Synods, Exhortations, And The Other Side Of The Coin

By PEGGY MOEN

In all the sound and fury of the Extraordinary and Ordinary Synods on the Family and up through the release of Amoris Laetitia, one sort of suffering Catholic has been largely overlooked. That is, those who undergo trials precisely because of their faithfulness to Church teaching on the indissolubility of marriage.
Pope John Paul in the 1981 Familiaris Consortio spoke of the most obvious instances of this suffering:
“Loneliness and other difficulties are often the lot of separated spouses, especially when they are the innocent parties. The ecclesial community must support such people more than ever. It must give them much respect, solidarity, understanding and practical help, so that they can preserve their fidelity even in their difficult situation; and it must help them to cultivate the need to forgive which is inherent in Christian love, and to be ready perhaps to return to their former married life.
“The situation is similar for people who have undergone divorce, but, being well aware that the valid marriage bond is indissoluble, refrain from becoming involved in a new union and devote themselves solely to carrying out their family duties and the responsibilities of Christian life. In such cases their example of fidelity and Christian consistency takes on particular value as a witness before the world and the Church. Here it is even more necessary for the Church to offer continual love and assistance, without there being any obstacle to admission to the sacraments.”
(Amoris Laetitia n. 242 offers, in passing, a quotation from the Synod Fathers about “divorced people who have not remarried, and often bear witness to marital fidelity.”)
One year before Familiaris Consortio, Philip Trower reported on the 1980 Synod on Marriage for The Wanderer, recounting the testimonies of devout married couples to the assembled bishops and others. One such testimony he recorded as follows:
“A Frenchman abandoned by his wife and left with four children stated his life was unchosen celibacy and spoke of his faith in the binding power of the sacrament which he believes will eventually bring his wife back to him. (A colleague who was in the press box said even the pressmen were moved by this.)” (See The Wanderer, October 23, 1980, p. 10.)
But faithful people in all states of life may experience grave difficulties in living or upholding Church teaching on marriage.
In 2012, The Wanderer published an essay by Juliana Davis called “The Poor of Humanae Vitae,” those, “though rich in faith, are any individuals, married couples, men or women religious, Catholic or Protestant ministers, youth leaders, or others who hold to principles of natural law, on which the Catholic Church bases its centuries-old moral teaching on the sacredness of human sexuality” (see The Wanderer, August 16, 2012, p. 4A).
We also have among us the “poor” of Familiaris Consortio.
Some examples:
Clergy who preach or counsel in accordance with an admittedly difficult and undeniably unpopular teaching.
Catholic teachers and catechists, both lay and religious, who teach the indissolubility of marriage.
Anyone who faces ridicule for simply speaking up on behalf of the doctrine on marriage.
Single Catholics who refrain from getting involved with someone who is not free to marry in the Church.
Those who will not serve as witnesses to an invalid marriage, often incurring the wrath of relatives and family members.
Certainly, these people are not portrayed sympathetically in media or in entertainment. But they should be able to expect more attention in Church documents and ministry.
Msgr. Ignacio Barreiro wrote in Human Life International’s Truth and Charity Forum October 9, 2014:
“The proposal to admit divorced and remarried persons to the Eucharist would recognize the moral legitimacy of cohabitating with a person who is not one’s true spouse, and as a consequence it would scandalize not only the faithful but also any attentive person, promoting the notion that there exists no marriage that is absolutely indissoluble, that the ‘forever’ to which every true love cannot but aspire is an illusion, as [Carlo] Cardinal Caffarra notes well [in Remaining in the Truth of Christ: Marriage and Communion in the Catholic Church].”
Msgr. Barreiro was reviewing the above-mentioned book and thereby deploring the “Kasper proposal” to admit the divorced-remarried to the Eucharist and the scandal that it would cause. The emphasis here is on “scandalizing” the faithful.
Raymond Cardinal Burke (see pages 1A and 3A of this week’s issue) has written that Amoris Laetitia has no magisterial authority — that it cannot and does not, in any event, change Church teaching and practice regarding marriage and the Eucharist.
Canonist Edward Peters wrote, as cited in Fr. John T. Zuhlsdorf’s wdtprs.com blog:
“Bottom line: sacramental rules are made of words, not surmises. Those who think Amoris has cleared a path to the Communion rail for Catholics in irregular marriages are hearing words that the pope (whatever might be his personal inclinations) simply did not say.”
Major media and prominent progressivist Catholics are nonetheless trying to claim that Church pastoral practice has in fact changed.
The April 9 Chicago Tribune reported as follows about Archbishop Blase Cupich:
“Cupich called the document ‘a game changer for the way we as a diocese are going to work with people.’
“‘There’s not really any doctrine as such that’s changed, but there is, I think, a very fresh way that will strike Catholic people in the pews and the priests about how we pastorally deal with people, especially those people whose lives are really very complicated,’ Cupich told the Tribune.
“The document, though, should not be read as an open invitation for everyone who is divorced and remarried to automatically receive communion, Cupich said. Rather, it invites them to a conversation and a discernment process with their pastors that could lead them to communion one day.
“Cupich said he hopes the Pope’s guidelines show divorced and remarried Catholics that they do still belong in the church and give license to priests, like himself, who have been taking that approach for a while.”
So, to return to Msgr. Barreiro’s point about scandal — if the “Kasper proposal” does become widespread in practice, no one will be more scandalized than those Catholics who have suffered to be faithful to Church teaching on marriage.