Not So Soon!

Terrifying! The headline on AP’s article by Nicole Winfield was reinforced by “unsourced speculation” that Pope Francis might be getting ready to resign. Visiting Pope Celestine V’s tomb (he resigned in 1294), appointing enough new cardinals to have a majority in the college, planning a briefing for ALL cardinals on the rules he just issued for the Curia, and having trouble getting around – is he done? Well, he can smile from a wheelchair!

Not exactly “unsourced.” Winfield mentions Robert Mickens, whose June 3 “Letter from Rome” careens wildly around the new cardinals and the timing set up for their meetings. But he concludes: “It may also be the occasion and forum for Francis to make an important announcement about the future of his pontificate and when the cardinal-electors will have to exercise the one function reserved to them alone — elect the Bishop of Rome.”

I am not going to “scamper through three thumping great tomes,” as Brendan Walsh introduces a book review in this week’s Tablet. I will focus, however, on three serious articles I have read this week which will illustrate, I hope, how important the selection of Francis’s successor is to the movement for women’s ordination. Not to suggest, of course, that either Winfield or Mickens are not serious. But consider the theology of it all!

You know in your gut and heart about what it was like before Pope Francis. Not that he’s perfect or solved all the problems.  But where we are now is really different.

Two of these articles are interviews with theologians presenting at a conference in May on moral theology and Amoris Laetitia [AL] at the Pontifical Gregorian University, which I would have dismissed ten years ago. Gerard O’Connell in America does us a great service by talking with them now, before the talks can be published. [Think of service later in this blog.]

Lisa Sowle Cahill of Boston College starts me off by saying “what the church in the past tended to look at was irregularity or sin or what is not acceptable. Amoris Laetitia,” [in contrast] “is about authentic faithfulness, courage, perseverance, real fidelity and authenticity that is still present in families.” And in lots of other people, I’d note; AL is the Pope’s response following the synod on the family.

Cahill addresses an area that was controversial at the time of some of those synods, LGBTQ individuals and families: “It’s not that the church must reach out; they are here… [there has] “sometimes been the assumption, maybe even of Pope Francis in Amoris Laetitia, that all these families are very oppressed by the teachings of the church.” She suggests that’s not true for youth, now: “But what you see in many countries…is an alienation of the younger generations. They are not really in pain because they are disregarding what the church has to say…so unfortunate.”

I quote that because it’s an example of a moral theologian recognizing what’s actually happening. I do not see her abandoning “a moral and value framework with which to encounter the cultures that they live in” [but] “this doesn’t mean that we need to go back to pre-Vatican II Catholic sexual teaching, or even to Vatican II-era moral teaching. Rather, what we need today is a sensible and Christian perspective on relationships that is viable in the world in which we live.”

Cahill says Francis “takes the idea from Aquinas that all moral knowledge is practical knowledge and that it always arises in a context…And so, in Chapter 8, he quotes Aquinas in saying that if you can have knowledge of a rule or knowledge of a practical reality, it’s the knowledge of the practical reality that is more important than the knowledge of the rule in terms of making a correct discernment, an authentic discernment, of what is required in a situation.”

Cahill notes that some saw “nothing new” in AL, and others saw it as something to be resisted. Rather, it’s “much deeper” and “more radical.” She hopes that “both sides will try to create the kind space [emphasis added, not kind of space] that we don’t have now, which is the space of dialogue, and to realize that theology is not trying to be the magisterium,” O’Connell writes. “We don’t see our own views as final and never beyond revision.”  She wants to avoid polarization, especially in light of other views of “norms around family and gender” in the global church. Francis “has a very daunting task making a huge move forward without tipping the boat he’s steering too far to one side or the other and without throwing people overboard.” Remember us in the water!

Julio Martinez, S.J., spoke at the same conference. He’s been a professor of moral theology at Comillas Pontifical University in Madrid and at the Gregorian University in Rome, so what do I expect? Not what I get. In his address, he recognized “it is more comfortable and apparently safer to repeat the paths inherited from the past, ignoring the questions, contradictions, and searches of the present. What good is all this if we are not able to transmit light and hope to the problems and sufferings that shake the men and women of our day?” Also rocking the moral theology boat!

Martinez speaks of discernment; to him, Francis’s understanding is rooted in the Ignatian tradition, and in the Second Vatican Council, especially in Gaudium et Spes (1965), on the church in the modern world. Martinez says we need to “recover that approach,” and O’Connell quotes him, “without getting lost in the meanders [emphasis added] of Veritatis Splendor.” This 1993 encyclical of John Paul II is a problem for Martinez, as is Humanae Vitae, the 1968 birth control encyclical of Paul VI. He suggests that both tied moral theology in knots because they removed context and discernment from decision-making.

I found especially illuminating his contrast of discernment in personal matters with its use in social matters. Martinez tells O’Connell, “‘At first, there was not the same kind of resistance to social questions. But, eventually, resistance also emerged in social moral matters,’ he said, citing two instances. First ‘when the American church in the 1980s implemented a method of participation through dialogues and encounters to deal with the questions relating to peace (1983) and economic justice (1986),’ he said, ‘the Vatican considered this matter to be problematic at the time.’ Second, he recalled, ‘John Paul II decided to issue Veritatis Splendor, to set order in the field of Catholic moral theology.” I didn’t know about the negativity about the first; the second was problematic for me!

I quote this entire paragraph as O’Connell writes it:

Veritatis Splendor introduced “a very profound development in moral theology with the introduction of the concept we call intrinsic evil,” he said. “This is a controversial philosophical concept that brought serious difficulties for moral theology in the development of the path of dialogue and discernment; which is the way to put into action a mature and well-formed conscience.” Furthermore, Veritatis Splendor had a profound impact on the church, by insisting the role of the magisterium included “teaching morals in a very precise and very clear way,” he said. And although it gives importance to conscience, which is “the proximate norm of personal morality,” he said, quoting from the encyclical, “it ends by understanding conscience somewhat as an instance of the person who has to know what the magisterium says and to implement this in his or her life.”

Martinez calls “this move as “a hypertrophy [O’C: an excessive development] of the magisterium in the field of moral theology,” and I love it! The movement for women’s ordination was condemned in a similar hypertrophy. Martinez says AL “will allow us to untie the knots [especially] those that come from within the church itself…it is very important to deal with the issues that really need to be addressed, without spending energy on internal discussions or maneuvers that lead to clashes or disqualifications.”

I cheer, and transition quickly to the third article, which deals with both of those. Austen Ivereigh is a journalist, not a theologian, but he spoke in May to the Union of [male] Superiors General [USG], and NCR published a condensed version this week. It’s an analysis of those “clashes” and “disqualifications” under the two Popes previous to Francis. He wrote of a 2003 article by a former head of the USG, Camilo Maccise, a Chilean Discalced Carmelite, whose article is about “violence of a moral and psychological character…I have had had intimate knowledge of this violence, above all as exercised by a number of Roman dicasteries.” He describes that violence as centralism, authoritarianism and dogmatism, Ivereigh summarizes, and then he defines: “Violence, after all, involves coercion — physical, moral, psychological — to impose one’s will. Jesus came to free us from slavery and oppression and built his church on love of God and neighbor. Authority in the church is service [emphasis added]: ministerium, not potestas. It is incompatible with violence.” I will keep this to respond to those who see women’s ordination as a quest for power!

Ivereigh goes on to describe the origin and impact of Francis’ new constitution for the Roman Curia, Praedicate Evangelium. “It is a reform aimed at nothing less than a conversion of the way power is exercised in and from Rome, and by extension in the global Catholic Church,” Ivereigh says. “Catholics are learning to live in a polyhydric synodal church that listens, dialogues and holds together differences in tension in expectation of resolution by discernment. Authority is still in charge, but takes decisions after many have been involved in their making.” Oh, yes, I hope we are!

And I hope Francis does not resign before removing some of the violent disqualifications from a previous era that still linger to harm our hearts and souls and ministries. There is still plenty to do.