Rome, October 2014
This is being written during the first days of the Extraordinary Assembly of the Synod of Bishops called by Pope Francis to discuss pastoral challenges to the family.
The Synod is taking place at the Vatican and scheduled to run from October fifth through the nineteenth, 2014. Preliminary discussions, public pronouncements, published articles and books relating to the issues to be reviewed, are charged with acrimony, reflecting a long history of opposing positions held by leading members of the hierarchy. The most notable conflicts, spanning a twenty year period, are the opposing positions held by both Cardinal Walter Kasper and Cardinal Godfried Danneels, and the then, Cardinal Ratzinger, requiring intervention by St. John Paul II, favoring Ratzinger.
The most contentious issue remains the proposal by Cardinal Walter Kasper, previously condemned by Ratzinger, to reverse the Church’s teaching that living in an invalid “marital” union precludes one from receiving the Eucharist.
BATTLE LINES
The lines are clearly drawn! Weapons vary from non-lethal to quasi-lethal exchanges. Progressives on one side, dormant since Vatican II, with their progeny, are proposing accommodation to the secular, and anti-Christian culture.
On the other side are the Doctrinal Defenders who see the salvation of the modern Church depending chiefly on whether it is able, as salt of the earth, to keep its savor – its basic teachings intact - from being trampled underfoot by barbarian forces engulfing the Church. Doctrinal Defenders hold that capitulation is never the solution!
ARUGMENTS
Progressives, championing doctrinal reversal, are claiming that divorced and remarried Catholics are in special need of grace, only provided by the sacraments. They hold that, while this group is not living in sacramental marriage, they need sacramental instruments to support them. They hold that God does not allow anyone to fall; He shows mercy to one and all!
Doctrinal Defenders respond with the double edged sword of Aristotelian logic and explicit theology, Christ’s own words on the inviolability of marriage.
TACTICS
Pre-Synod maneuvers have been particularly aggressive. Both sides accuse the other of insincerity, misrepresentation and even deviousness. Progressives, arguing for inclusiveness and mercy, are employing anarchistic tactics. Claiming to borrow from the business world, they employ such operational maneuvers as “brainstorming” where participants are free to put forward any and all ideas on the table, which later on can be critiqued. One wonders if, in a business setting, such issues as sharing patents with competitors or the Marxist notion of shared surplus value, are ever considered fit to bring to the table.
Doctrinal Defenders, apparently lacking Papal patronage, are mustering the forces of orthodoxy, worldwide. By appointing two Cardinals, acknowledged nemeses of Ratzinger, Cardinal Kasper, and Cardinal Danneels, both pulled from retirement by Pope Francis, to join the Synod, gives the outside world a sense of serious division within the Church.
REAL VICTIMS
Progressives are heralding the divorced and remarried as victims of our cultural conflagration. Their sympathies are clearly with the adulterer who is desirous of receiving communion, ready to confess his guilt, but not willing to pay the price for adultery.
Children, not adulterers, remain the first and foremost victims in the cultural upheaval caused by divorce and remarriage.
Secondary victims are the abandoned spouse who may now be forced to watch while the Church sacramentally blesses the adulterer.
CLEAR WARNING
St. Paul’s instruction on the Eucharist culminates in a warning against unworthy reception of Christ’s body. “He who eats and drinks unworthily, eats and drinks judgment to himself.” Reformers have previously struck this decisive verse from specific Masses.
The power of the Church’s teaching will only shine forth when it is not diluted. Debasing doctrine is a short-sited, if not counterproductive, response to the crisis of our time!
--Xavier Rynne
