It seems very clear that the rift between the more conservative elements of Bishops and the more moderate members among them has widened in the face of the controversies which have been occasioned by Pope Francis Apostolic Exhortation, Amoris Laetitia (AL) and the recent letter of Cardinal Burke and three other Cardinals asking for clarification of the teachings contained therein. Cardinal Burke has publicly threatened a formal act of correction if the Holy Father does not respond.
This open challenge to the Pope is an interesting development in the Catholic Church.
Until this Pontificate, it was unheard of for Bishops to argue in public. The Catholic Hierarchy seemed always to speak with one voice.
During the years of Pope Saint John Paul II and Benedict XVI people who did not share the same mindset as the Vatican were often censured. Yet, in the last few days, Bishops have taken to the media to spat with the Pope and each other.
The following are just a few examples of the public comments which various Church leaders have made most recently.
Cardinal Sarah of Guinea (who also heads up the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments), joined Cardinal Burke and his associates in the public criticism of Pope Francis.
Cardinal Sarah had suggested earlier this year that priests should go back to the “ad-orientum” position of saying mass. “Ad-orientum” basically means that the priest stands with his back to the people so that all face east. This was the position that priests used up until the Second Vatican in the 1960s. At the Council, the Church decided to change this so that the priest faced the people.
Cardinal Sarah, and other traditionalists, have been advocating for the reversal of this decision. Sarah suggested that the Church’s new Liturgical Year would be the best time for this to be implemented (the new Church Year happens to begin on the first Sunday of Advent).
Days after his comments, he was called in to see the Holy Father. Following that meeting, the Vatican issued a statement saying that there would be no such changes.
Earlier this week, Cardinal Sarah (who many conservatives are would like to see as the next Pope, the first from Africa) said Church teaching on sin and communion cannot change. “Not even a Pope can circumvent or alter Divine Law,” he insisted.
Just days before being made a Cardinal himself by Pope Francis), the newly appointed Archbishop of Newark, USA, Joseph Tobin, publicly said his American counterpart, Cardinal Burke, was “at best naive” when he was asked to comment on the private letter made public. Cardinal-electTobin called the incident “troublesome”.
Another American, the Archbishop of Chicago and a personal appointee of Francis who was also made a Cardinal last week, Blase Cupich, said that Catholics who have doubts about the Pope’s exhortation should seek “conversion in their lives”. A rather sharp retort, indeed.
As I noted in a previous article, retired Greek Catholic Bishop, Frangiskos Papamanolis, who is the emeritus bishop of Syros, Santorini and Crete, accused the letter-writing four of risking “schism” in the church.
The Greek Bishop said that he was “deeply concerned for the good of the Cardinals' souls” for “two very serious reasons” of “heresy” and “scandal”. In the strongest response yet, the Bishop accused the four Cardinals themselves of receiving communion “sacrilegiously” – not the divorced and remarried, as they had suggested.
On the other side of the controversy, the Auxiliary Bishop of Lublin, Józef Wróbel, came to the Cardinals’ defense earlier this week, stating that “Amoris Laetitia is not well written" and that the Cardinals “did well in asking for clarification.”
Wróbel was then joined by Kazakhstan Bishop Athanasius Schneider who stated that the Cardinals “only did their basic duty” to guard the “revelation transmitted through the Apostles” so that it might be “faithfully interpreted.” He went on to praise Cardinal Burke and the three other Cardinals for being courageous and said that they were victims of “hush-up strategies and slander campaigns”.
Schneider added, seemingly hitting back at the Greek Prelate Papamanolis, that his reaction to the four cardinals’ letter was “unusually violent and intolerant” and that “among such intolerant reactions one could read affirmations such as, for instance: the four cardinals are witless, naive, schismatic, heretical, and even comparable to the Arian heretics”. (For the record, the Arian heresy was an argument about the divine and human nature of Christ in 321AD.) Bishop Schneider's reference to this theological battle seemed overly dramatic and irrelevant to the issue being argued about in AL.
Even the Holy Father himself has entered into the public fray. Although he has offered no formal response to the four Cardinals, he has, in an interview with the Italian newspaper, Avvenire, criticized “a certain legalism” and said that some people thought issues were “black and white, even though it is in the course of life that we are called to discern”.
In the same interview, the Pope also dismissed critics who claimed he was trying to “Protestantize” the Catholic Church. Last month he traveled to Sweden to mark 500 years since the Reformation. He urged Catholic-Lutheran reconciliation while visiting in the city of Malmo. Responding to a question about this, Francis said that he “will not lose sleep” about such provocative comments.
Truly, the Pope seems not to be perturbed by critics.It is very apparent that he believes that the pastoral approach of the Catholic Church needs a make-over and he continues to shape that approach not so much by speaking and writing but by his actions and temperament.
Francis has returned again and again to the question of how the leadership in the Church behaves. He has challenged Bishops and Priests several times about their lifestyles and attitudes.
Just recently, he warned Clergy about their use of money: “Do not allow money to become your Lord,” he said. Apart from a certain Augustinian monk named Luther who raised these questions, such issues have been raised before by Early Church theologians, medieval theologians (many of them saints like Gregory Nazianzus, Gregory of Nyssa, Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Aquinas) and contempory exponents of Catholic social ethics like Leo XIII, Pius XII and Saint Pope John XXIII.
If, by writing a letter – and then making it public – Cardinal Burke believes that he and his associates could corner the Pope and get the answer they wanted, their strategy appears to be doomed to failure. It is unlikely that the Holy Father feels cornered.
However, the four Cardinals have now placed themselves in a rather difficult position. They are but four Cardinals out of 228 from 79 countries. They are not a majority by any stretch of the imagination.
It is ironic that when 12 Cardinals wrote a letter to Francis last year, which was leaked to the media, the Cardinals were most indignant and insisted on the fact that it was a private letter. They were expressing their unhappiness with the way that he decided to change the process at the Synod of bishops to allow people to speak freely. Now, it seems, it is okay for these same Cardinals to go public on a private letter to the Holy Father voicing their objections to AL.
Such petulant behavior is anything but edifying coming as it does from persons in positions of both leadership and prestige within the Church Hierarchy.
On this side of the Atlantic, Philadelphia Archbishop Charles Chaput has fired back at remarks which newly-elevated Cardinal Farrell made suggesting that Chaput's diocesan guidelines for implementing AL are causing “division.”
Archbishop Chaput stated, “I wonder if Cardinal Farrell actually read and understood the Philadelphia guidelines he seems to be questioning. The guidelines have a clear emphasis on mercy and compassion.”
Cardinal Farrell — one of Pope Francis’ most outspoken American supporters and Prefect of the newly established Congregation for Family Life — said that he disagreed with Archbishop Chaput issuing his own guidelines for Philadelphia. Cardinal Farrell insisted that implementing the Pope's exhortation should be done “in communion” with all U.S. bishops by way of the USCCB.
The center of Farrell’s criticism appears to be Chaput’s insistence that the document be interpreted, as Chaput has previously stated, “within the tradition of the Church’s teaching and life.” Archbishop Chaput’s guidelines unequivocally state that divorced and civilly remarried Catholics may not receive Holy Communion unless they “refrain from sexual intimacy.”
For Cardinal Farrell, this is problematic.
“I don't share the view of what Archbishop Chaput did, no," the Cardinal told Catholic News Service. "I think there are all kinds of different circumstances and situations that we have to look at — each case as it is presented to us,” he said. “I think that is what our Holy Father is speaking about, is when we talk about accompanying, it is not a decision that is made irrespective of the couple.”
But Chaput called Farrell’s criticism of his guidelines, as well as the fact that he issued the guidelines as a Bishop acting in his own diocese, “puzzling.”
“Why would a bishop delay interpreting and applying Amoris Laetitia for the benefit of his people? On a matter as vital as sacramental marriage, hesitation and ambiguity are neither wise nor charitable,” Chaput said.
“I think every bishop in the United States feels a special fidelity to Pope Francis as Holy Father. We live that fidelity by doing the work we were ordained to do as bishops. Under canon law — not to mention common sense — governance of a diocese belongs to the local Bishop as a successor of the apostles, not to a Conference, though Bishops' Conferences can often provide a valuable forum for discussion. As a former resident bishop, the Cardinal Farrell surely knows this, which makes his comments all the more puzzling in the light of our commitment to fraternal collegiality,” he added.
Archbishop Chaput doubled down on his key for interpreting the exhortation, stating that any implementation that contradicts not only Sacred Scripture but the Church’s previous Magisterial teaching is contrary to the mission of the Church given to her by Christ.
“Life is messy. But mercy and compassion cannot be separated from truth and remain legitimate virtues. The Church cannot contradict or circumvent Scripture and her own Magisterium without invalidating her mission. This should be obvious. The words of Jesus himself are very direct and radical on the matter of divorce,” he said.
And yet, in September, the Pope himself seemed to indicate his intentions in AL, when he wrote to the bishops of Argentina that there was “no other interpretation” of the Exhortation other than one admitting divorced and remarried Catholics to Holy Communion.
Pope Francis has clearly indicated the direction in which he wants the American church to go.
How this will play out among the American Bishops as a whole is uncertain to be sure.
For their part, the U.S. Bishops responded earlier this week by electing two staunch conservatives to the top posts in the Bishops’ Conference (USCCB).
In what was widely viewed as pushback against the Pope’s progressive agenda, the Bishops chose Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, Archbishop of Galveston-Houston and a known conservative, as president of the USCCB. Cardinal DiNardo was one of 13 Cardinals to sign a letter to Pope Francis in October 2015 raising several objections about a left-wing manipulation of the controversial Synod on Marriage and Family Life.
Elected to serve as Vice President of the Conference was another conservative, Los Angeles Archbishop José Gomez, a member of Opus Dei. Together with Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia, Archbishop Gomez was passed over by Pope Francis in the recent selection of new U.S. cardinals, despite his impressive résumé and the importance of Los Angeles as an Archdiocese.
The bickering, it seems, continues and has taken on a nasty and irreverent tone as well. To the average Catholic, this is terribly confusing and quite unseemly.
How this controversy will end is anyone’s guess at this point in time.
Let us pray to the Holy Spirit for unity and peace within the Body of Christ.
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