President of the Polish Episcopal Conference: - Let's end this delusion that 'mercy' began only now, after 2,000 years! - Familiaris Consortio is sufficient

From La Stampa's Vatican Insider:

Gądecki: "Had I not spoken up, the Synod would have ended up worse"

Marek Lehnert

ROME

Archbishop Stanisław Gądecki, archbishop of Poznan, Poland, and president of his nation's episcopate, is glad with himself and with the others who thought as he did for the determined criticism of the relatio post disceptationem of the Synod on the Family. The Polish prelate denounced a clear separation with the teaching of John Paul II on the issue, as well as the unclear vision about the purpose of the Synod itself.

Speaking yesterday to Polish radio, Gądecki reiterated that many of the Synod Fathers shared his feelings, considering that text "strongly ideologized, because it considered more the sociological than the theological side," but above all because "some of its theses seemed to devastate the magisterium of the Church."

"I am under the impression that, had I had not spoken up, things might have ended up even worse. I consider that there was a need to say something, because of the calls rising up from the families, they were terrified. Something had to be said, so as not to confirm to people the certainty that we were about to abandon the doctrine of the Church. Because everything had to have a more serious format, more detailed and analyzed."

"Thankfully - the Polish prelate added - the circuli minores carried out a very serious work, considering word by word, and that which ended up in the third text is much more serious, thank God."

The President of the Polish bishops considers that at the recent Synod "nothing revolutionary happened." The 1981 exhortation 'Familiaris Consortio', of John Paul II, "had already expounded everything long before that." What happens is that "everyone has forgotten it, and now there is the impression that the Church has suddenly become merciful, while she wasn't before. That she has become enlightened, and wasn't before."

"These are all delusions, that are the product of nearsightedness, of the fact that we look at the past two weeks to exclaim: this did not exist before! Instead, all this already existed. The impression cannot be given that for two millennia there had been no mercy in the Church, that mercy now shows up unexpectedly. Mercy makes sense if it is related to truth," Archbishop Stanisław Gądecki declared to Polish state radio. [Source, in Italian]