Thursday, December 11, 2014

It's baaaaaack!

I have been assured, over and over again, sometimes condescendingly and sometimes not, that the Kasper Proposal is a dead letter. 

First it was Cardinal Muller's letter in L'Osservatore Romano. Then it was some random papal comment affirming marital indissolubility (which ignored the fact Cardinal Kasper swearsies he's all about keeping marriages intact). Then, most recently, it was the supposed door-slamming vote at the end of the Synod, which asserted that the matter was--this time for sure, how could you ever doubt it?--done. Over. Locked into a safe, wrapped in chains and dumped square in into Challenger Deep, where it could never be seen again, thanks to our Papal Guarantee of Unassailable Orthodoxy. Take that, Huns!

Well, I was skeptical about that. Very much so.

And it appears my skepticism was warranted. Like the villain in a bad horror movie, the damned thing keeps rising from assured death to menace the protagonists again. Behold Question 38, straight from the Pope's handpicked secretary at the Vatican:

38. With regard to the divorced and remarried, pastoral practice concerning the sacraments needs to be further studied, including assessment of the Orthodox practice and taking into account “the distinction between an objective sinful situation and extenuating circumstances” (n. 52). What are the prospects in such a case? What is possible? What suggestions can be offered to resolve forms of undue or unnecessary impediments?

So much for the matter being closed, shut, finito. There's a wake-up call, for those so inclined to grab the receiver.

And then there's the Pope's words, just this week, offered in the Time-Honored Magisterium of Newspaper Interviews:


[Q:] In the case of divorcees who have remarried, we posed the question, what do we do with them? What door can we allow them to open? This was a pastoral concern: will we allow them to go to Communion?

[A:] Communion alone is no solution. The solution is integration. They have not been excommunicated, true. But they cannot be godfathers to any child being baptized, mass readings are not for divorcees, they cannot give communion, they cannot teach Sunday school, there are about seven things that they cannot do, I have the list over there. Come on! If I disclose any of this it will seem that they have been excommunicated in fact!
Thus, let us open the doors a bit more. Why cant they be godfathers and godmothers? "No, no, no, what testimony will they be giving their godson?" The testimony of a man and a woman saying "my dear, I made a mistake, I was wrong here, but I believe our Lord loves me, I want to follow God, I was not defeated by sin, I want to move on."
Anything more Christian than that? And what if one of the political crooks among us, corrupt people, ate chosen to be somebody´s godfather. If they are properly wedded by the Church, would we accept them? What kind of testimony will they give to their godson? A testimony of corruption?
Things need to change, our standards need to change.
 "Communion alone is no solution." That's an...interesting formulation. There are other problems with the interview, too, as someone less biased on the topic than I am has noted. This one is particularly insightful, and warrants a careful read.

Those of you who are Anglicans will have seen this movie before: dialogue does not end until the proper result is reached. Then it becomes the Laws of the Medes and Persians, hater.

Given what the Vatican just issued, the most recent interview shows the Pontiff's mind quite clearly (not that it was particularly opaque before). Throw that in with the papal power-invoking rhetoric in the wildly-overpraised speech he gave at the conclusion of the 2014 Synod (reinforced by more explicit authority to depose), and I think it's more likely than not that he forces through some variation on the Kasper proposal in 2015.

Welcome to horribly interesting times. 

8 comments:

  1. Dale,

    I am heartsick and fearful over these latest developments. I still cannot believe the number of faithful who keep giving the Pope the benefit of the doubt. I can no longer do this. I can only pray that the damage he will do to the Church is God's way of taking her through fire and that she will emerge stronger and more ready to face spiritual battle. But in the meantime it will be very hard and the betrayal I and I think others feel hurts to the center of my soul.

    Paula Gehringer

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  2. Francis arrived at his office with an agenda he intended to implement and he will implement and part of the agenda was communion for divorced and remarried.

    He is Paul VI cubed; he trusts in man and he is not at all concerned he is continuing the work of creating a man-centered church, rather, he is proud of that fact.

    He is an adult whose inner 68er child is alive and kicking down the remaining bastions.

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  3. Dale,
    "mass readings are not for divorcees, they cannot give communion". I have an RC friend who is divorced. His original marriage was outside the church to a divorced woman. He divorced her for infidelity and remarried in the church to a RC widow. He is a LEM. Does this square with the above quote? I don't know if he had his first marriage annulled but had two children with his first wife.

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  4. Those of you who are Anglicans will have seen this movie before: dialogue does not end until the proper result is reached. Then it becomes the Laws of the Medes and Persians, hater.

    Bingo.

    Then suddenly "dialogue" and "living into the tension" and "diversity of viewpoint" stop being praised as virtues in and of themselves. We've "moved on," why can't you, hater?

    God have mercy.

    peace,
    Zach

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  5. Yep. Same playbook as we've watched TEC use for the last 30-odd years.
    The change, should it happen, doesn't bother me. I think the Eastern Orthodox handle this correctly. What bothers me is the way this change is being imposed.

    But if it's all BS...*shrug*...maybe there's at least some entertainment value in the antics of Pope "Relax!".

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  6. So the abandoned, neglected and betrayed spouses and children should just 'move on' too? Right? They will leave the Church in disgust at this further betrayal. And the ones who chose adultery will come and go because they are not living in the truth anyway. Yes, lots of sad stories but as someone with 5 siblings affected by divorce, I tend to be on the side of the ones who were left behind while the adulterers went on to do 'what was best for them'.

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  7. "Put down the cross, the love of Christ obscure, till all the world, not fret the impure."

    Eh, doesn't quite have the same ring to it. But serious, hard for me to think this will bring people closer to Christ when you remove the sacrifice aspects of His Love/Sacraments. Cause without the sacrifice, do you really have the dignity? Maybe I'm just waiting for the day when Googling "Pope Clown" doesn't immediately pull up the Pope with a married couple in red clown noses. Serious, if that couple ends up having five children and a priest/nun among them, I'll recant in a second. But my, shall we say, "Sainty Sense" is tingling.

    Ugh, this comment is too goofy. Sorry, I'm taking a break from Christmas Cards.

    ReplyDelete

Be reasonably civil. Ire alloyed with reason is fine. But slagging the host gets you the banhammer.

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