By Patrick J. Buchanan
Normally a synod of Catholic bishops does not provide fireworks
rivaling the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, where Mayor
Richard Daley’s boys in blue ran up the score on the radicals in Grant
Park.
But, on Oct. 13, there emanated from the Synod on the Family in Rome a
12-page report from a committee picked by Pope Francis himself — and
the secondary explosions have not ceased.
The report recognized the “positive aspects of civil unions and
cohabitation” and said “homosexuals have gifts and qualities to offer to
the Christian community.” As for Catholics who divorce and remarry
without an annulment, we must avoid “any language or behavior that might
make them feel discriminated against.”
Hailed by gay rights groups, the document stunned traditionalists.
“Undignified. Shameful. Completely Wrong,” said Cardinal Gerhard
Muller, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and
guardian of Catholic orthodoxy.
He was echoed by Cardinal Raymond Burke, Prefect of the Supreme
Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura. “The document lacks a solid
foundation in the Sacred Scriptures and the Magisterium,” said Cardinal
Burke. “It gives the impression of inventing … what one Synod Father
called ‘revolutionary’ teaching on marriage and the family.”
Cardinal Burke called on the pope for a restatement of Catholic
teaching on marriage and morality, saying, “It is long overdue.” The
pope has relieved Cardinal Burke of his post.
Voice of the Family, a coalition of international pro-life groups, calls the document a “betrayal.”
Irish representative Patrick Buckley said it “represents an attack on
marriage and the family” by “in effect giving tacit approval of
adulterous relationships.” The report, he adds, “fails to recognize that
homosexual inclination is objectively disordered.”
Cardinal Walter Kasper has been the prime mover of the liberalization
of Catholic teaching on sexual morality. When an African bishop
objected to the report, Kasper retorted, “You can’t speak about this
with Africans. … It’s not possible. … It’s a taboo.”
Hearing this insult, Burke went upside the head of his brother cardinal:
“It is profoundly sad and scandalous that such remarks were made by a
cardinal of the church. They are a further indication of the
determination … to advance Cardinal Kasper’s false positions, even by
means of racist remarks about a significant and highly respected part of
the Synod membership.”
In the report voted on by the full synod and released this weekend, the language most offensive to orthodox Catholics was gone.
But the synod meets again next year, and the stakes could scarcely be higher for the church and pope.
In his remarks at the synod’s close, Pope Francis mocked “so-called traditionalists” for their “hostile rigidity.”
That is one way of putting it. Another is that traditionalists
believe moral truth does not change, nor can Catholic doctrines be
altered.
Even a pope cannot do that.
Should such be attempted, the pope would be speaking heresy. And as
it is Catholic doctrine that the pope is infallible, that he cannot err
when speaking ex cathedra on faith and morals, this would imply that
Francis was not a valid pope and the chair of Peter is empty.
We would then be reading about schismatics and sedevacantists.
The Catholic Church is not the Democratic Party of Obama, Hillary and
Joe, where principled positions on abortion, homosexuality and same-sex
marriage “evolve.” And when did flexibility in matters of moral
principle become a virtue for Catholics?
Indeed, it was in defense of the indissolubility of marriage that
Pope Clement VII excommunicated Henry VIII who held the title “Defender
of the Faith” for refuting the heresies of Luther.
When Henry wished to divorce Catherine of Aragon and marry Anne
Boleyn, Pope Clement said this was not possible. His stand for marriage
caused the Catholic Church to lose England.
One wonders what this pope thinks of Pope Clement’s “rigidity.”
While Francis I has neither denied nor sought to change any doctrine,
Cardinal Burke is correct. The pope has “done a lot of harm.” He has
created confusion among the faithful and is soon going to have to speak
with clarity on the unchanging truths of Catholicism.
In his beatification of Paul VI on Sunday, Pope Francis celebrated
change. “God is not afraid of new things,” he said, “we are making every
effort to adapt ways and methods … to the changing conditions of
society.”
But among the social changes since Vatican II and Paul VI have been
the West’s embrace of no-fault divorce, limitless promiscuity, abortion
on demand and same-sex marriage.
Should the church “adapt” to these changes in society?
Should the church accommodate itself to a culture as decadent as
ours? Or should the church stand against it and speak moral truth to
cultural and political power, as the early martyrs did to Rome?
Pope Francis is hugely popular. But his worldly popularity has not
come without cost to the church he leads and the truths he is sworn to
uphold.
“Who am I to judge?” says the pope. But wasn’t that always part of the job description? And if not thee, Your Holiness, who?
On Sunday, with my latest broadside on matters Catholics filed
and published, I drove with my family up into northwestern
Connecticut — just for the drive, no particular destination in mind. We
ended up stopping for mass at a shrine near Litchfield, built in
imitation and honor of Lourdes, that I’d visited occasionally many years
earlier with my parents. The place was mostly unchanged: A big expanse
of land, gray and somewhat forbidding on a cloudy day with the trees
half-gone toward winter; a grotto where they have outdoor masses in
warmer weather; a long stations of the cross ascending a wooded hill to a
lifesize Calvary; and various gift shops and outbuildings scattered
around the grounds. One of the outbuildings doubles as a chapel, and
that’s where the All Saints Day mass was held: In a crowded, close,
carpeted space, with a mostly-gray haired congregation (we were some of
the youngest people there) dressed in suburban- Catholic casual and
packed into too-small chairs on three sides of the altar.
