Washington D.C., Mar 5, 2018 / 10:37 am (CNA).- Since the beginning of the debate on whether chapter eight of Pope Francis’ Amoris Laetitia permits the divorced and civilly married to receive Holy Communion, Cardinal Donald Wuerl has lamented that the exhortation has been co-opted by that single issue and that, really, the Holy Father’s concern is much broader than that debate suggests.
Some people, though, have suggested that the synods and Amoris Laetitia were simply a cover to change the practice of not giving Holy Communion to the divorced and civilly married. In a newly-released pastoral plan for the Archdiocese of Washington, Cardinal Wuerl has taken a decided step away from such a cynical view and captured the passion of the Pope Francis’ insistence that because we are all in need of it, we must also go out and give God’s mercy and truth to those who do not know it, who are not living it, and who are desperate to receive it.
Sharing in the Joy of Love in Marriage and Family, the Archdiocese of Washington’s pastoral plan, focuses the implementation of the exhortation not on questions of sacramental doctrine and practice, since these truths have been definitively taught and Church teaching has not changed.
Rather, echoing a cornerstone in the thought of Pope Francis, Pope St. John Paul II, and Pope Benedict XVI, Wuerl’s plan begins with the principle that “the desire to love and to be loved is a deep, enduring part of our human experience.” This desire is part of God’s providential care for us and his plan for marriage. Echoing a reflection on our need for God that Joseph Ratzinger once made in his “Introduction to Christianity,” Cardinal Wuerl notes that the joy of love in this life “gives us an invitation to experience Christian hope in the love of God that never ends.”
It’s somewhat surprising that it was thought necessary to hold two synods and to issue an apostolic exhortation to encourage priests and parish leaders to reach out to people living in irregular situations. In the United States I’ve certainly not noticed priests turning people away who struggle to live the Christian life. If anything, I think many priests are loathe to challenge people to strive for holiness and virtue by living in the grace of Jesus Christ. Perhaps that’s another story about our own weaknesses as priests and pastors.
But in a culture given over to secularism, materialism, and individualism, it’s indisputable that many people do not experience marriage as a force of life-giving joy. Moreover, in at least two generations, the majority of Catholics have not been catechized or given the teaching of the Church in a meaningful way. There are many reasons for that, but the question before us is what to do with those who live in irregular situations.
There are two extreme responses we could make to persons who aren’t living in the truth of Christ’s teaching about marriage. We could simply ignore the situation and let them continue on as they have been. Some may be living with a sort of resentment of the Church’s teaching, and some may be ignoring it (and receiving Holy Communion in the meantime). Or we could, upon learning of people’s sins and struggles, simply exhort them to live in a way consistent with Church teaching (and in those cases to refrain from Holy Communion until they do). Neither of these solutions seem aligned with a pastoral sensibility. The former is passively laxist and the latter will likely have no effect on persons unaccustomed to receiving difficult truths from ecclesial authority.
Despite the ambiguity of various passages in chapter eight of Amoris Laetitia, I think that the Holy Father asks us to choose neither of these paths. In his pastoral plan for the archdiocese of Washington, Cardinal Wuerl avoids the question of Holy Communion for the divorced and civilly married, even though he repeatedly asserts the need for the formation of conscience, and explains that personal judgement does not supersede the objective moral order. Rather, noting that “each one of us is in an ‘irregular situation’ when it comes to our relationship with the true God,” the cardinal reminds his priests and pastoral leaders that the “Church offers the love and mercy of God as the sure path to fulfill the human desire for love, walks with those who bear and try to overcome the trials and difficulties that too often mark marriage and family as they do life in general.”
The thrust of the pastoral plan and the majority of the text, therefore, focuses on meeting people where they are and finding ways that priests, parish staff, and youth leaders can work to form the consciences of the faithful in order to invite those who are struggling in marriage and irregular relationships to come to know the mercy, love, and liberating truth that Jesus Christ offers.
Encouraging individual meetings between priest and parishioner, developing comprehensive formation in marriage with the assistance of mentor couples, offering retreats for couples, and teaching families to pray together are just some of the suggestions the pastoral plan makes.
Cardinal Wuerl’s plan focuses not specifically on couples in irregular situations but on all marriages. That’s why it focuses on preparing youth to give and to love, on developing a culture supporting the self-offering of marriage, on formation during the engagement period, and on supporting families in unique situations such as those with children who have special needs or those families with immigrant members.
After so much polarization, we finally now have a local implementation of Amoris Laeitia that sees the larger picture of Pope Francis’ challenge and vision. It’s a plan that doesn’t get bogged down in a question that was neither asked nor answered in the exhortation: whether divorced and civilly remarried can receive Holy Communion. That question was already answered by Pope St. John Paul II in his 1983 exhortation on the family Familiaris Consortio and has been reaffirmed repeatedly by the Holy See.
Some will no doubt be disappointed that Cardinal Wuerl did not repeat the Church’s teaching on the matter. Yet, it seems to me that to do so would be to continue the tired arguments of the last few years to the detriment of a vision that seeks to encounter the faithful and to help them not only to know the doctrines of our faith but to experience the liberating truth of what we believe.
The cardinal understands that “many adult Catholics do not know the fullness of what the Church teaches and have never experienced it lived out. Some know Church teaching, but citing the primacy of individual conscience (which is sometimes a misinformed conscience), they simply pick and choose which teachings they will practice or not follow.” He is also well aware of the pressures Catholics face from the culture not to take seriously the demands of Christ and his Gospel.
All of this being the case, Cardinal Wuerl’s pastoral plan recognizes that many people have great difficulty in grasping the positive value of the Church’s teaching or have difficulty in embracing it fully. Nevertheless, he is clear: “The underlying moral principle which should inform both that personal discernment and the priest’s ministry is that a person whose situation in life is objectively contrary to moral teaching can still love and grow in the faith, he or she can still take steps in the right direction and benefit from God’s mercy and grace while receiving assistance from the Church.”
We are not permitted to claim that any situation in this life is irredeemable or that any person is lost until they die in a state of mortal sin (which is something that only God can know definitively). So we have to believe that listening to, forgiving, loving, teaching, and accompanying those who struggle can by God’s grace initiate positives steps that move them in the right direction toward a normalized relationship with God: to reconcile with loved ones, to live chastely when necessary, and to live with integrity as children of God.
Some may insist that Cardinal Wuerl leaves too much to personal judgment and conscience. I point out that his pastoral plan clearly states that “prudential judgments of individuals about their own situation do not set aside the objective moral order.” Additionally, it states, “In Catholic pastoral ministry there is an interaction of objective moral directives and the effort to live them according to one’s ability to grasp them and thus make prudential judgments.”
While it is true that every person is bound to follow his or her conscience, the conscience must be well-formed. That people often act because their conscience is either ignorant of or deadened to the divine law does not lessen our responsibility not only to teach but also to evangelize and to accompany. Indeed, the mere statement of truth is not the goal of a disciple’s mission but rather the liberation and conversion of those caught in sorrow, addiction, and sin is.
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According to the report, the settlements will be funded through the diocese’s self-insurance program, a loan, and “contributions from other religious orders, where appropriate.”
“The settlements will not come from parish or school assets, the annual diocesan appeal, donor restricted contributions, or restricted endowments, the report states.”
With all the “confession, reconciliation, and repair” going on in the Diocese of Richmond, it seems that transparency and simple honesty did not make the list. The Diocese’s “self-insurance program” is a fancy way of saying it is funded by, wait for it, the unrestricted contributions of parishioners. The “loan” will be paid, principal and interest by, wait for it, yes, that’s right, the unrestricted contributions of parishioners. Why will the payments not come from “parish or school assets, the annual diocesan appeal, donor restricted contributions, or restricted endowments”? Because these assets don’t belong to the Diocese but to the separate civil and/or canonical legal entities involved.
The Diocese’s verbal legerdemain leaves me very skeptical that it is going to “meet victim survivors with support and compassion”. If that were the case, there never would have been 50+ rape or sexual abuse victims to begin with. I have had significant experience, professional and personal, with Catholic dioceses throughout the U.S. for over 35 years on sexual abuse matters. The experience has been a bitter one, with “support and compassion” present primarily in public relations releases like the one here that are intended to manipulate the credulity and trust of the victims and anesthetize the laity into believing the problem has been solved. It hasn’t. The Catholic Church in this country is massively corrupt and has been for decades and even today is heavily infiltrated by homosexuals at all levels up to and including the highest.
Look closely at the inscription on the architrave shown in this photograph:
https://travel.sygic.com/en/poi/cathedral-of-the-sacred-heart-poi:15150519
The Gilded Age New York millionaire Thomas Fortune Ryan who built this cathedral single-handedly knew what was most important. Sadly, the interior of this magnificent building has been vandalized by Vatican II liturgical Nazi’s and bears little resemblance to its original conception and design, a paradigm of the Catholic Church in Richmond and this country, if not the world.
Charles Flynn,
Exactly. Thank you for sharing that link.
In the end, money that could have been spent on worthwhile endeavors gets spent on attempting to fix injustices that should never have happened, and in many cases, most likely did not happen. The way these things are often described, it almost sounds as though they printed the money. The bottom line is that it has to come from somewhere, and it doesn’t matter if it comes from one’s front pocket, back pocket, left pocket, or right pocket.
Yes, I agree with you that the squandering of $4 billion by U.S. Catholic bishops, let alone the ravaged lives of innumerable Catholics, victims and loved ones, is a sordid tragedy of horrendous proportions, regardless of who pays for it. The even uglier reality is that the Satanic evil that underlies it has not diminished; in fact, it has metastasized. For over 35 years I have said that stories like this will continue as long as the priesthood continues to be a safe harbor for homosexuals and other psycho-sexual deviates. Make no mistake, they make up the predominant share of priests in today’s ape-Church.