David Quinn“Pope Francis takes a different view as to how Jesus’s teaching should be applied in very particular cases”, writes David Quinn
A new poll from the US shows that young people whose parents divorced are much less likely to be religious than young people whose parents did not divorce. At one level this is understandable. Witnessing a bad divorce could easily make you disillusioned and this sense of disillusionment could easily spread to other parts of life, religion for instance.
But at another level it is not so understandable.
On his visit to Georgia last weekend, Pope Francis discussed the ‘war’ on marriage. Addressing members of religious communities, he said this ‘war’ comes in the form of a culture or philosophy which says “do this, when you tire, do that”. In other words, if you are no longer happy in your marriage, and have grown tired of it, feel free to walk away and start again.
This is what many children have witnessed their parents do, hence their sense of disillusionment. However, the Pope wants to point us towards the antidote to this, which is found in Christianity because Christianity promotes commitment and fidelity. This is the opposite of the ‘throw-away’ culture which Francis also frequently attacks.
Commitment
A culture that believes strongly in fidelity and commitment will have far fewer divorces than one that does not. So those who have been through the bitter divorce of their parents ought really to see religion as the antidote to what they experienced. They ought to be attracted to anything that emphasises fidelity, which is what Christianity does. Unfortunately, this is not what happens.
In the last few weeks a lot of attention has been given once again to the recent Apostolic Exhortation, Amoris Laetitia. This is because the Pope has given his approval to a particular interpretation of Chapter 8 of the Exhortation, which deals with whether or not divorced and remarried Catholics can receive Communion in certain circumstances.
Chapter 8 did not explicitly say that they could. The Archbishop of Philadelphia, Charles Chaput, said they could not. A group of bishops in Francis’ native Argentina said that they could, given the right conditions. Francis wrote to those bishops saying that “there are no other interpretations” than what they have offered.
The Argentine bishops said that a Catholic who is remarried really ought to live with their second spouse like a “brother and sister”, that is, to abstain from sex. However, where children were involved and abstaining would destroy the relationship and harm the children, then the possibility of the person in this situation receiving Communion would have to be considered.
The bishops seemed to be considering a scenario whereby a young Catholic woman (say), was divorced early on and remarries a few years later while still young. She has children. She comes to regret what happened to her first marriage, repents of it but still cannot receive Communion because in the eyes of the Church her first marriage is still valid.
She goes to her priest who says she and her second husband (recognised as her husband only in civil law) should abstain from sex if she wishes to receive Communion. She says her husband would not accept this and it would break up the marriage and the divorce would harm the children. Given this situation the priest says she can receive Communion, but only in private and not at Mass in order to avoid causing any misunderstanding among the congregation.
Previous Popes had forbidden even this on the grounds that Jesus clearly regarded second marriages while the first spouse was still alive as adulterous.
Pope Francis takes a different view as to how Jesus’s teaching should be applied in very particular cases. Don’t be entirely surprised if a future Pope reverses course again.
However, it is a big mistake to over-concentrate on Chapter 8 of Amoris Laetitia because it does not do justice to the totality of what the Pope is saying about marriage and the family today. This is why we also have to take into account the sort of things he said in Georgia last weekend, and in many other places as well, about the ‘global war’ on marriage and his frequent attacks on gender ideology.
Gender ideology is the belief that we can pick and choose our genders and that our gender has nothing to do with our biological sex. By some accounts there are literally dozens of different genders and not just two, male and female. Pope Francis totally rejects this and is adamant that it should not be taught in schools.
On the plane back from Georgia, however, he urged Christians to walk with transsexuals and not simply to condemn them.
He told journalists on the flight: “Life is life, things have to be accepted as they come…tendencies, hormonal imbalance, have and cause so many problems…we must be attentive. Not to say that it’s all the same, but in each case, welcome, accompany, study, discern and integrate. This is what Jesus would do today.”
Putting all this together, we ought to be able to see what the Pope is trying to do. He is not setting aside the Church’s age-old teachings on marriage and the family. Apart from anything else, he does not have the authority to do that. But he knows that if the Church was to set them aside, it would not be good pastoral practice.
A culture in which there is a great deal of divorce does not need a Church that softens its teaching on divorce. It needs a Church that continues to teach self-sacrificial love and life-long commitment.
Equally, the culture does not need a Church that uses its teaching merely as a stick with which to beat people over the head, which is what an authoritarian Church does.
Francis wants the Church to be a teaching Church and a pastoral Church. He wants all Catholics, lay, priests and religious to properly combine these two elements of Christian witness.
A Catholic who underemphasises the teachings, or wishes to outright transform them in order to be “pastoral” is failing to execute Francis’ vision. That is the ‘liberal’ temptation.
A Catholic who overemphasises the teachings and fails to be pastoral, is also failing to implement the Pope’s vision. That is the ‘conservative’ temptation.
Francis wants us to succumb to neither temptation. This, it seems to me, is his message and the message of Amoris Laetitia.