ALWAYS AND EVER OUR MOST BELOVED BENEDICTUS XVI
Spent the afternoon after Mass and lunch translating this interview with Cardinal Caffarra...
CARDINAL CAFFARRA:
‘Only a blind man would deny that
there is great confusion in the Church’
‘The division among bishops is the reason for the letter we sent the pope, and not its effect.
Insults and threats of canonical sanctions are unworthy reactions’
Exclusive interview
By Matteo Matzuzzi
Translated from
January 14, 2017
BOLOGNA – “I think many things must be clarified. Our letter on the DUBIA was the result of long reflection, months of it, and of discussion among us. For myself, it also meant much prayer before the Blessed Sacrament. We were aware that the step we were taking was a most serious matter.”
Cardinal Carlo Caffarra, Archbishop emeritus of Bologna, moral theologian and first president of the John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and the Family, made this clear before a long conversation with
Il Foglio on the now-famous FOUR CARDINALS’ letter sent to Pope Francis for clarifications regarding Amoris Laetitia and the debate – not always courteous nor elegant – that it has unleashed in the Vatican and outside.
“We had two concerns. The first was not to scandalize the faithful in their faith. The second was that no one, believer or not, would find in our letter anything that would even remotely sound the least bit like any lack of respect for the pope. Thus, the final text was the result of several reviews- revisions, omissions, corrections.”
With these premises, the cardinal went into the subject matter of the letter.
“What urged us to do it? One was a general structural consideration, the other contingent and conjunctural. Let us start with the first.
We cardinals have the serious duty to advise the pope in the governance of the Church. It is a duty – and duty obliges.
The contingency, on the other hand, is the fact – which only a blind man would deny – that there is great confusion and uncertainty in the Church as a result of some paragraphs in AL.
In the months since it was published, what has happened is that on fundamental questions concerning the sacraments of matrimony, penance and the Eucharist, and concerning Christian life in general, some bishops have been saying A, others say the contrary of A, but it’s all about interpreting the same text. This is a fact that is undeniable. But texts are stubborn, as David Hume said.
The way out of this ‘conflict of interpretations’ is a recourse to fundamental theological criteria, using which it would be possible to show reasonably that AL does not contradict Familiaris consortio. Personally in public encounters with laymen and priests, I have always followed this way...
We soon realized that this epistemological way was inadequate. The conflict between interpretations could not be resolved that way. So there was only one way to deal with it head-on: to ask the author of the text being interpreted what was the right interpretation. There was no other way. Consequently, there was the problem – how do we address the pope on such a matter? So we chose a way that is very traditional in the Church: presenting our questions in the form of dubia.
Why? Because it is a way whereby, if the Holy Father in his judgment wished to reply, he would not need to do so in long elaborate responses. He simply has to answer Yes or No. He could then ask, as popes often do, probati auctores [recognized experts] or the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to issue a supplemental declaration explaining his Yes or No answers. It seemed to us the simplest way to go”.
The other question we asked ourselves was whether to do this in private or publicly. We argued it out and agreed that it would be construed as a lack of respect if we did this in public from the beginning. And so, we chose to do it privately. We decided to go public only when we were reasonably sure that the Holy Father was not going to answer as at all.
This was one of the major points for discussion, with various arguments pro and con. Recently, Cardinal Mueller, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, said that publication of the letter was wrong.
But we interpreted the pope’s silence as an authorization to continue with the public discussion. Besides, the problem profoundly concerns both the magisterium of bishops (which, we must remember, they exercise not because the pope has delegated them, but by virtue of the sacrament [of Holy Orders] which they received), and the life of the faithful. Both the bishops and the faithful have a right to be told [what is being taught in AL].
Indeed, many priests and laymen had been saying: “In a situation like this, you cardinals have the obligation to intervene with the Holy Father. Otherwise, what are you here for if you do not help the pope out in such serious matters?” [For one, this pope did and does not think he needed or needs the help of anyone with AL once it was published.]
The scandal among the faithful had started to widen, and we would seem to have been like the dogs who fail to bark which the prophet speaks of (Is 56,10): "All the sentinels of Israel are blind, they are without knowledge. They are all mute dogs,
unable to bark - dreaming, reclining, loving their sleep."
So this is what was behind those two pages of our letter.
And yet, the polemics over AL continued quite publicly, with criticisms against the Four Cardinals from their fellow bishops, or from bishops of the Curia.
Some persons continue to say that we are disobeying the pope’s magisterium. That is false and calumnious. We wrote the pope precisely because we do not wish to be disobedient.
I would be obedient to the pope’s teaching if I knew what he is teaching about the faith and Christian life. But that is precisely the problem: that in fundamental things, we do not understand well exactly what he is teaching, as we see in the conflicting interpretations of Al, even among bishops.
We want to be obedient to the teaching of the pope, but his teaching should be clear. None of us wished to ‘oblige’ the Holy Father to reply – in the letter, we refer to his ‘sovereign judgment’.
All we did was to simply and respectfully ask five questions.
The accusation that we wish to divide the Church do not deserve attention. The division that already exists in the Church was the reason for our letter, not the effect. What is unworthy in the Church, especially in this context, are insults and even threats of canonical sanction.”
The Premise to the letter notes “a serious disorientation of many faithful and a great confusion regarding questions that are of great importance in the life of the Church. What specifically is this confusion and disorientation?
I received a letter from a parish priest that is a perfect picture of what is happening. He wrote: "In spiritual direction and in giving confessions, I no longer know what to say. To the penitent who tells me, ‘I live with full conjugal rights with a divorced woman, and now, I would like to receive communion’, I propose a course to follow in order to correct his situation. But he stops me and says, ‘Look, the pope has said I can do that without having to live in continence’.
I can no longer deal with this. The Church can ask anything of me, just not to betray my conscience. And my conscience objects to a supposed papal teaching to allow communion to those who live as husband and wife although they are not married.” So he writes.
The situation of many pastors of souls – especially parish priests – is this: On their shoulders they must bear a weight that they are not able to deal with [And not supposed to! They have more than enough problems as it is!]It is this I am thinking of when I speak about a great disorientation. That is with respect to parish priests.
But many of the faithful are even more disoriented. We are talking about matters that are not secondary. We are not just talking of keeping or breaking abstinence. It is about matters that are most serious for the life of the Church and for the eternal salvation of souls. Which we must never forget: The supreme law in the Church is the salvation of souls. Not other concerns. Jesus founded his Church so that the faithful may achieve eternal life, and have it in abundance.
The division Cardinal Caffarra refers to originated above all in the interpretation of paragraphs 300-305 in AL Chapter 8. Many, including bishops, find in these the confirmation of a turning-point for the Church that is not just pastoral but also doctrinal. But others maintain that everything in AL accords with and is in continuity with pre-Bergoglio Magisterium. How does one exit from such an equivocation?
“I would make two very important premises. To think of pastoral practice which is not founded on and rooted in doctrine means to found and root pastoral practice on arbitrariness.
We cardinals have the serious duty to advise the pope on governing the Church. It is a duty, and duty obliges. [But it seems to me, in JMB’s mind, that when he needs their advice, he will ask for it. For now, he is formally advised only by his Crown Council of nine cardinals, and a few non-redhatted ‘grey eminences’ surrounding him at Casa Santa Marta’ His failure to respond to the DUBIA and his earlier non-acknowledgment even of online appeals from cardinals, bishops, theologians and faithful show he does not appreciate unsolicited advice or opinions at all, much less listen!] A Church that pays little attention to doctrine is not a more pastoral Church, but a more ignorant Church.
The Truth we speak about is not formal truth, but a Truth that leads to eternal salvation – verita salutaris (saving truth), in theological terms. Let me explain.
There is formal truth. For example, I want to know if the longest river in the world is the Amazon or the Nile. It is the Amazon – and this is formal truth. Formal in this sense means that this factual knowledge has nothing to do with my own situation, with whether I am free or not.
But there are truths that I call existential. If it is true, as Socrates taught, that it is better to suffer an injustice than to commit it, I am expressing a truth that affects my freedom to act differently if the opposite were true.
When the Church speaks truth, it is speaking of the second type, which if obeyed freely, generates true life. When I hear it said that there has only been a pastoral change and not doctrinal, then
- either one thinks that the commandment prohibiting adultery is a purely positivist law that can be changed (and I think no person who thinks straight could possibly think this), or
- it means saying that, yes, a triangle generally has three sides, but it is possible to build one with four sides, i.e., I would be saying something absurd.
Our medieval thinkers had a saying: “Theoria sine praxis, currus sine axi; praxis sine theoria, caecus in via”. (Theory without practice is like a chariot without an axle. Practice without theory is to proceed blindly.)
The second premise made by Cardinal Caffarra has to do with
the great theme of the evolution of doctrine, which has always accompanied Christian thinking. We know it was synthesized splendidly by Blessed John Henry Newman.
If there is one point that is most clear, it is that there can be no evolution where there is contradiction. If I say that ‘s’ is ‘p', and then say that ‘s’ is not ‘p’, the second statement does not develop the first but contradicts it.
Already, Aristotle taught rightly that to enunciate a universal affirmative proposition (e.g., every case of adultery is not right) and at the same time to enunciate a specific negative proposition having the same subject and predicate (e.g., some cases of adultery are not wrong), one is not making an exception to the first but contradicting it.
Ultimately, if I wanted to define the logic of Christian life, I would use a statement by Kierkegaard, who said: “To be always moving but remaining firm on the same point”.
The problem we have is to see whether Paragraphs 300-305 of AL with footnote 351 contradict or not the magisterium of previous popes who spoke on the same question. According to many bishops, they d ocontradict previous magisterium. According to many others, it is not a contradiction but a development. That is why we want the Pope to answer this himself.
Thus we come to the point that has been most contested and that dominated the discussions in the recent two ‘family synods’: the possibility of allowing civilly remarried divorcees to receive the Eucharist. Which is not explicitly allowed in AL, but in the judgment of many is implicit in the document but is nothing more than an evolution from No. 84 of John Paul II’s
Familiaris consortio.
The core of the problem is this: Can the Eucharistic minister (usually a priest) give the Eucharist to a person who lives more uxorio [in a husband-and-wife sexual relationship] with a woman or a man who is not his wife or her husband, and yet has no intention of living in continence? The answer can only be Yes or No.
Yet no one questions the fact that Familiaris consortio, Sacramentun caritatis, the Code of Canon Law and the Catechism of the Catholic Church all say NO. And it is a No that is valid until the concerned faithful decide to give up living as husband-and-wife [in a relationship considered adulterous by the Church].
Does AL teach that, given certain precise circumstances and after following a certain course, the concerned faithful can receive communion without committing themselves to sexual continence?
There are bishops who have said Yes, they can. Which means that by simple logic, one would then have to teach that adultery in itself and of itself is not always a sin, and that is not pertinent to cite ignorance or error regarding the indissolubility of marriage - an error that is, unfortunately, quite widespread.
This is an interpretative, not an orientative, stand. It may be used as a way to discern the imputability of actions already done, but it cannot be a principle for acts that have yet to be done. The priest has the duty to enlighten the ignorant and to correct the errant. [What if, as in the most outrageous consequences and justifications of AL’s dubious propositions, it is priests, bishops, cardinal and the pope himself who need to be enlightened and corrected?]
In fact, the novelty that AL has brought to the question is calling on pastors of souls not to be content with simply saying No (but not being content does not thereby mean saying Yes), but to take the person by the hand and to help him grow to the point where he understands that he is in a condition that disqualifies him from receiving Communion unless he stops having sexual relations that only a husband and wife should have with each other. But not that the priest should help the adulterous couple along the way by giving them communion unconditionally. It is in this regard that Footnote 351 is ambiguous.
If, for instance, I tell a confessee that he cannot continue having sexual relations with his partner who is not his spouse in the eyes of the Church, but that meanwhile, because he has suffered so much, he could receive communion, if he limits himself to having relations once a week instead of three [AL does not even imply any such 'token sacrifice’ which, as the Maltese bishops have said, would be ‘humanly impossible’], it makes no sense. And by doing that, I am not being merciful towards the confessee.
Because to put an end to habitual bad conduct – a habitus, theologians would say – requires a determined resolve not to further carry on such conduct. But between giving up what is wrong and starting to do what is good, one needs to make a choice, even if one has to prepare for it a long time. For some time, Augustine tells us, he prayed, “Lord, make me chaste, but not just yet”.
Going over the DUBIA, one gets the impression that more than Familiaris consortio, it is John Paul II’s encyclical Veritatis splendor that is at stake. Is that right?
Yes. We face here what Veritatis splendor teaches. This document, published August 6, 1993, is highly doctrinal, as St. John Paul II intended it to be, to the point that – an exceptional case till then for encyclicals – it was addressed only to the bishops, who are directly responsible for the faith that their flock must believe and live by (cfr No.5). And the pope advises them to be vigilant about the doctrines condemned or taught in the encyclical itself – the first so that they may not be spread among Christians, the second so that they may be taught to Christians (cfr No. 116).
One of the fundamental teachings of the document is that there are acts which can be dishonest, for and in themselves - independent of the circumstances in which they are committed and the intention that the person may have in committing such acts. And that to deny this fact can mean denying any sense to martyrdom (cfr No s. 90-94).
Indeed, every martyr could have said, “But I found myself in a certain situation where I was no longer obliged to the serious duty to profess my faith or to affirm the intangibility of a moral good”. Think of the difficulties that Thomas More’s wife presented to him when he was already in prison: “You have a duty to your family, to your children”.
So it is not merely about faith. Even if I use only correct reasoning, I see that in failing to resist acts that are intrinsically dishonest, then I deny that there is a limit beyond which the powerful in this world cannot and should not go. Socrates was the first person in the West to understand this.
Therefore, the matter is serious, one in which there can be no uncertainty. That is why we decided to ask the pope to be clear about the DUBIA, because there are bishops who appear to reject the basic fact [of intrinsically evil acts] by citing AL. But adultery has always been listed among the acts that are intrinsically evil. We only have to read what Jesus said about it, what St. Paul said, and the commandments given by God to Moses.
So is there any room today for these so-called ‘intrinsically evil acts’? Or is it not time to look on the other side of the scale, to the fact that everything can be forgiven by God?
Watch out! There is great confusion about this as well. All sins and intrinsically dishonest choices we make can be forgiven. So ‘intrinsically dishonest’ does not mean ‘unforgivable’.
Nonetheless, Jesus did not just tell the adulterous woman: “Neither do I condemn you!”, but he added, “Go and sin no more!” (Jn 8,10).
St. Thomas, taking inspiration from St. Augustine, said a very beautiful thing when he commented: “Jesus could have said, “Go and do as you please – you will always be sure I will forgive you. Despite your sins, I will free you from the torments of hell.” But the Lord, who does not like sin, condemns it, saying, “Go and sin no more!” And thus, the Lord shows how tender he is in his mercy and just in his Truth” (cfr Comm on John 1139). [I bet this is something JMB's Aquinas experts chose to ignore and that, perhaps, JMB himself may never have known! It makes trash of his faux-mercy ideas.]
We are truly – and not only in a manner of speaking – free in the eyes of the Lord. Therefore, the Lord will not cast his forgiveness blindly. There should be a mysterious marriage between the infinite mercy of God and the free will of man, who must convert himself if he wishes to be forgiven.
We asked Cardinal Caffarra if confusion does not also result from the conivction, so rooted in many pastors, that
individual conscience is a faculty whereby one decides autonomously what is good and what is bad, and that ultimately, the decision rests with is individual conscience.
I think this is the most important point of all. It is the point at which we intersect with the load-bearing pillar of modernity. Let us begin by clarifying the language.
Conscience does not decide because it is an act of reason. Decision is a free action, resulting from one’s will. Conscience is a judgment in which the subject of the proposition expressed is the choice that I am about to make or have already made, and the predicate is the moral quality of that choice. It is therefore a judgment, not a decision.
Of course, every reasonable judgment is exercised on the basis of criteria, otherwise it is not a judgment. Criteria are therefore the basis on which I affirm what I affirm or deny what I deny. On this point, a passage from Blessed Rosmini’s Tract on Moral Conscience: “There is a light which is in man, and there is a light which is man. The light which is in man is the law of Truth and grace. The light which is man himself is right conscience, because man becomes light when he takes part in the light of the law of Truth through conscience which is a confirmation of that light”.
Now, in the face of this idea of moral conscience, we have the idea that sets up one’s own subjectivity as the unappealable tribunal that decides whether one’s choices have been good or bad. For me, this is a decisive confrontation between the Church’s view of life (which comes from divine Revelation), and modernity’s idea of conscience.
Blessed John Henry Newman saw this most lucidly. In his famous letter to the Duke of Norfolk, he wrote: “Conscience is Christ’s aboriginal vicar. A prophet in its information, a monarch in its order,s apriest in its blessing and in its anathemas. For the great world of philosophy these days, these words are nothing but vain and sterile verbosities, devoid of any concrete significance. In our time, there is a dogged wat. I might call it a conspiracy, against the rights of conscience”. Later, he adds that “In the name of conscience, true conscience is destroyed’.
That is why among the five DUBIA, number 5 is the most important: Paragraph 303 in AL is not clear. It seems – and I repeat, it seems – to admit the possibility that conscience (which is not invincibly erroneous, as the Church has always held) can express true judgment against what the Church teaches to be in accordance with divine Revelation. That is why we placed this particular dubium before the pope.
Newman said that "if the pope speaks against conscience in the true sense of the word, then he would be committing suicide, digging his own grave under his feet”. So, this is a matter of devastating gravity if individual judgment is elevated to be the ultimate criterion of moral truth.
I would never tell anyone, “Always follow what your conscience tells you”, without immediately adding, “Love the truth and seek it, seek what is good”. Otherwise, you would put into his hands the weapon that is most destructive of his humanity.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 17/01/2017 20:02]