And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the new wine will burst the skins; the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, new wine must be poured into new wineskins. And no one after drinking old wine wants the new, for they say, ‘The old is better.’
(Luke 5:37-39)
The Church of my youth, of my seminary and Priestly formation, was the Church modeled on the vision of the perfect society, which Pope Leo XIII applied to the Church in his Encyclical, Immortale Dei.
In the document, he writes: “The Church is a perfect society of its own kind and their own right, since in and of itself it everything for their existence and their effectiveness is necessary, in accordance with the will and power of the Grace of their Founder. As the goal of the Church is more sublime, its power is always far superior, and it can therefore not be considered less than the Civil state, as to not be in a state of subordination.”
The perfect society Church was a neat, divinely inspired, order of authority established within the distinct responsibilities and obligations from the Supreme Apostolic Office of the Papacy down through the ranks of those in Sacred Orders (Cardinals, Bishops, Priests), to those in Religious Life (Consecrated men and women) to the laity (on the low side of the hierarchical pyramid).
In keeping with the Biblical metaphor, this was the Church of the old wineskin, my Church.
Now comes a Pope who clearly rejects the notion of the Church as a perfect society and proclaims a new model (a new wineskin): a field hospital!
In his Apostolic Exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium, Francis writes: 'Frequently, we act as arbiters of grace rather than its facilitators. But the Church is not a tollhouse; it is the house of the Father, where there is a place for everyone, with all their problems.'
More recently in Amoris Laetitia, he repeats the image of the field hospital and complements it with other images: “The Church must accompany with attention and care the weakest of her children, who show signs of a wounded and troubled love, by restoring in them hope and confidence, like the beacon of a lighthouse in a port or a torch carried among the people to enlighten those who have lost their way or who are in the midst of a storm”.
The Holy Father then goes on to insist that mercy must be the hallmark of all we say and do: “Mercy is the very foundation of the Church's life. All of her pastoral activity should be caught up in the tenderness which she shows to believers; nothing in her preaching and her witness to the world can be lacking in mercy."
And so it is that many find themselves caught in the tensions of what Jesus spoke about in images of old wineskins and new wine.
There can be no mistaking the depth and width of the chasm between Pope Francis and some Bishops who waged the culture wars in times past as Pope John Paul's most loyal storm troopers.
This is now playing out in Rome and will be an ongoing tension in the Church for at least another generation or two. In speaking to those Bishops, Pope Francis said. “I know that you face many challenges and that the field in which you sow is unyielding, and that there is always the temptation to give in to fear, to lick one's wounds, to think back on bygone times and to devise harsh responses to fierce opposition. And yet we are promoters of the culture of encounter. We are living sacraments of the embrace between God's riches and our poverty. We are witnesses of the abasement and the condescension of God who anticipates in love our every response. For this, harsh and divisive language does not befit the tongue of a pastor, it has no place in his heart; although it may momentarily seem to win the day, only the enduring allure of goodness and love remains truly convincing."
New wine into old wineskins, indeed!
Four Cardinals who were in the peak of their powers during the previous two Pontificates took the unprecedented step of publishing their concerns about Pope Francis’ teachings and pointing out that some of the things being said by Francis are irreconcilable or at least inconsistent with previous clear statements by Pope John Paul II.
Cardinals Brandmuller (who previously chaired the Pontifical Committee of Historical Sciences), Burke (who previously headed the Church's supreme court), Caffarra, Archbishop of Bologna, and Meisner, Archbishop of Cologne think Francis is seriously in error when he teaches about mercy and justice, right and wrong, and the place of conscience.
In 1993, in his Encyclical, Veritatis Splendor,
Pope John Paul II stipulated one and only one way of moral reasoning in the Catholic tradition. But this way had strong appeal for the present dissentients.
Pope Francis does not even refer to Veritatis Splendor.
Yet, invoking that Encyclical, the four Cardinals insist that there are absolute moral norms which prohibit intrinsically evil acts which are binding without exception. Circumstances and intention cannot transform these acts. There are objective situations of grave habitual sin. They are insistent that Veritatis Splendor both excludes a creative interpretation of the role of conscience and emphasises that conscience can never be authorised to legitimate exceptions to moral norms that prohibit intrinsically evil acts.
Old wineskins, to be sure!
Francis has an altogether different approach in his Apostolic Exhortation, Amoris Laetitia, in which he states: “Individual conscience needs to be better incorporated into the Church's praxis ... Naturally, every effort should be made to encourage the development of an enlightened conscience, formed and guided by the responsible and serious discernment of one's pastor, and to encourage an ever greater trust in God's grace. Yet conscience can do more than recognize that a given situation does not correspond objectively to the overall demands of the Gospel. It can also recognize with sincerity and honesty what for now is the most generous response which can be given to God, and come to see with a certain moral security that it is what God himself is asking amid the concrete complexity of one's limits, while yet not fully the objective ideal."
New wine, most definitely!
Still, the old wineskins insist John Paul's statement is contained in an Encyclical, while Francis's plea is only in an Apostolic Exhortation, as though the import of Francis' is somehow circumscribed by the literary form in which it was proclaimed.
The fact is Pope Francis has created a chasm with this "new wine". And the dissenting Cardinals have highlighted how deep and wide that chasm is.
This tension opens new possibilities and new risks for those wanting to show mercy and love to those who most need it.
Francis says that a person can be living in God's grace while 'in an objective situation of sin', and that the Sacraments, including the Eucharist might help, because the Eucharist 'is not a prize for the perfect, but a powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak'.
How am I, an old wineskin, reacting to this new wine? More in Part II tomorrow.
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