Yesterday the Argentine daily La Nacion published a
perplexing interview with Synod father and rector of the Catholic University of
Argentina, Archbishop Victor Manuel Fernandez.
Fernandez was also a member of the controversial committee appointed by
Pope Francis to draft the two “relacios” of the Church’s Extraordinary Synod
on the family. There is a lot to talk
about with regards to the whole interview, and some of what Fernandez says
really is rather odd and tendentious.
But I want to focus on just one part, wherein Fernandez opines about the
possibility of divorced and civilly remarried Catholics receiving
Communion. Here is what he says (with
the help of Google Translation):
No one wants to deny the indissolubility of marriage and
we all wish to encourage couples to be faithful, to overcome their crises, to
start over again and again, especially considering the suffering of children.
But many have insisted on second marriages who have spent many years living
with generosity and who have children.
Most think that it would be cruel to ask them to separate, causing
unjust suffering to the children. So we
continue to believe in the possibility that they can receive Communion, given
that, as in the Catechism, where there exists a condition that a person cannot
overcome that person’s liability is limited.
I’ll tackle the argument point-by-point.
1.)
No one wants to deny the
indissolubility of marriage and we all wish to encourage couples to be
faithful, to overcome their crises, to start over again and again, especially
considering the suffering of children.
Good so far, right? It is a shame, then, that the Synod did not
seem to make this the emphasis of the now completed Synod. I’m not sure how you can even begin to
approach the pastoral challenges of broken families and the culture’s
disordered approach to sexuality without spending a long time studying and
contemplating the Christian family. It
is from this Gospel vision of the family that your answers will come.
2.)
But—and there is
always a but—many have insisted on second marriages...
He is right, of course, that many have
insisted on second marriages. People
insist on all sorts of things that are neither holy nor good. That’s what sin is! The phenomenon of divorce and remarriage is
hardly an especially modern malady, either.
Christ was confronted in His own pastoral ministry with the problem,
too, and he chose to address it with almost abrasive clarity when he said,
“[w]hoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her;
and if she divorces her husband marries another she commits adultery” (Mk.
10:16). It doesn’t get much clearer than
that, and if you’re making it more complicated than it is, you’re doing it
wrong.
Yes, the Church ought to reach into the
messiness of irregular situations, of sin, and of the various calamities born
of deformed consciences and cultural rot, and to bring the light of Christ into
those areas and thereby draw people out of the darkness of sin and into the
Christian life. But the emphasis must always
be on drawing individuals out of that darkness rather than a pathetic coming to
terms with it. The pastors of the Church
ought to pick up “the smell of the sheep” in the process of bringing them
back to life in Christ. Yet it is
one thing to propose, invite, shepherd, and pastor. It is another thing to accommodate and
chase the spirit of the world in a shallow attempt at relevance. The Synod came awfully close to that this
year.
3.)
… who have spent many years living
with generosity and who have children.
This is probably the sort of thinking on
which at least some of the Synod’s now-infamous relatio post disceptationem “midterm
report” was founded. Remember this? It said, among so many other things, that “some
ask whether the sacramental fullness of marriages does not exclude the
possibility of recognizing positive elements even the imperfect forms that may
be found outside this nuptial situation, which are in any case ordered in
relation to it.” That is one way of
suggesting that even second unions, civil unions, and cohabitation carry the
same sorts of qualities as Christian marriage.
After all, even cohabiters have to respect each other, share food, put
the cap back on the toothpaste, put the toilet seat down, and sometimes
participate in the upbringing of children.
Is that like marriage? Well, no,
it really isn’t, actually, because matrimony is a sacrament and therefore a
conduit of the graces that bring about salvation, and it is indissoluble, it is
forever, and it cannot be ended when “the flame dies,” as it were. But it is true that the daily life of
cohabiters nevertheless requires some selflessness and generosity. And, yes, we should celebrate that
generosity, for whatever it’s worth.
One potential problem with this approach is
that it almost sidesteps the fact that the misuse of human sexuality utterly
undermines whatever generosity there might exist within these irregular
situations. Divorced and remarried
couples may practice a great deal of human virtue, but they’re still committing
adultery, which is an abuse of their own sexuality as well as a serious breach
of the promises that they made to their first spouse. Adultery is corrupting and, most glaringly,
it cuts souls off from Charity and corrodes their ability to love their second
spouse or anyone else. A person who
engages in adultery, premarital sex, homosexual acts, or various other sexual
sins with a person is saying effectively saying something like this, even if
they never actually say as much:
I love you. I selflessly, generously, authentically love
you. I want to give myself to you. And I also am going to help destroy God’s
love in your life by engaging in this adulterous/homosexual/premarital act
because I am selfish, ungenerous, and superficial, and I want to do this with
you.
P.S. I love you.
Come on.
Adulterous relationships are not loving.
They destroy grace in one’s soul and they corrupt the precious gift of
sexual love that God granted to genuinely married couples. Are there elements of mutual love in these relationships? Yes, of course, and we can freely concede as
much. God can and does use that
generosity to open hearts to supernatural charity. But the stark reality is that adulterous
relationships kill the soul and there is a whole lot that is unloving about
killing the soul. While acknowledging
the good within even the most wounded soul, it is necessary to understand and
especially confront the weapons of sin that have caused those wounds in the
first place.
4.)
Most think that it would
be cruel to ask them to separate, causing unjust suffering to the children.
The problem for Archbishop Fernandez is
that nobody is necessarily requiring them to separate. In Familiaris Consortio, the apostolic
exhortation written by St. John Paul II at the end of the 1980 Synod on the
family, says this: “when, for serious reasons, such as for example the
children’s upbringing, a man and woman cannot satisfy the obligation to
separate, they [must] ‘take on themselves the duty to live in complete
continence, that is, by abstinence from the acts proper to married
couples.’” And when they observe this
requirement, they may access the sacraments of Penance and Communion. Familiaris Consortio very clearly
contemplates the serious reasons that Archbishop Fernandez also sees in terms
of physical separation, and it also provides a route by which couples in those
situations can still access the sacraments.
Yes, that route is a real cross, but why should any Christian ever fear
or avoid the Cross?
5.)
So we continue to
believe in the possibility that they can receive Communion, given that, as in
the Catechism, where there exists a condition that a person cannot overcome
[then] that person’s liability is limited.
Perhaps Fernandez is referring to
part 1860 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which states that “[t]he
promptings of feelings and passions can also diminish the voluntary and free
character of [an] offense, as can external pressures or pathological
disorders.” If I am following the
archbishop’s thinking on the matter, he is suggesting that the pressure and
circumstantial difficulty involved in ending a second “marriage,” especially
when children are involved, would be an “external pressure” that mitigates at
least full culpability for the act of remaining in what is an adulterous (or
“irregular) situation.
But just a few pages earlier in the
Catechism it also says that “[it] is … an error to judge the morality of human
acts by considering only the intention that inspires them or the circumstances
(environment, social pressure, duress or emergency, etc.) which supply their
context. There are acts which, in and
of themselves, independently of circumstances and intentions, are always
gravely illicit by reason of their object, such as blasphemy and perjury;
murder and adultery. One may not
do evil so that good may result from it” (part 1756, emphasis mine). Can circumstances reduce culpability even of
adulterous acts? Yes, of course,
although such an act is still gravely evil.
And it may very well be the case that spouses in irregular situations
may indeed have reduced culpability for sexual relations within the context of
an irregular situation, especially if the one spouse places extraordinary
pressure on the other spouse to maintain a sexual relationship, and surely that
does happen when one spouse decides to follow Christ and the other objects and
even threatens divorce or resorts to emotional or physical abuse to compel
sexual relations. Such circumstances
might mitigate some culpability for isolated acts of, for lack of a better
term, pressured adultery. But those
circumstances are probably extreme, and an abused spouse should seek immediate
help anyway, regardless of their ability to access Communion, when one spouses
turns to abuse or threats when denied sexual relations. The problem in most cases is simply that the
Church cannot permit a divorced and remarried individual to have a sexual
relationship with anyone other than their first spouse. That isn’t casuistry. It is Christ’s own words. In certain cases divorced and remarried
spouses can remain together under the same roof, but they must do so without
engaging in sexual relations.
Impossible, it is often
said. What married couple can reasonably
be asked to refrain from a sexual relationship?
First, of course, it should be said that they aren’t married in the eyes
of the Church, which are the eyes through which every Catholic should be
looking at their lives. But there is
something more to be said about this, and I think it touches on a malady that
particularly strikes modern man. As it
does so often, it comes down to this: either we believe in the power of the
Cross or we do not. Either the Cross
really is an instrument of redemption and liberation or it is not. Either the Christ on that Cross really can
save us and help us in even the stickiest situations or He cannot. Is it asking a lot of remarried spouses to
remain celibate within that union? Yes,
it is, indeed it is asking for them to bear a heavy cross, and the bishops at
the Synod should be especially focusing on ways to help these couples bear that
cross. But who is Archbishop Fernandez
or anyone else to take it upon themselves to take away that cross—a cross that
ought to be seen as a gift and an instrument of the couple’s salvation.
In his final speech to the Synod,
Pope Francis told the gathered bishops that there is “a temptation to come down
off the Cross, to please the people, and not stay there, in order to fulfill
the will of the Father; to bow down to a worldly spirit instead of purifying it
and bending it to the Spririt of God.”
That is beautifully put, and it
appeared to have been a temptation that the Synod struggled mightily
against. It will be a temptation for many heading into the Ordinary Synod, too. Next year that 2015 Synod on the family will open October 4th, on
which the Gospel reading for the day comes from the tenth chapter of the Gospel
of St. Mark. That reading contains the
following declaration by Jesus Christ:
“Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against
her; and if she divorces her husband marries another she commits adultery.”
How timely.
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