Francis’ Patient Revolution
There was no agreement at the synod on homosexuality and divorce, but in the end it will be the pope who decides. And he already has in mind the changes he wants to introduce, or rather is already putting them into practice. A commentary by Paul Anthony McGavin
by Sandro Magister
ROME, October 24, 2014 – It is not true that Francis was silent during the two weeks of the synod. In the morning homilies at Saint Martha’s, he hammered away every day at the zealots of tradition, those who load unbearable burdens onto men, those who have only certainties and no doubts, the same against whom he lashed out in the farewell address with the synod fathers.
He is anything but impartial, this pope. He wanted the synod to orient the Catholic hierarchy toward a new vision of divorce and homosexuality, and he has succeeded, in spite of the scanty number of votes in favor of the change of course, after two weeks of fiery discussion.
In any case, he will be the one who ultimately decides, he reminded the cardinals and bishops who may have had any doubts. In order to refresh their memory on his “supreme, full, immediate, and universal” power, he brought to the field not a handful of refined passages from “Lumen Gentium,” but the rock-solid canons of the code of canon law.
On communion for the divorced and remarried, it is already known how the pope thinks. As archbishop of Buenos Aires, he authorized the “curas villeros,” the priests sent to the peripheries, to give communion to all, although four fifths of the couples were not even married. And as pope, by telephone or letter he is not afraid of encouraging some of the faithful who have remarried to receive communion without worrying about it, right away, even without those “penitential paths under the guidance of the diocesan bishop” projected by some at the synod, and without issuing any denials when the news of his actions comes out.
This is one of the ways in which Jorge Mario Bergoglio exercises his absolute powers as head of the Church. And when he pushes the whole of the Catholic hierarchy to follow him on this road, he knows very well that communion for the divorced and remarried, numerically insignificant, is the loophole for a much more generalized and radical sea change, toward that “second possibility of marriage,” with the consequent dissolution of the first, which is admitted in the Eastern Orthodox Churches and which he, Francis, just shortly after his election as pope said “must be studied” in the Catholic Church as well, “in the context of pastoral care for marriage.”
It was in July of 2013 that the pope made these intentions public. But in that same interview on the plane back from Brazil he opened a construction site on the terrain of homosexuality as well, with that memorable “who am I to judge?” universally interpreted as an absolution of actions that have always been condemned by the Church but no longer are, if they are committed by someone who is “seeking the Lord and has good will.”
A turning point on this matter did not have an easy time at the synod. It was invoked in the assembly by no more than three fathers: by Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, by the Jesuit Antonio Spadaro, director of "La Civiltà Cattolica," and by the Malaysian archbishop John Ha Tiong Hock.
Hock supported himself with a parallel drawn by Pope Francis between the Church’s judgment on slavery and that on the conception that the man of today has of himself, to say that just as the first changed so also the second judgment can mutate.
While Fr. Spadaro brought up the pope’s example of a girl adopted by two women to maintain that these situations must be treated in a new and positive way.
Then, for having inserted into the mid-discussion working document three paragraphs encouraging the “affective growth” between two men or two women “integrating the sexual dimension,” Archbishop Bruno Forte, brought in as special secretary of the synod at the pope’s behest, was publicly disowned by the cardinal relator, the Hungarian Péter Erdõ. And the subsequent discussion among the synod fathers ripped the three paragraphs to shreds, which in the final “Relatio” were reduced to just one without anything new in it, not even reaching a quorum of approval.
But here as well Francis and his lieutenants, from Forte to Spadaro to Argentine archbishop Víctor Manuel Fernández, have hit their target of getting this explosive issue onto the agenda of the Catholic Church, at the highest levels. The result remains to be seen.
Because this is how Bergoglio’s revolution proceeds, “long-term, without obsession over immediate results.” Because “the important thing is to initiate processes rather than possess spaces.” Words from “Evangelii Gaudium,” the program of his pontificate.
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This commentary was published in "L'Espresso" no. 43 of 2014, on newsstands as of October 24, on the opinion page entitled "Settimo cielo" entrusted to Sandro Magister.
Here is the index of all the previous commentaries:
> "L'Espresso" in seventh heaven__________
Francis’ closing address for the synod, with the reaffirmation of his absolute powers as head of the Church:
> Discorso del Santo PadreThe complete text of the final "Relatio":
> Relatio SynodiAnd that of the "Relatio" produced halfway through the discussion:
> Relatio post disceptationemThe address in the assembly by the director of “La Civiltà Cattolica”:
> Intervento di p. Antonio Spadaro S.I.The contented assessment of the synod expressed in the Argentine newspaper “La Nación” by Archbishop Víctor Manuel Fernández, the pope’s closest friend and confidant:
> "El Papa espera más apertura de los obispos"To a question from the interviewer, Elisabetta Piqué, on the “disappointing” final paragraph on homosexuality, Fernández replied:
“The fact that this brief paragraph did not gain a two-thirds consensus is not explained only by a negative vote of the conservative sectors, but also by a negative vote of some bishops most sensitive to this issue, who were not satisfied by the little that was said. [...] Probably there was a lack of will to say, with Pope Francis: 'Who are we to judge the gays?' But many things could mature better with time, because this was only one first stage of exploration.”
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One confirmation that the work has by no means stopped at the construction site opened by the synod comes from the profusion of commentaries on it. Many of which already seem to be looking to the second and final session, in October of 2015.
Among the most original commentaries is one by Fr. Paul Anthony McGavin, an Australian theologian whom the readers of www.chiesa have had the opportunity to appreciate through a couple of previous contributions.
McGavin is not a “fan” of pope Bergoglio, whom he has not spared from criticism. But he fully shares the manner in which this pope considers the tradition of the Church as a living organism, not fixed once and for all, and acts accordingly.
The following is a passage from the commentary by the Australian theologian.
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TO DEFEND WHAT POPE FRANCIS IS DOING
by Paul Anthony McGavin[…] It might surprise readers who tend toward a fixed-tradition position to hear me say that personally I am not attracted to the present Holy Father.
I think he needs to step out of his Latin American emotivism. I think he needs to step out of his Jesuit authoritarianism. There are things in his first sole-authored major writing as Pope, "Evangelii gaudium", that I think are unsustainable.
Yet, as I wrote in my critical appreciation of that Apostolic Exhortation, Jorge Bergoglio in important respects brings an acute and essential methodology to the problems of the Church in our era.
This methodological perspective involves a critical approach to the manners of thinking that the Pope in his Closing Synod Address names as “do-gooders” and “progressives and liberals”.
It also involves critical approach to the manners of thinking that he names as “traditionalists” or who name themselves as “traditionalists”.
It is not a "via media" of compromise that is commended. It is a dialogue in truth that is needed, and a dialogue that comprehends how differing syntaxes in thought, differing cultures in thought, differing contexts in thought may be made and can be made integral to the tradition that derives from the past: the “unchanging Gospel”. […]
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The complete text of the commentary by Paul Anthony McGavin can be found on this other page of www.chiesa:
> Discerning the Bergoglio mission to revivify Catholic tradition__________
English translation by
Matthew Sherry, Ballwin, Missouri, U.S.A.
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For more news and commentary, see the blog that Sandro Magister maintains, available only in Italian:
> SETTIMO CIELO
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24.10.2014
