There was an interesting interview today in the Italian
daily, La Stampa, with Polish Archbishop Stanislaw Gadecki of Poznan. Recall that it was Gadecki who slammed the
controversial relatio post disceptationem released last week as part of
the Catholic Church’s Synod on the family that wrapped up yesterday in Rome. That document, of course, was the same synodal
midterm report that was hailed in various circles as a landmark step in the
direction of new openness towards gays and lesbians and acceptance of the gay lifestyle because of language suggesting
that the Church should welcome homosexuals and even value homosexuality. The report also indicated the possibility of divorced
and civilly remarried Catholics receiving Communion and it—amazingly—suggested viewing
the positive aspects of cohabitation and other “irregular” situations. One Vatican commentator referred to the
report as an “earthquake,” breaking pastoral ground in areas and ways that had
been previously resisted. Soon after the
release of the midterm report, though, Gadecki took to Vatican Radio to
denounce it as “unacceptable.” He
outrage was understandable given comments that he had made prior to the Synod,
in which he called cohabitation a “self-mutilation of love.” After making his post-relatio comments
on Vatican Radio, Gadecki was soon joined by other prelates who also vigorously
advocated for significant changes to the document to bring it in line with Church
teaching.
Ultimately, Gadecki and those prelates were successful at considerably
altering the content of the document at the end of the Synod, removing much of
the doctrinally shaky content. Speaking about what happened,
Gadecki told La Stampa this:
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.
Whether it was Gadecki who ultimately altered the trajectory
of the two-week Synod is, of course, debatable.
His quick and strong denunciation of the midterm report surely had an
impact, although it is still murky just how broad that impact really was. In the interview Gadecki explained that the
prevailing narrative that the Church is undergoing a “revolution” of mercy and
compassion is false: “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.”
That is an important point and Gadecki’s role in this year’s
Synod has no doubt been an important one.
But there is an aspect to this story that has received scant coverage. His participation in the event was enabled by
his election as head of the Polish bishops’ conference in March of this
year. His election was celebrated by the
left-liberal Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza because of his apparent willingness
to rein Polish bishops away from their intense (and usually right-wing) political
involvement. Gadecki is said to be a kind of episcopal moderate, neither belonging to the Polish Church’s right-wing
or liberal faction.
It is impossible to know what (or who) prompted Gadecki to
make his strong statement against the Synod midterm report. He would likely lay it at the hands of the Holy
Spirit, and of course he would be right.
But what is most striking here is the fact that Gadecki is a Churchman
very much in the mold of Pope Francis, despite the fact that some media have
characterized him as one of the “conservative” bishops who revolted against the
midterm report last week.
That is not to suggest that Gadecki’s protest was at the
behest of Francis. There is no evidence
of that at all But it does raise
questions about how the media has been covering what has happened in Rome over the
last couple of weeks. The
conservatives-versus-Pope-Francis-and-the-“progressives” narrative is an
imperfect one, if not an outright falsehood.
Most notable, perhaps, is something Gadecki said upon his
election as president of the Polish bishops’ conference. He noted that “if the Church does not remain
faithful to tradition it will 'fall.’”
It was surely that same conviction that led him to label an unacceptable
relatio post disceptationem as such.
Speaking to reporters in March, Gadecki commented that “I am shaken in
the face of this responsibility, which moves me from a diocesan level to a
nationwide one.” Now it seems that
he has taken on a global profile, and the Church is surely better off because
of it.
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