By MAIKE HICKSON
Part 2
(Editor’s Note: We are publishing this commentary from Gerhard Cardinal Mueller, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, as reported by Maike Hickson, in two parts. The first part appeared in last week’s issue.
(OnePeterFive graciously gave The Wanderer reprint permission for this article. All rights reserved. See: www.onepeterfive.com/cardinal-muller-reminds-church-marriage-doctrine/.
(Dr. Hickson, born in Germany, studied history and French literature at the University of Hannover.)
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Mueller continues his very important and timely doctrinal discernment, as follows:
“The principle is that no one can really want to receive a Sacrament — the Eucharist — without at the same time having the will to live according to all the other Sacraments, among them the Sacrament of Marriage. Whoever lives in a way that contradicts the marital bond opposes the visible sign of the Sacrament of Marriage. With regard to his carnal existence, he turns himself into a ‘counter-sign’ of the indissolubility, even if he is not subjectively guilty.
“Exactly because his carnal life is in opposition to the sign, he cannot be part of the higher Eucharistic sign — in which the incarnate Love of Christ is manifest — by thus receiving Holy Communion. If the Church were to admit such a person to Holy Communion, she would be then committing that act which Thomas Aquinas calls ‘a falseness in the sacred sacramental signs’.”
Mueller continues:
“This is not an exaggerated conclusion drawn from the teaching, but, rather, the foundation itself of the Sacramental Constitution of the Church, which we have compared to the architecture of Noah’s Ark. The Church cannot change this architecture because it stems from Jesus Himself and because the Church was created in it and is supported by it in order to swim upon the waters of the deluge. To change the discipline in this specific point and to admit a contradiction between the Eucharist and the Sacrament of Marriage would necessarily mean to change the Profession of Faith of the Church.
“Concerning their Faith in an indissoluble marriage — not as a distant ideal, but as a concrete way of conduct — the blood of the martyrs has been shed.”
Mueller denies that Pope Francis opened the door to such a disciplinary or doctrinal change. He, rather, “opened all the windows because he is aware of the deluge in which the current world lives. He has invited all of us to let ropes down from these windows so that the shipwrecked can enter the ship. However, to admit someone to Holy Communion who lives in a way that is visibly in opposition to the Sacrament of Marriage — even if it were only in a few individual cases — would not mean to open an additional window.
“It would rather be as if someone had drilled a hole into the bottom of the ship and thereby allowed the seawater to enter the ship. The seafaring of all would thereby also be put into danger and the service of the Church for society would be put into question. Instead of a way of integration, it would be a way of destruction of the Church’s Ark, a leak.
“If the discipline is respected, there are no limits to the capacity of the Church to rescue families. Additionally, the stability of the ship as well as the capacity to lead us safely to the haven are thereby secured. The architecture of the Ark is necessary, especially so that the Church does not permit that someone remain in a situation which is in opposition to Jesus’ own words of eternal life, so that the Church, thus, ‘does not condemn anyone forever’ (AL 296-297).”
Cardinal Mueller shows us here that “the discipline of the Church has an unmeasurable pastoral value.”
(As my own husband, Dr. Robert Hickson, often says: “The Laws of God are Acts of Love!”)
Cardinal Mueller also shows the consequences of any denial of this whole Sacramental Order:
“If the Church were to admit remarried divorcees to Holy Communion without demanding a change of their way of life by allowing them to remain in their [objectively sinful] situation — should one then not simply say that she has accepted divorce in some cases? Certainly, on paper, she would not accept it. She would continue to consider marriage as an ideal. But, does society today not also consider it an ideal? How, then, would the Church be different?
“Could she then still claim to have remained loyal to the Word of Jesus which, even at the time, was considered to be hard? Was not His Word also then in opposition to the culture and the practice of His time, which allowed for divorce in certain cases in order to adapt to human weakness? In practice, the indissolubility of marriage would remain merely a pleasant principle, because it would not any more be manifestly confessed in the Eucharist, the true place where the Christian truths are being confessed that relate to life and that form the public witness of the Church.”
Here, the cardinal also points to the importance of the Common Good of the Church, namely: If we admit exceptions, the whole edifice will suffer, and every member of the Church will be affected.
Mueller refers to the example of a couple who undergo difficulties and who now are weakened by the fact that other such divorced and “remarried” couples may receive Holy Communion. He says:
“To perceive marriage and the Eucharist as something individual without considering the Common Good of the Church will dissolve, in the long run, the very culture of the family. That would be as if Noah, when seeing all the shipwrecked around the Ark, would start taking apart the bottom of the ship and its sides in order to distribute the wooden planks. The Church would forfeit her character as a community which is based upon the ontology of the Sacraments. She would turn into a collection of individuals who aimlessly swim around, exposed to the play of the waves.”
Therefore, by preserving this very edifice of the Church, she can also be of help to the “remarried” divorcees who are in need of guidance to go apart from habitual sin. In Mueller’s words:
“In this manner, the Church can then remind them of the call: ‘Do not stand still. It is possible also for you, you are not excluded from the return to the Sacramental Covenant which you once entered, even if it takes time. With the help of God, you can live in loyalty to Him’.”
In Mueller’s eyes, this is the true path of discernment: to renew the desire “so that we can live according to the Word of the Lord.” Those people who are trying to find exceptions, says the cardinal, “forgo to renew the hearts of men.”
In this context, Cardinal Mueller also shows that, in the case of the “remarried” divorcees, the question of subjective culpability is not applicable since “the Sacramental Order is an order of visible sacred signs, not of inner attitudes or subjective guilt. A privatization of the Sacramental Order would certainly not be Catholic.”
Therefore, a discernment can only mean “to return to the fidelity of the marriage bond and to come back into the dwelling or the ark which the Mercy of God has offered for the love and the desire of men. The whole process is aimed at recognizing and healing — step by step, with patience and mercy — the wound from which our brothers and sisters are suffering. It [the wound] is not the failure of the earlier marriage, but the new relationship. Therefore, the discernment is necessary — not in order to chose the goal, but, rather the way. . . .
“Here comes into play, as a second criterion, the logic of the small steps of growth about which the pope also speaks (AL 305). It is of decisive importance that the divorcees forgo to settle into their situation, that they do not make an acquiescent peace with their new partnership in which they live, [but, rather,] that they are ready to consider it [the relationship] in the light of the Words of Jesus. Everything that aims at terminating this way of living is a small step of growth which has to be promoted and encouraged.”
While still keeping with his image of Noah’s Ark, Cardinal Mueller says, at the end of his talk, that the Church takes in a man “who has lost logos (reason) through sin and who therefore has become ‘unreasonable’ and walks around without the light of love.” Thus it is the duty of the Church “to renew man and to form the human heart according to the Word (Logos) of Jesus. The people walk in as ‘unreasonable’ and turn out to be ‘reasonable.’ That is to say, they are then ready to live according to the light of Christ, according to His love, which ‘hopes for everything’ and which ‘remains forever’.”
At the end of Cardinal Mueller’s text, there are to be found several very important footnotes. One feels here again reminded of a certain parallel to Pope Francis’ text, namely, that some very decisive comments are being made in footnotes — this time, however, with the intention to preserve and strengthen orthodoxy. In footnote 8, for example, there is to be found a criticism of the term “objective situation of sin” as being a “very general term.”
Additionally, the term “irregular situation” is being criticized as being too “general.” Mueller says: “In itself, this notion merely says that someone is finding himself outside of a norm. But the distinction is not made whether this norm is an Ecclesial norm or a norm of Divine Law. In any event, we may be reminded [of the following principle]: If there is a doubt concerning the interpretation of a document, there is only one way of reading that is validly possible — according to a Catholic hermeneutic — a reading which follows that meaning which has been previously taught by the Magisterium.”
In footnote 9, Cardinal Mueller proposes to explain footnote 336 of Amoris Laetitia, saying that “it is a very general formulation” and that it implies “that a canonical norm (even within the Sacramental Order) does not necessarily need to have the same effect for everybody, because the subjective guilt might be mitigated in some cases.”
Mueller then turns this argument the other way around, saying: “That means that there can be proper norms that are indeed to have the same effect for everybody. This is an undeniable fact, for example, with regard to the norm that denies the non-baptized access to all the other Sacraments.” He explains: “Such a norm does not depend upon the subjective guilt of a person, but upon his objective state as a non-baptized person.”
Mueller proceeds to talk about cases of norms where there are exceptions, and he then explicitly mentions once more the “remarried” divorcees and their non-admittance to the Sacraments as falling under the same category of canonical norms that are binding without exception:
“The norm of FC 84 belongs however to the former category [of norms]. It does not depend upon the subjective guilt, but upon the objective state in which someone finds himself. The Magisterium has continuously explained this.”
It is in this context that Mueller mentions that there might be, for example, exceptions to the general rule that public sinners are excluded from public roles within the Church such as lectors and godparents — as long as they have started “a path of conversion” and that such an admittance would encourage them [to persevere on their new path].”
He therewith also puts forth a strong limitation to the doubtful idea of some that “remarried” divorcees should be generously permitted to have public functions within the Catholic Church.
At the conclusion of this summary report on Gerhard Cardinal Mueller’s historic speech in Oviedo, Spain, I would like to note that the fuller version of his talk is much stronger and keener than those portions that had previously been selectively published in Germany.
Additionally, it should be noted that Cardinal Mueller sets very strict limits to any attempt to undermine the Sacramental Order, or the other irreformable teaching and divinely established structure of the Catholic Church. If Pope Francis intends to do so, he must now publicly contradict his own Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. For, each Catholic may now refer to this decisive talk when defending any novel interpretation of the Church’s teachings on marriage.
It is to be hoped that Pope Francis will now soon come out with his clarifications as to where he stands and as to what his fuller intentions are — and to do it in a manly, forthright, and honest way.
During his recent trip to Spain — when asked whether his new book Report on Hope is meant to be a “theological correction” of Pope Francis — Cardinal Mueller trenchantly stated that, indeed, both Pope Benedict and also Pope Francis himself had told him “not to be a slavish copy of the pope, but to use my own head — and so I try. I have to do my own homework.”
That is to say, Mueller honorably added, “to promote and defend the faith.”
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