Amoris Laetita: Opening An Even Bigger Door?

Well, Amoris Laetitia is out and krazies are spattered with the fecal matter they have thrown into the fan.   Everyone is reacting to it—progressives and conservatives.  After Mass yesterday it was the only subject of conversation during the coffee hour.  The pastor and the parochial vicar have some very different thoughts on it, though I would label neither of them “conservative.” One little old lady couldn’t stop crying as she told us how she had gone forty years without Holy Communion—“every Sunday having my heart pulled out of my chest and crushed,” because she had left an abusive husband and civilly married a man—who could provide for her five girls.  She loved her second husband and she found graces every day in their relationship; she had grown deep in prayer and grace throughout the years, but her hunger for the Eucharist had to go unsatisfied.  Finally able to have her marriage in the Church blessed (the abusive husband has died), she is at Mass every morning and says she never takes the sacraments for granted.   Another woman told us “I am in an invalid marriage and I can go to Holy Communion every day.  O, we were married by a priest—at Mass even—but we have always planned, because of a gene that runs in my family for dwarfism—not to have children.  That renders my marriage invalid.  But I know that before God Bob and I stand in his grace.  And nothing keeps me away from the Christ in the Eucharist.”

I want to look at Amoris Laetitia not as a pastoral document about the remarried but from a different perspective, a sign of greater things to come in the Church.  For almost five centuries Catholic theology, like its Liturgy, had been frozen and not allowed to develop.  This was due primarily as a reaction to the Protestant Reformations and the challenges to our traditional faith.  Through those Middle Ages where the Church was so strong, the universities were the center of theological debate.  A particular subject of debate was whether the Blessed Virgin had been conceived with or without Original Sin.  The Dominicans, ironically, opposed the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, the Franciscans and Carmelites supported it.  But all matter of theological topics were up for argument and it was from the give-and-take, in the arguments pro and con, that the magisterium was able to formulate doctrines.  The Reformation put an end to all that.  Martin Luther posted his list of 95 theses he wanted to debate at the University Church of Wittenberg and suddenly the Church said: no more debate.  We will define our doctrines sitting here in our Roman ivory towers.  Students for priesthood were pulled from the universities and locked into closed seminaries where ideas could be controlled.  Catechisms for the laity and manuals for the seminarians appeared: here are the questions: here are the answers.  Memorize the answers.  It was a time of doctrinal retrenchment.  And it only got worse.  In the nineteenth century as Protestant scholars begin looking at the scriptures from historical, linguistic, and structural perspectives and new insights began to emerge: there are four sources for the Book of Genesis not a single author; Paul did not write Hebrews (among other books attributed to him); there are inconsistencies in the Resurrection narrative, etc.   And then scholars—both Catholic and Protestant—got into the Church Fathers and found some wide discrepancies both among the Fathers and between the Fathers and contemporary Catholicism.  Rome totally freaked and the papacies of Leo XIII and Pius X built a strong firewall against “modernism.”  The walls did not last.  In the years after WWI, Catholic scholars surreptitiously began working again in the forbidden fields.  Some were caught and silenced—Congar, Chenu, deLubac—but the tide was overwhelming.  In 1943 Pius XII sanctioned biblical studies with the encyclical Divino Afflante Spiritu. The work of the historians and patristic scholars came out into the light again as well.   Little by little the Catholic intellectual world began to open up again.

The one area that has remained shut—indeed padlocked—is the sexual moral theology.  When it comes to morality of economics, politics, immigration, human rights—no problem.  The Church has made huge strides.   But don’t dare say a word about human sexuality.  Any number have tried—including Charles Curran—and the axe always falls.  Hopefully Amoris Laetitia is the unchaining of a much-needed theological investigation into contemporary issues for which the old sixteenth-century answers no longer seem to work.

No intellectual discipline stands in a vacuum and especially today there is an appreciation for the interdisciplinary nature of sound scholarship.  Theology always stood on the shoulders of Philosophy.  Today—if it is to have credibility—the Church also needs both to dialogue with and to draw on the sciences: the behavioral sciences, the social sciences, and the physical sciences.  This does not mean “surrendering” to the surrounding culture—far from it.  In the spinning whirl of contemporary culture the Church needs to keep its compass pointed to the Truth but it does not do this by burying its head in the sands of the answers of simpler days.    Today we face not only divorce and remarriage, but same-sex attraction, gender identity, artificial conception, genetic engineering, stem-cell research, embryology, various forms of contraception, abortion, surrogacy, and even potential cloning of human persons.  We have a lot of work to do to catch up on our scientific knowledge and bring it into dialogue with our theology if we are to have anything credible to say—or be listened to—in the world in which we live.  To quote a famous moral theologian: If the Church does not listen to the world, then the world will never listen to the Church.   

Finally, one more note about Amoris Laetitia.  In the years before, during, and for sometime after Vatican II there was an outstanding moral theologian teaching in Rome: Father Bernard Häring, CSsR.  Häring taught moral theology in Rome from 1949 until 1987.  He had a very different approach than other theologians, declaring that moral action was not about following a set of external rules, but fundamentally a dialogue between the soul and God with the soul desiring to root itself in God’s will.  I think Amoris Laetitia calls us all—not only the divorced and remarried—to do just that: with rigorously honest hearts to conform our actions to the will of God as best as we can discern, and leave the laws and prescripts to the scribes and the Pharisees who choose to live by law rather than by grace. Häring was pushed into a gentle exile by Cardinal Ratzinger in the John Paul years.  His methodology was seen as too dangerous to the sort of authority Rome wanted to exercise.  I think that in many ways, Amoris Laetitia is a vindication of the contribution of Bernard Häring and a signal we are back on track. 

Of Synods and Shepherds

Well, the two-year Synod on the Family closed yesterday with somewhat mixed results that should give us a hint that Pope Francis, his agenda more or less thwarted by the conservative block of bishops in the Synod, will take matters into his own hands.  I think it also gives a hint that all things being equal—and they never really are—Francis may not step down from the papacy as early as he has previously hinted. 

The final Synod document isn’t bad, it just isn’t good.  To get what he needed to justify taking the Church in some new directions, the document had to be more ambiguous than Francis and the liberal block would have liked.  For example, there could be no explicit mention of giving Holy Communion to those who had been divorced and remarried without a Church annulment.  Even with the vague ambiguities of the final document, some of the more controversial passages barely received the required two-thirds majority needed.  The two-thirds rule, while necessary for a measure of consensus, is a huge part of the problem.  A simple majority of bishops would probably have gone further along with the Holy Father’s desire to create a more open and welcoming Church. 

Francis could let the document stand as it is or he can use it as a basis for a document—perhaps an encyclical—he will write and give the more concrete norms on how the Synod statements should be interpreted.  Francis is probably going to go that route.  He also will probably delegate to the various Episcopal Conferences the task of providing the concrete guidelines for better pastoral care of those Catholics in irregular unions.  In such a case I would not expect the American bishops to be as open to changing pastoral practice as might be the Canadian or German Bishops, or even the English bishops.  The American hierarchy is still infested with John Paul and Benedict appointees who are strong on canon law but short on theology and pastoral experience.  And this is why I think Francis may hold on to the See of Peter for a few more years than the next two or three of which he has spoken.   He has made inroads in changing the College of Cardinal Electors but he still needs at least two more “classes” of his appointees to secure a succession that will continue his direction.  Even more important, he needs to fill key Sees with bishops who understand and are onboard with his agenda.  There are many archbishops and bishops who will, given normal lifespans, outlast Francis.  They days are ticking down for Myers of Newark who recently drew his line in the stand that there will be no change in policy as long as his caboose is parked on his marble throne in the Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart, but Myers goes off to the Jacuzzi in his retirement home next summer and his successor is someone who at least cultivates the appearances of being in the Francis style.  Lori of Baltimore has ten more years as does Aquila of Denver and Gomez of Los Angeles.  Chaput of Philadelphia, on the other hand, has only four more years to go—Francis might be able to change that See if he holds on just a little longer than he had been thinking about.  Cordileone—a problematic prelate by any account—has sixteen more years before mandatory retirement.  Francis could move him to a desk job in Rome where he could be neutralized and he certainly would not be missed by the City on the Bay, but he will almost certainly be at Francis’ funeral and, along with his mentor Cardinal Raymond Burke, do a happy dance on Francis’ grave.  I suspect that Francis will have a “come to Jesus” talk with Dolan and DiNardo after the behavior at the Synod—behavior which frankly surprised me.  Most of the more obstinate bishops—Morlino, Slattery, Paprocki, Sheridan, Lennon, Olmstead, Dewane, O’Connell etc.—are non-entities beyond their respective Sees—or even within them—but collectively can do great damage as a sort of Episcopal Tea Party within the Conference.   Restructuring the American hierarchy in the Francis model would be an immense task and hard to do in even a ten-year period. 

I would like to look at two paragraphs from the homily at the Mass with which Pope Francis closed the Synod:

There are, however, some temptations for those who follow Jesus. Today’s Gospel shows at least two of them. None of the disciples stopped, as Jesus did. They continued to walk, going on as if nothing were happening. If Bartimaeus was blind, they were deaf: his problem was not their problem. This can be a danger for us: in the face of constant problems, it is better to move on, instead of letting ourselves be bothered. In this way, just like the disciples, we are with Jesus but we do not think like him. We are in his group, but our hearts are not open. We lose wonder, gratitude and enthusiasm, and risk becoming habitually unmoved by grace. We are able to speak about him and work for him, but we live far from his heart, which is reaching out to those who are wounded. This is the temptation: a “spirituality of illusion”: we can walk through the deserts of humanity without seeing what is really there; instead, we see what we want to see. We are capable of developing views of the world, but we do not accept what the Lord places before our eyes. A faith that does not know how to root itself in the life of people remains arid and, rather than oases, creates other deserts.

There is a second temptation, that of falling into a “scheduled faith”. We are able to walk with the People of God, but we already have our schedule for the journey, where everything is listed: we know where to go and how long it will take; everyone must respect our rhythm and every problem is a bother. We run the risk of becoming the “many” of the Gospel who lose patience and rebuke Bartimaeus. Just a short time before, they scolded the children (cf. 10:13), and now the blind beggar: whoever bothers us or is not of our stature is excluded. Jesus, on the other hand, wants to include, above all those kept on the fringes who are crying out to him. They, like Bartimaeus, have faith, because awareness of the need for salvation is the best way of encountering Jesus.

I think that Pope Francis was giving a less than subtle criticism of those bishops who are resisting a change in pastoral approach, pointing out that they are deaf to the people whom they are ordained to serve.  They live in an isolation in which the concrete pain and alienation of so many has become invisible to them.  They see the rules and laws and regulations but they do not see with compassion the realities of the lives of ordinary people who are struggling to be faithful to Jesus and his Gospel in a very complex world.  There are none so blind as those who will not see; none so deaf as those who will not hear.  To effectively change the Church and put it back on track with its mission to bring people to Christ, we need new leadership.  Let’s pray that Pope Francis will be able to give us bishops who have that Shepherd’s Heart that is on fire for going and searching out those who are lost rather than gathering as much wool as possible from the docile sheep in the pen.  

The Division Grows Deeper But Will It Divide?

John Joseph Myers, Archbishop
of Newark

Well the Synod goes on and the markers of division within the Church grow stronger and stronger as fear of change haunts the anti-Francis faction in the Church.  I posted on this past Monday about the letter sent to Pope Francis by Cardinal Pell and several (the exact number is disputed as it seems some Cardinal’s names were added without their knowledge) other Cardinals protesting that the Synod has been rigged to predetermine a more progressive agenda towards sacramental inclusion of those in “irregular” unions. 

Now it turns out that Newark New Jersey Archbishop John Joseph (aka “Farmer John” because of his southern Illinois roots) Myers of Newark sent a letter to his clergy insisting on the tightest of guidelines about who may and who may not receive Holy Communion.   Turns out that the priests and religious of the Archdiocese are as banned from the Lord’s Table as are the multiply married, the transgendered and the gay.  “His Grace,” as he likes to be known with all the affectations of an Anglican Primate waddling into the House of Lords, has declared that “Catholics must be in a marriage recognized as valid by the Church to receive Holy Communion or other sacraments.”  Well, golly gee.  That puts the Arch himself in a catch 22.   If he is married, it cannot be in a canonical marriage, as priests cannot validly marry.  And if he is not married—well he himself has declared that only those in a marriage the Church recognizes as valid can receive the Sacraments—he is not eligible for Holy Communion.  We have canon lawyers for a reason—you would think they would have checked his letter before it was sent out.  In fact you would think a good secretary would catch the blunder.  But at the end of the day there are more horses’ asses than horses.  No need to verify the obvious. 

But that is only part of the story.  “His Grace” of Newark is living beneath the shadow of his far more popular successor, the appointed coadjutor, Bernard Hebda, as the clergy and faithful count down the days to Myers’ 75^th.  Myers and Hebda provide  a sort of good cop/bad cop duo.  Hebda, at least in his public face, walks a more Francis line on things.  He lives more simply, living in a dorm at Seton Hall University.  He has better people skills and is more approachable.  Behind the scenes he is every bit the Institution Man that most bishops are, but if life is a Christmas pageant, he knows how to play the shepherd.  That alone gives him an edge over many of his colleagues who are still into the Prince of the Church model and can’t seem to shift.  In any event, Archbishop Hebda gave a good talk to the Religious of the Archdiocese yesterday where he offered a far more inclusive theology of Church than Myers’ terse veditum.   It wasn’t a direct assault on Myers’ position but it made it clear that there is a new sheriff waiting in the wings, one who sees the Church as more inclusive and welcoming to all.  In the event, most priests have said that they will take the Archbishop’s letter for what it is worth and that policies in the parishes will change little if at all.  The Archdiocese is in the middle of a 90 million dollar capital campaign and it will be interesting to see if Archbishop Myers’ letter causes much fallout.  

Myers is not the only bishop to express his concerns about where Francis is taking the Church.  Cardinal Burke has said that the Church under Francis is a ship without a rudder.  Bishop Tobin of Providence has criticized Pope Francis.  Archbishop Chaput who just two weeks ago welcomed the Pope to Philadelphia has spoken up about the “anxiety” that Francis’ Synod on the Family is causing among those determined to resist any change in pastoral practice.  Several other bishops—Cordileone of San Francisco, Loverde of Arlington, Lori of Baltimore, Paprocki of Springfield, Lennon of Cleveland, Sheridan of Colorado Springs, Slattery of Tulsa, Olmstead of Phoenix, have all been quoted from private conversations—often after a drink too many—with disparaging remarks about Pope Francis or the direction in which he is taking the Church.  I am sure they are not the only bishops who have let slip their dismay with the current occupant of Peter’s chair.

Clergy and laity are far more outspoken.  Despite the lovely welcoming ceremony at the seminary of Saint Charles in Philadelphia, the word is that the student body is overwhelmingly anti-Francis.  Even more rabid are the seminarians at Mount Saint Mary’s in Emmitsburg where Francis is widely regarded as a usurper on the Papal Throne.  And an acquaintance just back from the sabbatical program at the Pontifical North American College  (you know, you saw the video of the NAC *** Men’s Chorus and the toe-tapping clerics of Little Broadway) was shocked by the anti-Francis sentiments being expressed openly by “a vast majority” of the NACers.  Diocese of Arlington clergy regularly undermine the Pope and his desire for a more inclusive Church from the pulpits of Saint John the Beloved in McLean, Saint John the Apostle in Leesburg, Saint John the Evangelist in Warrenton, Saint John the Baptist in Front Royal, and several other parishes where the priests are determined to hold the line against any loosening up of Church discipline.  Arlington, while particularly infested with clergy who are anti-Francis is far from the only diocese that is suffering from a split Catholicism.  Examples can also be found in New York, Philadelphia, and Boston.  And of course, our friends such as the Canons of Saint John Cantius in Chicago and the Canons Regular of the New Jerusalem in Wheeling and in Saint Louis as well as the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest run churches that are bubbles of a bygone Catholicism and while they are devout in prayers for the Holy Father, otherwise barely acknowledge his existence much less his vision for the Church in our contemporary world. 

And then we have the blogging priests.  “Father Z,” who in between gorging himself with culinary delights and squeezing into over-sized airline seats manages to blog consistently against Francis and his policies, is sort of the Dean of the Anti-Francis blogs.  More vicious but less well known is the English Father Hunwicke, a refugee from the Church of England who would like to make us all over in his image and likeness of what the Catholic Church should be, as if the soured Anglican would know authentic Catholicism.  And of course there is Rene Henry Gracida, the retired bishop of Corpus Christi and his blog, Abyssus Abyssum Invocat which might be better translated the Abysmal Calls to the Abysmal.  Honest to goodness, the man was a poor enough excuse for a bishop, as a blogger he just fills the world with a gloomy faux gospel of judgment and condemnation.  Father Joseph Illo, aka Father Riceroni, the San Francisco treat, makes sure everyone is on board with his scribe and Pharisee Catholicism in contradistinction to Francis’ message of Mercy.  And then there is The Black Biretta: A Cleric Opines.  Sorry Father, but stop opining and get to work preaching the Gospel, the Good News of salvation not the sour news of condemnation.  You weren’t ordained to opine and you obviously weren’t give the charism by the Holy Spirit to have anything worthwhile to say. 

I won’t even go into the Lay Bloggers save to say that Michael Hichborn of Lepanto Institute is in virtual schism in what he says about Pope Francis and the Synod of Bishops.  Rorate Caeli, at one time a worthwhile blog despite its right-wing biases, has lost any credibility for sound theological thinking or for loyalty to the Church and has just morphed into a rant.  As for the witches of Eastwick, Janet and Carole and Mary Ann and the other koven of krazies are beside themselves in despair and ready to jump ship from Peter’s barque should compassion and reconciliation triumph over self-righteousness and spiritual pride.  Let ‘em go, let them all go. 

In the end it will be, I think, much ado about nothing because while many priests and the wing-nut laity will let spiritual pride win out and convince them that they know Catholicism better than the Pope, ultimately I don’t think a single bishop will go with them. You can’t have a schism without a bishop.   In the end Myers and Sheridan and Olmstead and Lori and Burke—and even that old senile windbag Gracida—won’t walk Peter’s plank.  Frankly I might have more respect for them if they did.  I can deal with stupidity, but it shakes me to see people who lack moral courage to stand by their convictions.  Old hens all, I am afraid, who squawk and pick and ruffle their feathers but nothing more.  

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.