The practical dangers of the Kasper proposal

By Phil Lawler ( bio - articles - email ) | May 14, 2014

Last week when I insisted (not for the first time) that Pope Francis is not going to change Church teaching on remarriage and Communion, one reader gently suggested that I might be answering the wrong question. “I believe,” he tweeted, “the main concern is not that Francis will ‘change Church doctrine’ but accept pastoral practices which undermine it.” Good point.

The Synod of Bishops will not call for change in Catholic doctrine. But the October meeting of the Synod (and/or next year’s meeting, which is dedicated to the same topic: marriage and the family) will do something. Both Pope Francis and Pope Benedict have spoken of the need for a pastoral response to the plight of Catholics who are divorced and remarried, and while Cardinal Kasper’s proposal has encountered heavy opposition, there seems to be a broad consensus that the Church could do more to help people living in irregular marital situations.

The most likely response will be a broader access to marital tribunals. As a practical matter, that sort of change would make very little difference to Catholics in the US, where annulments are already notoriously easy to obtain. And if the tribunals function properly, they only provide annulments in cases when a valid marriage did not actually take place. So they will not resolve the problems of Catholics who were validly married before a divorce and remarriage.

The Church can never accept a 2nd marriage. The Catholic teaching on the indissolubility of marriage is based not merely on the traditions of the Church or the inferences of theologians, but on the clear and unmistakable words of Jesus Christ: “And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for unchastity, and marries another, commits adultery." [Mt: 19:9] Traditions can be adapted and inferences can be redrawn, but the words of Christ cannot be contradicted. To accept a 2nd marriage is to accept adultery. It is true that Jesus refused to condemn the woman caught in adultery, but it is also true that He cautioned her to “sin no more.”

We are all sinners, and have no right to condemn other for their sins. Yet we are also the holy People of God, with a duty to preserve the purity of the Eucharistic assembly. So the Church can extend Communion to those who sin (that is, all of us), but not to those who “live in sin”—whose way of life is openly at odds with the moral standards that we uphold.

Nor would it be really merciful to allow people who live in sin to receive Communion. St. Paul warns us that anyone who receives the Eucharist unworthily “will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord,” and thus “drinks judgment upon himself.” Rather than allowing people to jeopardize their own souls, it is far more charitable, far more merciful, to stop them. Sometimes people who are living in disordered situations need an “intervention” to set them straight; in such cases, “tough love” is true mercy.

So the challenge facing the Synod of Bishops is to devise a pastoral approach that will draw Catholics who are divorced and remarried back toward the sacramental life of the Church, without violating the principle that adulterous relationships can never become acceptable. And the great danger facing the Church is the likelihood that pastors might adopt the Kasper proposal as a working pastoral solution, even without authorization from Rome.

Will liberal priests begin inviting remarried Catholics to receive Communion? Apparently that practice is already widespread in the German-speaking world. Will ill-informed Catholics, hearing the buzz in the media, leap to the inaccurate conclusion that the Church’s stand has already changed? Will bishops allow their priests to ignore the official teachings of the Church—and perhaps even ostracize those priests who uphold Church discipline? Unfortunately, in the years since Vatican II, we have seen many illustrations of how a wide rift can develop between the formal pronouncements of the Church and the actual experiences of the faithful.

Some people may misinterpret Church pronouncements intentionally, because they want a more radical result. Others will then be lend into misunderstanding, simply because they never hear the Church’s stand accurately explained. To guard against that sort of innocent misunderstanding—and to make intentional misrepresentation more difficult—it is absolutely essential for loyal Catholics to insist on accurate reporting about what the Vatican is saying. That is why I am so dismayed by the tendency of a few conservative Catholics to convey the impression that acceptance of the Kasper proposal is a foregone conclusion. It is not; and saying that it is only lends strength to those who will advance Kasper’s ideas without Vatican approval.

The Kasper proposal takes a passive approach to the problem of marital breakdown: accepting the high incidence of divorce and remarriage as a given. Rather than accepting that unhappy reality, the Synod should look for ways to change it. Then the discussion would proceed in an entirely different direction. Positive statements about preserving marriage, and positive policies aimed at helping troubled couples, would be far less prone to misunderstanding.

Let me suggest, just for example, four ways in which the Synod could shift the focus of the discussion:

• Strengthen programs of preparation for marriage. If it is true that a high proportion of couples who wed in the Catholic Church are not validly married—as Pope Francis has suggested, and Pope Benedict suggested before him—then we have a pastoral crisis on our hands. Ordinary people are capable of forming a true marital bond. If they fail to do so, is it because they lack the understanding of what marriage entails, or the will to make a real commitment? As society’s notion of marriage diverges ever further from the Christian understanding, it is imperative to ensure that couples understand what they are undertaking when they marry in the Catholic Church.
• Redouble efforts to help troubled couples. In the US, at least, pastors often hear about a marital breakdown only after the divorce lawyers are involved. The Church should offer resources for couples who are experiencing difficulties, and pastors should stress, in preaching and their counseling, that married couples should work constantly to strengthen their bonds—and that it may be gravely sinful to allow a marriage to disintegrate.
• Call Catholics back to the confessionals. Pastors cannot offer useful personal advice unless they know the particular problems of the couples in difficulty. By encouraging regular confession, and encouraging penitents to reflect on the damage they may be doing to their marriages, priests might help couples to address marital problems before they become critical.
• Explain the idea of “being in communion” with the Church. If the world understands why divorced and remarried Catholics cannot receive Communion, perhaps it can also understand why Catholics who support abortion should not, either. The Eucharist is not a reward for good behavior, and conversely, denial of the Eucharist is not a punishment inflicted by the Church. Rather, it is a recognition of an objective fact: that an individual, because of his beliefs or his public actions or his way of life, has separated himself from the Catholic community. As Catholics we do not condemn Orthodox or Protestant Christians, yet we recognize the painful reality that we are not in full communion with them. Acknowledging that reality should be the first step toward repairing the divisions.