The trouble with 'gradualism'

By Phil Lawler ( bio - articles - email ) | Oct 15, 2014

Pope Francis has compared the Church to a field hospital, a place where wounded people come to be healed. Let’s apply that very useful metaphor to the relatio post disceptationem, the interim document from the Synod of Bishops, and in particular to that document’s call for “gradualness” in response to irregular situations.

In a field hospital, doctors might advise a wounded patient to resume normal activities only gradually. That would be appropriate medical advice. If he tried too much too soon, he could reopen the wounds and aggravate his condition.

But suppose a patient was hospitalized because of an addiction. Would a responsible doctor suggest that the patient should try taking a bit less heroin each day? Not likely. Addictions feed on themselves, making gradual recovery impossible; the habits must be broken.

So is a homosexual lifestyle, say, more like a wound or an addiction? Until we answer that question we cannot assess the value of “gradualness” as a pastoral approach.

In a field hospital, doctors are candid with their patients. They do not tell a wounded man (nor an addict) that he is healthy; they tell him that he needs treatment. Father D. Vincent Twomey, the noted Irish theologian, has said of the relatio: “There is nothing very courageous about offering ‘pastoral’ recommendations that fail to challenge a world that still bears the scars of the sexual revolution of the 1960s.”

In its passage suggesting “gradualness,” the relatio cites St. John Paul II, who used the term in his apostolic exhortation, Familiaris Consortio [34]. He acknowledged that many people will make gradual progress toward virtue, but he quite clearly indicated that pastors should not shy away from a clear statement of Church teachings:

They cannot however look on the law as merely an ideal to be achieved in the future: they must consider it as a command of Christ the Lord to overcome difficulties with constancy. "And so what is known as 'the law of gradualness' or step-by-step advance cannot be identified with 'gradualness of the law,' as if there were different degrees or forms of precept in God's law for different individuals and situations.

If “gradualness” means meeting people wherever they are, and opening a conversation that might lead them toward Christ, of course it is a good thing—indeed a pastoral necessity. But the relatio seems to suggest something different: a willingness to tolerate sin, to pretend that a wound is a sign of health.

---

[Throughout this essay I have used the term “gradualness,” because that is the term used in the relatio and in Familiaris Consortio. In my title I use “gradualism” because it, unlike “gradualness,” is a word found in the English language.]