David Quinn
Fr James Martin SJ Francis wants a moral revolution, writes David Quinn
The Gospel reading at Mass last Sunday is one of the most famous. In it, Jesus condemns the Pharisees for burdening people with man-made customs.
He tells them (Mark 7:8): “You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to the traditions of men.”
This passage is often used by preachers to justify changing some of the traditions of the Church. They don’t always specify which ‘traditions’ they have in mind, but they are preparing the way for a reform agenda of some sort. That’s fine, depending on the content of the agenda.
However, one thing they must not do is confuse what Jesus was attacking with the moral law itself, because Jesus never challenged that. On the contrary, he confirmed it.
The context for Jesus’ condemnation of the Pharisees was their obsession with physical cleanliness. The Pharisees noticed that the disciples were eating with unclean hands. The tradition upheld by the Pharisees was to ceremonially wash themselves first, and any utensils they intended using.
Jesus then attacks them for confusing physical, ritualistic cleanliness with moral cleanliness. He says: “Nothing that goes into someone from outside can make that person unclean; it is the things that come out of someone that make that person unclean. For it is from within, from the heart, that evil intentions emerge: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, malice, deceit, indecency, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these evil things come from within and make a person unclean.”
Emphasis
The emphasis here is all on moral conduct and the list would be familiar to any Jewish person of the day because they would have learnt it from Scripture. In no way, shape or form does Jesus challenge any of this. To repeat: he confirms it. What he condemns is confusing ritual and ceremony with morality, a different thing entirely.
This is why it is inaccurate at best to use Jesus’s confrontation with the Pharisees to drive a reform agenda within the Church that would seek to change its basic moral teachings. Jesus would have no truck with that whatsoever.
In fact, on moral questions Jesus could be even stricter than the Pharisees. For example, he was far stricter than they were about divorce.
In debates about the future of the Church, everyone with an opinion about how it should be reformed attempts to recruit Jesus to their side. This is as it should be. We’re Christians, after all.
‘Conservatives’ are often accused by ‘liberals’ of being modern-day Pharisees who Jesus condemned. Liberals say Jesus would favour the sort of ‘inclusive’ Church they favour.
On the other hand, conservatives are likely to accuse liberals of lacking fidelity to Jesus in their seeming willingness to dilute his moral commands. Yes, the Church must welcome everyone, but ultimately all who wish to be members of the Church must be disciples of Jesus in all respects, and that includes accepting his commandments.
During the World Meeting of Families, the American Jesuit, Fr James Martin, gave a talk about how parishes can be more welcoming towards LGBT Catholics. He could have given much the same talk about how parishes can welcome divorced and remarried Catholics, who are very numerous in Western countries.
But any such welcome cannot ultimately leave out the teaching of Jesus that marriage is permanent and indissoluble, and similarly when welcoming LGBT Catholics a parish cannot silence the teaching that marriage is between one man and one woman. To do either of these things shows a lack of fidelity to Jesus himself and therefore, at the end of the day, is not fully Christian.
Liberals in the Church often like to say they are promoting the vision of Pope Francis, but that is not the case when they leave to one side key teachings of Jesus himself, which Francis never does. Francis has never said, and will never say, that marriage is anything other than permanent and indissoluble or that it can be anything other than between a man and a woman.
What Francis is trying to do is ensure people are not deterred from even entering a Church because certain teachings are proclaimed in a highly condemnatory way. But he is not seeking to change these teachings either.
In fact, just last week he told the Oblates in Rome that we live in times of “rampant relativism that undermines the edifice of faith at its base and strips the very idea of Christian fidelity of its meaning”.
Also last week in Rome, and reflecting on the visit to Ireland, he said that there is an ideal family. (Archbishop Diarmuid Martin has explicitly denied on several occasions that there is any such thing.)
Pope Francis said: “We forget so many families that go on with faithfulness and courage. We forget it because today it is fashionable to talk about divorces and separations and this is a bad thing. I respect everything, but this is not ideal, the ideal is not separation, but a united family!”
If the perennial temptation of conservative Christians is to use the moral teachings of Christ as a cudgel, the perennial temptation of liberal Christians is to be so ‘inclusive’ that those same teachings are relativised into near oblivion.
Pope Francis walks between these two poles, between moral authoritarianism and moral relativism.
What he wants for the Church is a moral revolution much more than a structural or doctrinal one. He wants us all, starting at the top, to lead better moral lives, more in conformity with our Christian calling. This is the best way to avoid the scandals that have done the Church such enormous damage, and it is what will ultimately attract people to Christianity.