By Antonio Socci, (translation by Rorate correspondent Francesca Romana)
Libero
October 5, 2014
There is a lot of confusion in the Church
about the Synod starting today and that’s going to hold discussions about
communion to the divorced and remarried.
Many believers are disorientated
about the “revolutionary” path indicated by Cardinal Kasper, who was
asked by Pope Francis to launch the novelty at the February Consistory and is
always saying that he speaks in the name of Pope Francis (”I spoke to the Pope.
We agreed on everything.”).
An overwhelming number of cardinals are in
total disagreement with him. So now
what’s going to happen? Could it really
be true that the Pope may embark on a way that upsets what the Church has
constantly taught for two thousand years, based on the words of Jesus Himself
and the Pauline texts? Is it possible to challenge the commandments, the Gospel
and the Sacraments? Some think that the popes can do it and the mass-media
feeds this expectation. In reality it is not like this at all since the Church
belongs to Christ and not the popes, who are only temporary administrators and
not masters – as Benedict XVI used to say repeatedly. They are subject to the
law of God and the Word of God and must serve the Lord by protecting the
“depositum fidei” entrusted to them. They cannot take possession of it or
change it according to their own personal ideas.
What many (also among believers) ignore are
the very rigid limits that the Church has always placed on popes, while at the
same time recognizing Petrine “”infallibility” in “ex-cathedra” proclamations
on matters of faith and morality.
Specifically in the Dogmatic Constitution “Pastor Aeternus” through
which Vatican Council I defined papal infallibility, we find “For the Holy Spirit was promised to the successors
of Peter not so that they might, by his revelation, make known some new
doctrine, but that, by his assistance, they might religiously guard and
faithfully expound the revelation or deposit of faith transmitted by the
apostles.”
The great Joseph Ratzinger explained this
principle, ignored by the majority of believers, like this: “The pope is not
the supreme master– since the time of Gregory the Great, he has been known as
"Servant of the servants of God"
but (as I like saying) he ought to be the guarantor of obedience, of the
conformity of the Church to the will of God, excluding any arbitrary act of his
own. The pope cannot say: I am the Church, or I am tradition, but on
the contrary, he has precise restrictions and incarnates the obligation of the
Church to conform to the word of God. If
temptations arise in the Church to do things differently, to choose a softer more comfortable way, he has to ask
himself if it is licit. The pope is
therefore not an authority that can give
life to another Church, rather he is a barricade against arbitrary acts.”
After these clear explanations, Ratzinger
added: “I’ll give an example: we know from the New Testament that sacramental
marriage is indissoluble. We currently have trends of opinion that say the Pope
could change this. This is not so. In
January 2000, in an address to Roman judges, the Pope (John Paul II) declared
that in respect to the trend in favor of revoking the bond of indissolubility
in marriage, he, the Pope, cannot do anything he wants, but on the contrary he
must emphasize obedience; also in this
sense he must continue “the washing of feet”.
Also Cardinal Caffarra, an authority on moral
issues since the Pontificate of John Paul II, in opposition to Kasper’s proposal, underlined that not even
pontiffs can dissolve the bonds of a first marriage, so the Church cannot
recognize a second marriage, neither by law, nor de facto, as Kasper advances
with the admittance of divorced and remarried to the Eucharist. Caffarra also recalled the words of John Paul
II from his address to the Sacra Rota:
“It is clear that the Roman Pontiff’s power does not extend to valid and
consummated marriages and this is taught by the Magisterium of the Church as a
doctrine to be definitively held even if it has not been solemnly declared
through a definitive act.” It is a technical formula, “a doctrine to be
definitively held”, and it means that on this point there is no further
discussion to be had among theologians nor doubts among the faithful.”
Basically, this truth cannot even be challenged among believers. Consequently
it is not even possible to change the discipline as regards admission to the
Eucharist.
There is a significant, hard to find and
long-forgotten book by Cardnal Kasper, published just ten years ago by Herder e
Queriniana entitled “The Sacrament of Unity. Eucharist and Church.” It was
written and published on the occasion of the Year of the Eucharist convened by
John Paul II in 2004 to 2005. That book by Kasper touches on various thorny
and contested issues and truly seems to be in line with the Church’s perennial
teaching as well as Pope Wojtyla’s.
Regarding reception of Sacramental Communion, Kasper emphasizes that it
cannot be for everyone: “we cannot invite everyone to receive [the Sacrament].
It is not possible to have access in a state of grave sin, but only when (through
confession) one is in the grace of God so as “not to eat and drink unworthily
the Body and Blood of the Lord.”
Kasper adds: “the affirmation that unity and
communion are only possible under the sign of the Cross, includes something
else, and that is: the Eucharist is not possible without the Sacrament of
forgiveness. The Ancient Church was fully conscious of this union. In the
Ancient Church the visible structure of the Sacrament of penance consisted in
the re-admission of the sinner to Eucharistic Communion, Communio, excommunicatio e reconciliatio were
all one. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the
Lutheran theologian killed by the Nazis in 1945, rightly warned against “cheap
grace”. “Cheap grace is a sacramental
sell-out, it is the Supper of the Lord without the remission of sins, it is
absolution without personal confession.” For Bonhoeffer, cheap grace is the
cause of the Church’s decadence.
“A superficial idea” of the Eucharist, Kasper
explained, “disconnected from the Cross and the Sacrament of Penance leads to
the trivialization of these aspects and the Eucharistic crisis which we see
today in the life of the Church.” The German Cardinal even fittingly writes:
“The crisis in the idea of the Eucharist is the nucleus of the crisis in the
Church today.”
Anyone can easily see the contradiction
between this Kasper of yesterday and the Kasper of today. The “innovators” at
the Synod, where he is one of the leading proponents, obviously don’t have the
courage to challenge doctrine openly, since that would mean shutting the Gospel
itself up in the attic. They sustain
that it is not about changing doctrine, but only about pastoral care in the
reception of the Eucharist.
Nonetheless, dogma and pastoral care cannot
absolutely be separated in the Church. The theological reason for their indissoluble union is once again
explained by Joseph Ratzinger: “pastoral care and dogma are woven together in
an indissoluble way: it is the truth of He Who is at the same time “Logos and
Pastor”, as primitive Christian art
profoundly understood in its depiction of the Logos as Pastor and in the
Pastor the Eternal Word flowed, and this for man is the true indication of the
way.”
In substance, Jesus the Good Shepherd is also
the Logos, the Eternal Word of God. It isn’t possible to separate mercy from
truth.
Which means that access to the Eucharist
cannot be changed for a particular category of people like the divorced and
remarried (the law is valid alike for all people) but it means too that the
Church’s stance towards them – as Popes Wojtyla and Benedict XVI said
repeatedly – is to show Her loving care as Mother in a thousand other ways.
