriage must be open to couples regardless of their gender-composition. 

Now I want to pair Bruni’s editorial with a posting I saw on Father James Martin’s Facebook Page. 

Cardinal Walter Kasper believes that Pope Francis wants a "listening magisterium," a hierarchy that listens to the faithful, to the "sensus fidelium." Also, in an interesting approach, he says that the hermeneutic of continuity (meaning the view that the church does not change) must be a hermeneutic of reform.

This is something I have been harping on for a long time.  John Henry Newman—so beloved of the Katholik Krazies who obviously have never read him—spoke of the necessary balance between the magisterium of the hierarchy, the work of the theologians, and the faith of the faithful and warned that when they get out of balance the integrity of doctrine suffers.  The faith of the Church is the faith held in the hearts and intellects of the faithful.  The predominance over the last five centuries of what Dulles referred to as the Institutional Model of the Church reduced the laity to recipients of the teaching of the hierarchical magisterium and this has created an imbalance from which the Church and its credibility has suffered greatly.  The hierarchy needs to carefully listen to the faith as it is held by the People of God.  The Holy Spirit puts the truth in the heart of the Church—not in the pen of the hierarchy.  I am not saying that my opinion or your opinion is the truth but precisely where there is that consensus fidelium—where the hearts of all the faithful line up in harmony—the Spirit is speaking.  That is why, even in the pre-Vatican II Church, it was always acknowledged that doctrine must not only be taught for it to be established as the teaching of the Church, but doctrine must be received by the faithful.  Doctrine taught but not received is not yet mature enough to be considered an authentic expression of our Catholic faith.  There is a lot of stuff that bishops—and even popes—have taught that is yet to be received by the faithful.  Maybe it is time for our pastors to be more attentive and less on their own agenda.  

I don’t think that this means that the Church must recognize marriage beyond the traditional boundaries of one man and one women “until death do us part.”  Perhaps we would do best to clearly delineate the Sacramental form of Christian Matrimony and civil marriage as two separate realities, only one of which is  within our purview as Church.  But very frankly many of us good, regular Mass-going Catholics, don’t want our faith in Christ to be tarnished by the homophobic injustices committed in Christ’s name.  

Organizing Burke's Resistance Movement

Resistance is mounting, indeed is being pro-actively organized, to Pope Francis and his program of mercy as Catholics of a more conservative stripe are making it clear that they do not want to see our co-religionists who are not married according to Catholic law or who are living in irregular unions admitted to the sacraments.  After last October’s Extraordinary Synod where the subject was discussed, Cardinal Raymond Burke, a persistent critic of the Pope, pledged to “resist” Pope Francis should there be any change in the current practice which requires divorced persons to obtain a Church annulment before they can enter a second union.   Pope Francis, or rather his “front man” Cardinal Walter Kasper, has spoken of introducing a process similar to the Orthodox Churches where divorced persons can acknowledge their fault in a marriage’s failure, do penance for their role in the marriage’s collapse, and then have their second marriage blessed—albeit it in a more somber rite that distinguishes it from the sacramental first marriage.  

Nearly 500 priests, Secular and Religious, from England and Wales signed the following letter to the English Catholic newspaper, The Herald, urging the participants in the upcoming Synod on the Family (Part II) this October to maintain the current discipline that excludes the divorced and remarried from the reception of the sacraments. 

SIR – Following the Extraordinary Synod of Bishops in Rome in October 2014 much confusion has arisen concerning Catholic moral teaching. In this situation we wish, as Catholic priests, to re-state our unwavering fidelity to the traditional doctrines regarding marriage and the true meaning of human sexuality, founded on the Word of God and taught by the Church’s Magisterium for two millennia.

We commit ourselves anew to the task of presenting this teaching in all its fullness, while reaching out with the Lord’s compassion to those struggling to respond to the demands and challenges of the Gospel in an increasingly secular society. Furthermore we affirm the importance of upholding the Church’s traditional discipline regarding the reception of the sacraments, and that doctrine and practice remain firmly and inseparably in harmony.

We urge all those who will participate in the second Synod in October 2015 to make a clear and firm proclamation of the Church’s unchanging moral teaching, so that confusion may be removed, and faith confirmed.

Yours faithfully,

LifeSite News, the media face of the Campaign Life Coalition, published an interview with Cardinal Burke, the leader of the opposition to any change in pastoral practice regarding admitting those in irregular unions to the sacraments, in which His Eminence said the only pastoral help which the Church can give to those spouses who have been abandoned, to the children whose parents have divorced, to those who are “struggling with homosexual tendencies,” or to those who find themselves “trapped” in “illegitimate unions” is to hold the line of “traditional teaching” and to recognize “the sinfulness of the situation in which they find themselves” and to “leave that sinful situation and to find a way to live in accord with the truth.”  His Eminence went to say in the interview that the discussion of the possibility of welcoming those in irregular unions to the sacraments should not even have been discussed at the Synod.  For His Eminence, judgment rises or falls on the single issue of conforming to traditional sexual morality.  In regard to whatever kindnesses or generosity or charitable behavior that those in such unions might show, the Cardinal compared them to “the person who murders someone yet is kind to other people.”  The LifeSite News interview concludes with a request to sign a petition to Pope Francis to speak out and put an end to this discussion of changing pastoral practice regarding those remarried after civil divorce. 

Cardinal Burke’s remarks have been quoted—somewhat out of context—to say that he is equating the divorced and remarried and people in same-sex unions with murderers.  I don’t think His Eminence, who is one to express vociferously his opinions, but not always think them through first, consciously intended that judgment. But then with “The Lady in Red” who knows. 

Last year Cardinal Burke was one of five Cardinals who along with an archbishop and three theologians wrote a spirited attack on the proposal that the Church might change its discipline to admit the divorced and remarried to the sacraments.  The book, Remaining in the Truth of Christ, was a response to Cardinal Walter Kasper’s The Gospel of the Family as well as several addresses which the Cardinal gave—including one he gave last spring to his fellow Cardinals—in which the Cardinal outline how Church discipline might be changed to admit those whose marriages the Church does not recognize to receive Holy Communion.  Copies of Remaining in the Truth of Christ were delivered to the Synod Fathers during the October 2014 Phase I of the Synod to lobby against any proposed changes in sacramental discipline, but the books “mysteriously” disappeared before they found their ways into the Synod Father’s hands.  The blame for the books’ disappearance has been fixed on Cardinal Lorenzo Baldisseri, the General Secretary to the Synod.  American Life League President Judy Brown, a perennial sounder of the tocsin against Pope Francis and the directions in which he is taking the Church, has done much to pin the blame on Baldisseri without establishing the grounds for the charge.  And it must be remembered that Synod Rules prohibit any general distribution of materials to Synod members without those materials being first approved and then presented through the General Secretariat.   In other words, no one is allowed to just hand out materials on their own authority. 

All that being said, however, I must admit that I am not sure that I can see how the practice regarding admittance to the sacraments can be changed.  I am not a theologian, only a historian—but there is a long history to the Church’s restricting the sacraments to exclude those in irregular unions.  Individual cases have always been able to be adjudicated where due to specific circumstances and with the advice of a confessor or competent spiritual director individuals, either on a specific occasion or as a regular occurrence, are admitted to penance, Eucharist, or the anointing of the sick, but a sort of olly-olly-in-free is somewhat of an innovation.  However, should Pope Francis—Synod or no Synod—decide that it is time for such an innovation, I won’t resist, but then I am no cardinal.