Not again...

So we learn that yet another senior prelate is guilty of serious sin, and of concealing it for many years.

What are we to make of it?

Whilst righteous anger is not inappropriate, it is risky...  the righteous bit, I mean.

I think a good place to start our consideration is to look into our own hearts. Have I never wilfully turned away from Christ, and broken my relationship with Him and the Father? Have I never tried to hide my sins?  Have I never sought to justify them to myself?

So casting the first stone is not, perhaps my job (though I should add, with that trivial turn of mind for which I am justly renowned, that I do rather like the story of the woman take in adultery which ends with Our Lord saying: Mother... Not you...!)

But my more serious point is Solzhenitsyn's: The line separating good and evil passes... right through every human heart. It is a bit too seductive to think in terms of us and them: Thank you, Lord, that I am not like that bishop... 

And the reason that I think that is important to consider is because it gives me a clue about what I should actually do when I read about such grave scandals.  I should strive harder for my own sanctity: pray more, do more penance, more acts of charity, and above all, cast myself at the foot of the Cross and ask the Crucified to have mercy on me, and on all sinners.

Likewise, I could consider what the Devil would most like me to do, and avoid that...

Irregular Situations

Fr Hugh OSB commented on a previous post of mine about those in irregular situations.  He wrote: But if we are being boldly honest, we have to admit that "irregular" equals "objectively sinful", and they need to repent. The good thing is that by attending Mass yet not receiving Communion (which would be poison to their souls if in mortal sin) they open themselves to hear the Word of God and its encouragement to repent.

He is of course quite correct. However, 'objectively sinful' does not necessarily mean 'in a state of mortal sin.'

So if one is divorced and 'remarried', and having marital relations in the new relationship, one is certainly in a situation that is objectively sinful. However, if one is subject to duress, for example (and that might be the duress of a partner threatening to abandon oneself and one's children - or even to harm them) then one might well not be in a state of mortal sin, for which free consent is a condition.

In which case, the damage to one's soul is less; and perseverance in attending Mass (and humility and obedience in not presenting for Holy Communion) are surely likely to be of significant spiritual benefit.

It also means, of course, that we should not assume that because someone is in an irregular situation, he or she is in a state of mortal sin. Indeed, we are expressly forbidden from making such a judgement.

Nonetheless, the Church is correct in her requirement that those living in such an irregular state of life do not present for Holy Communion, not least because of the risk of grave scandal (and there are other reasons, too, such as the problems of being judge in one's own case...)

But as I have blogged before, we should not underestimate the love and compassion of God.

Cupich's Folly

Of course, ++ Cupich doesn't really believe this: “If people come to a decision in good conscience then our job is to help them move forward and to respect that. The conscience is inviolable and we have to respect that when they make decisions, and I’ve always done that.”

If, for example, someone arrived at a decision 'in good conscience' to start a branch of the Ku Klux Klan in his diocese, and start lynching black people, and still presented for Holy Communion, I suspect he would have something to say about the matter. Or if I, in good conscience, were to seize the microphone from him in his Cathedral, and declare that I believed he was in grave error, and further made it clear that my conscience compelled me to do so every time he celebrated Mass publicly, then again, I suspect he would struggle to respect that decision and help me to move forward with it. 

One could push the argument further (and indeed many have done so); what about the paedophile or the rapist who has convinced himself that his behaviour is allowable in good conscience?  For the capacity for human self-deception is enormous, not least when one's mind and judgement are corrupted by habitual serious sin.

His argument, I imagine would be that one could not arrive at such decisions 'in good conscience.'  Which is reasonable enough. But that then begs the question about how one discerns (and who discerns) what decisions are made in good conscience - not least ones that fly in the face of the teaching of the Church which he has devoted his life (one assumes) to proclaiming and upholding.

What this kind of statement really means, in practice, is that the speaker respects decisions with which he does not fundamentally disagree. And it is a sorry story if an Archbishop does not fundamentally disagree with decisions to continue in sin.

Cardinal Kasper pontificates

OK, let's look at this...

Christopher Lamb of The Tablet has written the following, which I thought worthy of comment (my comments interpolated in red).

The Catholic Church has behaved like Pontius Pilate with regards to Catholics who are divorced and remarried, a prominent cardinal has said.

Cardinal Walter Kasper, who has called for remarried divorcees to be admitted to Communion, told the French daily Le Figaro that the Church has sought to “wash its hands of a difficult problem”.

Strangely, the Church has not sought to 'wash its hands' of this problem. That would imply a refusal to offer clear judgement, and passing the decision on to others. The Church, in fact, has clearly and consistently taught on this issue, cf (for example) Familiaris Consortio.

In an interview that was published on the same day as the Vatican released the working document for October’s Synod on the Family, the cardinal said: “if God is merciful, then the Church must be.”

Indeed: and the Church must be merciful in the same way that God is merciful. The Church follows Christ: naming sin for what it is, loving sinners, and calling them to repentance.

Cardinal Kasper explained that a lot of bishops who don’t make “much noise” have told him they are in favour of a shift in church teaching regarding the treatment of civilly remarried Catholics.

'A shift in teaching regarding the treatment of...' Weasel words. Why doesn't he say what really means, which is a shift in teaching regarding the indissolubility of marriage? 

He said the key question for the remarried divorcees receiving Communion was whether there was “grave sin”, and to clarify this, a dialogue with the individual was needed, he said.

He is correct in the first proposition: that is the key question; and the answer is yes. He is incorrect in the second proposition: no amount of dialogue can convert sin into not-sin. He is failing to distinguish between the objective and the subjective.

The cardinal added that the Church had been given the power by Christ to decide whether this was the case.

He is correct again: the Church has been given that power and has decided, in line with Christ's clear teaching. What the Church cannot do is reverse such a decision.

This has echoes with an interview the Archbishop of Accra, Charles Palmer-Buckle, gave earlier this year where he reflected on Matthew 16:19, in which Jesus says to Peter: “I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven,” and pronounces: “Whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”

“The Church can therefore loose or bind because this lawful power has been given it by Christ,” Kasper said.

And the Church has exercised that power. What Kasper and his followers want is in fact to reverse what the Church, using that power, has already decided and taught for centuries, based on the clear teachings of Christ and St Paul.

Archbishop Palmer-Buckle cited a Protestant friend who interpreted this passage to show that Christ gave them the power to unbind people in some marriages.

When they seek Protestant interpretations of the Bible to inform Catholic teaching in ways contrary to Catholic Tradition, we know they are scraping the barrel.

“I think we are going to look at what ‘the power of the keys’ could mean in this context,” the Ghanaian prelate told the Aletelia news website.

Good luck with that...

Ahead of last year’s synod Cardinal Kasper put forward proposals for admitting the divorced and remarried to Communion, and Pope Francis has praised a book the cardinal has written on mercy.

But reports of the Holy Father's support for Cardinal Kasper's proposals appear to have been greatly exaggerated. I have a feeling that ++Kasper, his fellow travellers and the Tablet will all be disappointed by the outcomes of the Synod.

--

But don't rely on that; remember SPES: Supplication and Penance for the Episcopal Synod.

The Mythology of Re-Marriage

In the run-up to part two of the Synod, I fear that I am going to have to return to this theme more than once.

So perhaps I should start this post (which is a follow-up, as promised, to this one) by stating my credentials. I am no moral theologian, or scholar of religion. However, when it comes to this topic, I do have some life experience to bring to bear. I am a sinner from early childhood, so understand something of the dynamics of sin and self-deception; and I have been married for more than thirty years, for better and for worse, and know a little about that.

But much more importantly, I have been raised in the Faith of the Church, and simply seek to pass on what I have received.

It seems to me that the movement in favour of telling divorced and re-married people that they may receive Holy Communion must rest on one or more of the following errors.

• A false understanding of mercy and compassion
• Confusion about the reality of sin
• A lack of belief in the teaching authority of the Church
• A desire to change the Church's teaching
• A belief in the necessity of erotic love

So let us address them in turn.

A false understanding of mercy and compassion. The argument is often couched in terms of mercy or compassion. That may be the underlying intention indicated by this: I see no reason why one cannot believe in the indissolubility of marriage in a doctrinal sense, but still think that it is right in practice to make allowances and bend rules for people whose lives go wrong. In fact I think this is far more Christlike than treating them as uniquely sinful.

The general drift is that we mustn't be too hard on people, because that is not kind; and we all make mistakes (or even, in more reactionary circles, 'we all fall into sin'). Therefore, we should overlook the fact that someone is divorced and remarried, in the name of mercy or compassion.

However, that is not the approach taken by Christ, who surely is our model, nor the approach taken by the Church, His Mystical Body, animated by the Holy Spirit. Rather, Christ's approach, and the Church's approach following His example and inspiration, is to call sin by its name, and to call sinners - that is all of us - to repentance.

Of course, Christ is compassionate; of course, the Church is; of course we must be. We must reach out in love to everyone.  But it is a false compassion to teach people that sin is good, and needs no repentance.

Moreover, the kindness advocated by those calling for change is very unkind, and indeed unjust, to others; not least abandoned spouses and children. It also creates a moral climate in which more people are likely to suffer abandonment in the future. It strikes me as the kind of compassion that buys the drunk another drink at the bar, rather than the tough love that would insist on walking him home...

Underlying that error is another, I think, that is at the root of the problem for many people: 

Confusion about the reality of sin. The problem here is that many of us know people who have been divorced and re-married. We know that they are not evil people. We know they are often devoted to their new families. So surely their new relationship cannot be harmful. Even if, technically, it is not legitimate, if it is based on love, and their conscience is clear, what can be wrong with that?

This view confuses two things: the subjective and the objective. About the subjective, we are forbidden from judging: indeed how can we possibly know the state of someone else's conscience? We may, charitably, assume that they are acting according to their best lights, and therefore recognise that the guilt associated with their illicit relationship may be negligible (if, for example, they truly believe that their first marriage was invalid). We are certainly forbidden from reaching a negative judgement about another's conscience.

However, the subjective does not over-ride the objective. A (hypothetical) abortionist who sincerely believes that his vocation is to help women in difficulty, and is therefore subjectively innocent, nonetheless kills an unborn child every time he performs an abortion. Further, he does himself genuine harm each time: he gives Satan a further foothold in his soul (and the macabre case of Kermit Gosnell, for example, demonstrates the cumulative impact of that, as does the willingness of other abortionists to perform the visibly evil partial-birth abortions).  The point is that sin is bad for us (and others), even if we do not fully understand that it is sin, or fully consent to it. There is an objective reality at work here.

It is distressing when even Cardinals of the Church seem to forget this truth, and say that the old language – of mortal sin, for example – was a misguided attempt to motivate the faithful (see here).

In the case of the divorced and re-married, there are several things going on at this level. One is the continuing breach of the solemn promises made at the first marriage. A second is the objective act of adultery committed each time the new union is consummated. A third is disobedience to the teaching and authority of the Church. Even where subjective guilt is minimal, these objective facts will cause harm to the person committing the sin. That is why it is a false mercy to pretend to the person that it is all right to continue to do so: in doing so, we are colluding with the individual doing great harm to himself or herself, and inevitably to others, too (for such is the nature of sin); not to mention offending God. For, and this is the really tricky bit, the teaching about re-marriage being adultery, and adultery being sinful comes straight from Christ Himself.

There is one other aspect to this. Many pastors seem to think that the issue should be left to the conscience of the individual. That is to overlook another reality: Original Sin. Part of the damage we suffer (known as concupiscence) is that we are not the best judges in our own cases: the merest self-reflection reveals how quick we are to make excuses for our own sins. It is a false compassion to allow people to delude themselves on so vital an issue.

As mentioned, persistence in believing that, though divorced and remarried, one should be free to receive Holy Communion, also demonstrates a lack of belief in the teaching authority of the Church. The Church has clearly and consistently taught that those in a state of mortal sin thereby exclude themselves from communion, until they have confessed their sin, with a firm purpose of amendment. That teaching, of course, follows logically from what has been stated above, that sin is bad for the sinner, and from St Paul's admonition. Therefore, the Church, in her maternal love, calls the sinner to repentance, just as Her Lord did. One of the reasons for the current confusion, I think, is that the Church has not been sufficiently clear about this in recent decades. For everything I argue here also applies to anyone in a habitual state of sin which he or she is not repenting of and striving to amend - such as the Catholic couple who use artificial contraception, or the priest who entertains impure thoughts or uses pornography, and so on. 

The leads us to the next error I identified: A desire to change the Church's teaching.

My instinct is that the corruption of the faithful, and possibly the clergy, at this level underpins this call for 'compassion.' It is much more comfortable to call for the 'rules' to be changed than to confront the need to submit to the change that Christ demands - and will accomplish, if we allow Him to.

However, the Church can no more change the moral law than she can change the nature of the Trinity. She can only pass on the truth entrusted to her - or fail to do so. And in the case of so many of our pastors, it is the latter we find. They fail to teach the truth, and in failing to do so, end up losing their grip on it themselves. 

And in large part, I think that is due to them succumbing to a particularly peculiar error: 

a belief in the necessity of erotic love.  This seems to underlie comments such as the suggestion that repentance followed by living “ as brother and sister” as laid down in Familiaris Consortio is ludicrous and cruel.' (here, 4th letter). We know that the deepest and truest love need not be expressed through sexual intimacy: again we have the example of Christ to follow here, as well as His Blessed Mother, countless saints through the ages, and many celibate priests, religious and lay people in our own time. But in a post-Freudian, post-sexual-revolution world, many of our bishops and priests seem to think that such a truth is unteachable. Which is an error that is visibly causing immense harm to the Church and many, many families.

--

As I mentioned at the start, I am no moral theologian, and am always open to correction if I have misunderstood or misrepresented anyone or anything in this blog, just let me know. But my fear is that my analysis is correct, and that the battle at the Synod will be damaging.

Sub tuum praesidium confugimus, Sancta Dei Genetrix.
Nostras deprecationes ne despicias in necessitatibus nostris,
sed a periculis cunctis libera nos semper,
Virgo gloriosa et benedicta.

--

Update:

See here for my additional thoughts on hard cases, and the love and compassion of God.

A Quick Reaction

In the comments box on a recent post, Savonarola (which I am strongly inclined to think an assumed and fictitious name, as the Bosher Street Beak said of Sippy's nom de guerre Leon Trotzky) has written:

I don't particularly dislike the letter, but I do disagree with its stance - like perhaps a large majority of our priests. I see no reason why one cannot believe in the indissolubility of marriage in a doctrinal sense, but still think that it is right in practice to make allowances and bend rules for people whose lives go wrong. In fact I think this is far more Christlike than treating them as uniquely sinful. If the resulting contradiction between doctrine and pastoral practice is messy and confused, so be it. We cannot expect everything in human life and seeking to follow God's ways in our lives to be neat and tidy. A mature faith so far as I can see is far more a matter of living with contradictions than it is of getting everything neatly worked out.

I think this is more coherent than the arguments in the Tablet, which I was commenting on, but no less misguided. This post  is the first of two which explain why... In this one,  I will give the brief version, and over the weekend I will write a more extensive consideration of the issues.

So, in brief:

Firstly, the idea that we can bend rules is an odd one, when the rules are Christ's.

Secondly, I think the phrase 'people whose lives go wrong' rather ducks the issues at stake. It is not a matter of a historic error or sin, but a commitment to repeated sin that is at issue here. 

Thirdly, I dispute that we are treating divorced and 're-married' people as 'uniquely sinful'. The Church insists that anyone who is guilty of unrepented mortal sin should stay away from communion; and where that is in the public domain, may enforce that to avoid the additional sin of scandal.

Fourthly, I reject the notion that denying or obscuring the objective reality of sin and its consequences is 'far more Christlike.' I see Christ doing nothing of that nature in the Gospels: quite the contrary.

Fifthly, 'A mature faith so far as I can see is far more a matter of living with contradictions,' again seems to me to duck the issue. It is not a matter of living with contradictions, but living with a commitment to sin. That has nothing to with a mature faith, as I understand it.

As I say, a longer and more considered post will follow.

From A Priest Friend

I received this comment form a priest whom I know, in response to my post about the Prodigal Son.  I thought my readers would be interested to read it in its entirety.

--The Catholic Church has no authority to deviate from the teachings of Jesus Christ who stated that divorcing and remarrying is the moral equivalent of committing adultery.

Nor does the Church have the authority to permit adultery – which is forbidden in the Ten Commandments: breaking any one of these is a mortal sin.

This teaching has been interpreted infallibly as a matter of doctrine by the Council of Trent:

“If anyone says that the Church is in error for having taught and for still teaching that…the marriage bond cannot be dissolved…and that neither of the two, not even the innocent one who has given no cause for infidelity, can contract another marriage during the lifetime of the other…Anathema sit.”

Council of Trent 24th Session: Doctrine on the sacrament of Matrimony – November 11,1563 – Canon 7: (Denzinger 1807)  

Furthermore, the Council of Trent also taught as a matter of doctrine (and not mere discipline) that if you have committed a mortal sin, you must go to confession before you can receive Holy Communion again.

 “Those whose conscience is burdened with mortal sin, no matter how contrite they may think they are, first must necessarily make a sacramental confession…If anyone presumes to teach, or preach, or obstinately maintain, or defend in public disputation the opposite of this, he shall by the very fact be excommunicated.”

Council of Trent 13th Session on the Most Holy Eucharist October 11, 1551 -  Canon 11 (Denzinger 1661) 

Of course only those Cardinals who know how to read will be influenced by these parts of the Deposit of the Faith. 

Some members of the hierarchy seem unwilling to even mention the word sin.

They appear to think that the Prodigal Son's faults consisted of Unethical Farming and Global Warming (caused by the pigs' over production of methane).

Their friends in the Green Party would have arrested Our Lord after the unfortunate incident of the Gadarene Swine.

Fear of Sin

So, pulling together the threads of recent posts, both about Fry and regular reception of Holy Communion, I think we are back to one of my old hobby horses: the fear of Sin.

There are two types of fear of Sin, the holy and the unholy.

The holy fear of sin is that fear that is mandated in the Bible and supported by a constant stream of Catholic teaching until, say, the mid 1960s.

It is the fear that we may end up, as Christ warned us, in Hell, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth; that fearful knowledge that each of us, personally, contributes to the sufferings of Christ by each and every sin we commit; that fear that, but for the Divine Mercy, Divine Justice would send us to our proper place.

Such fear is healthy: sin is the greatest evil that can befall us, and if we die in unrepentant mortal sin, then we go to Hell.

Here is what the Catechism has to say on the subject of Hell:

IV. Hell

1033 We cannot be united with God unless we freely choose to love him. But we cannot love God if we sin gravely against him, against our neighbor or against ourselves: "He who does not love remains in death. Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him." Our Lord warns us that we shall be separated from him if we fail to meet the serious needs of the poor and the little ones who are his brethren. To die in mortal sin without repenting and accepting God's merciful love means remaining separated from him for ever by our own free choice. This state of definitive self-exclusion from communion with God and the blessed is called "hell."

1034 Jesus often speaks of "Gehenna" of "the unquenchable fire" reserved for those who to the end of their lives refuse to believe and be converted, where both soul and body can be lost. Jesus solemnly proclaims that he "will send his angels, and they will gather . . . all evil doers, and throw them into the furnace of fire," and that he will pronounce the condemnation: "Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire!"

1035 The teaching of the Church affirms the existence of hell and its eternity. Immediately after death the souls of those who die in a state of mortal sin descend into hell, where they suffer the punishments of hell, "eternal fire." The chief punishment of hell is eternal separation from God, in whom alone man can possess the life and happiness for which he was created and for which he longs.

1036 The affirmations of Sacred Scripture and the teachings of the Church on the subject of hell are a call to the responsibility incumbent upon man to make use of his freedom in view of his eternal destiny. They are at the same time an urgent call to conversion: "Enter by the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is easy, that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard, that leads to life, and those who find it are few." Since we know neither the day nor the hour, we should follow the advice of the Lord and watch constantly so that, when the single course of our earthly life is completed, we may merit to enter with him into the marriage feast and be numbered among the blessed, and not, like the wicked and slothful servants, be ordered to depart into the eternal fire, into the outer darkness where "men will weep and gnash their teeth."

1037 God predestines no one to go to hell; for this, a willful turning away from God (a mortal sin) is necessary, and persistence in it until the end. In the Eucharistic liturgy and in the daily prayers of her faithful, the Church implores the mercy of God, who does not want "any to perish, but all to come to repentance":
Father, accept this offering
from your whole family.
Grant us your peace in this life,
save us from final damnation,
and count us among those you have chosen.

However, it seems to me that we have replaced that with another fear: the fear of talking about sin or Hell. That is the unholy fear to which I referred.

I think many priests and bishops, and even cardinals, are running scared on this one. I imagine that they are worried that they will lose people, and that they have listened to the secular voice that says that people don't want bad news.

The trouble is that without the bad news of sin and damnation, the Good News of the Gospel is completely meaningless, as I have pointed out before (here for example, inter alia).

What the Church truly has to offer is what our broken world is longing for at the deepest level: healing, wholeness, forgiveness and redemption. But these require a change of heart on the part of the individual: a turning away from sin. If we who are in the Church have lost that understanding, we are like salt which has lost its flavour: good for nothing and to be trampled underfoot.

The challenge is how to present all this in a hostile world. To do that, we need to be grace-filled; and we will not be grace-filled unless we regularly confront the sin within us, and beg for God's mercy and grace, through the sacramental means that Christ established for that very purpose.

A Straw God Argument

The increasingly ludicrous Stephen Fry answered a question about what he would say if he died and found that, unexpectedly, there was a God, and he was face to face with him.

He launched into what I see as a pompous and arrogant rant, accusing God of being evil for creating a world in which the innocent suffer.

He is right about one thing: the problem of suffering is one that any serious theology has to address.

But the reason I describe his ad Deum attack as a Straw God Argument is because he attacks a theology that nobody holds. It seems clear from the terms of his argument that he has no idea how scholars - mightier brains than he, though he may not recognise the fact - from Judaic and Christian backgrounds, have grappled with this; nor even how other atheists, again with more powerful and penetrating insights than his, have framed the debate. He is a bit like someone arguing against climate change who points out that we have had a very cold winter: he is rather missing the point at issue.

What is lamentable isn't so much his ignorance and arrogance, as the fact that many people seem to think that he is saying something of worth.

The other extraordinary thing is his failure of imagination. The premise of the question was that he found, after death, that he was wrong about something he is so sure of. Yet there is no sense of a need to reappraise his belief-system or even question it. Instead, he imagines telling the Almighty off as though He were an errant property mistress on a TV studio floor.

When St John, the Beloved Disciple, encountered the Risen Christ he fell on the floor as one dead (see the start of the Apocalypse). Yet Fry imagines he will tower over the Father and tell Him what's what. I hope and pray that when that day comes to pass, Fry will have more humility, and indeed more sense, and will find it in himself to ask for the mercy that we all need on that Day of Judgement.

It is not all Fry's fault, of course. He lives in an age when the Church has largely failed to proclaim the Gospel in a clear and compelling way; and in particular with regard to suffering.

At the root of the mystery of Suffering is the mystery of Freedom; and at the root of that, the mystery of Love.

God wanted to create creatures capable of love. To love is an act of the will: to choose what is good for the beloved. Thus the will must be free: a forced choice is no choice at all. Which means that freedom to love must be accompanied by the freedom not to love - and that is the root of all suffering. Moreover, since the Original Sin of our first parents, we are all damaged and have a tendency to self-love over and against the love of our neighbour. Our freedom to choose not-love means that we are able to hurt each other, and also to hurt and damage all of nature at a lower level than ourselves, to an extraordinary extent.

At the level of emotional suffering, and indeed most man-made suffering, that is clear enough. But what of the hard cases that Fry raises: the child with bone marrow cancer, for example?

This is where another truth that is under-proclaimed at present becomes important: the fact that we are under the Angels. The Angels too had freedom to choose. Lucifer chose not to love. And being of angelic power and intelligence, he can hurt and damage all of nature at a lower level than himself. That is where natural disasters and natural disease have their origins. Yet how shy we are of that truth.

But we can also say more about suffering. God is not heedless of it: indeed He took mortal flesh precisely so that He could enter into human suffering. He joins us in it, He helps us to bear it, and he helps us to find redemptive meaning in and through it.  So suffering, which is an undoubted evil, can be used for good by God and his saints: indeed, paradoxically to our mind, it is those whom the Father loves most who have the fullest cup of suffering: starting with His Son, and with Our Blessed Lady accompanying Him in His Passion, and standing at the foot of the Cross.

And finally, there is the matter of perspective. If to help a patient recover, a doctor has to cause him some pain, that counts as nothing when the patient is restored to health for the rest of his life. How much more is that the case, when we consider the fleeting nature of this earthly life against the eternity of happiness that God promises. 

None of this finally resolves the problem of Suffering; but it offers some insight. And for Fry to pontificate about God and suffering without any awareness of these considerations demonstrates the paucity of his thought on this subject.

A Church for Sinners or Saints?

I get a bit fed up, from time to time, when people respond to any reaffirmation of basic Christian teaching with a comment to the effect that we are meant to be a Church for sinners; and if we insist on such standards we will become a very small Church indeed, and one exclusively of people who think themselves better than everyone else.

I detect Screwtape's whispering behind such nonsense.

Of course the Church is a Church for sinners - apart from Our Lord and Our Lady, who else is there? Sinners are the raw material for the Church, and the substance of the Church Militant (the wot?). 

But when we look at the Church Triumphant (wot's 'e say?) what do we see? Saints, nothing but saints.

And the clue is in that intermediary stage, the Church Suffering (eh?). The Holy Souls are those who are near the end of the journey, that journey to sanctity, which is the only state in which we can inhabit Heaven.

The very fact that we rarely hear about the Church as Militant, Suffering or Triumphant is a clue to the problem. People seem to have forgotten what the Church is. It is a saint-making body. Or rather, it is a saint-making Body. It is the Person to whom we mystically unite ourselves so that we may come to share in His Divinity, Who humbled Himself to share in our humanity.

So of course it is a collection of sinners; but it is a collection of sinners who aspire to be saints.

That is, sinners seeking to be changed to conform to Christ and His Church, not seeking to change His Church to conform to us.

That is why we are called to repent, so that we may be born again in Christ, from Whom we separate ourselves each time we sin. That is why sacramental confession is so essential to the spiritual life; and the fact that it is largely ignored and forgotten is another indicator that people have lost sight of what (or more importantly, Who) the Church is.

Another of Screwtape's great deceptions is to dull our sense of sin, a  topic on which I have blogged before. Whilst I have never bugged a confessional, I would wager a substantial amount that those who confess rarely confess the kinds of 'social sin' beloved of the soi-disant reformers.

Bless me, Father, for it is twenty years since my last confession, and since then I have left the landing light on several times, failed to share my bath water on four occasions, missed numerous demos in favour of Charlie Hebdo, and bought Israeli produce. Somehow I think not...

--

Sub tuum praesidium confugimus, Sancta Dei Genetrix.
Nostras deprecationes ne despicias in necessitatibus nostris,
sed a periculis cunctis libera nos semper,
Virgo gloriosa et benedicta.

A Sense of Sin

It seems to me that, underlying Cardinal Kasper's comments, is a notion of sin that is very different from mine.

I am not, as I have observed before, a trained theologian.  So if I make any gross errors, I rely on my readers to correct me (as they have done in the past).  

So here I am thinking out loud about why I find Cardinal Kasper's approach so worrying.  If I understand him correctly, he is saying two things.  One is that many marriages many be null, due to lack of understanding. That may be the case: the Church has a process for that, so we need discuss it no further here, beyond saying that the assumption of validity unless proven otherwise is clearly an imperative of both justice and good practice.

But the other type of case to which he seems to refer is the one where a valid marriage has irretrievably broken down, and one of the spouses has set up house, and had children with, someone else. Leaving aside his unfortunate words about heroism, I want to focus on something else.

The gist of his argument seems to be that it is unreasonable to expect someone to stop living in an intimate relationship with such a partner, and that mercy demands a different solution.

The problem with that argument, as I see it, is that it ignores the damaging effect of sin.

We have it on Our Lord's authority, as well as from the witness of the Old Testament, and the authority and tradition of the Church for two millenia, that sexual relations outside marriage are a serious sin.

Clearly, in the modern situation, the culpability of individuals may be minimal. Poor teaching, social pressures and so on may combine to ensure that an individual really does not believe he or she is doing something wrong. So the conditions for mortal sin may not be met.

However, we cannot simply say that there is therefore no problem.  We believe that sin damages people - by its very nature. 

One may in all innocence drink poison mistaking it for water - and be wholly innocent of the crime of self-harm.  Yet one will still be sick or die.  Subjective innocence does not protect us from all the harmful effects of objective sin.

So Cardinal Kasper may think that the kind thing to do is to accept people in their real situations; but the Church has never taught that. Following Christ, we preach the reality of sin, and the necessity of repentance and conversion.

That is one reason why Cardinal Kasper's proposals are so dangerous: they risk teaching people (who already have a natural interest in self-deception) the lie that their objective sin is, in fact, harmless.  We know that not to be the case, and in all charity to those in such situations, we are called to bear witness to that truth.

And that is without even starting to consider all the other harms Cardinal Kasper's proposals will inevitably lead to: injustices to spouses, to children, and not least to those who have obeyed what, heretofore, everyone knew the teaching of the Church to be.

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I am tempted to say that this fear of considering the reality of personal sin is typical of many in the Church of today.  But unless we acknowledge the reality of sin, and the fact that it destroys us, we can have no need of a Saviour. And if we have no need of a Saviour, the Catholic Church is nothing more than a deluded do-gooding social club.  That is not what I believe.

Slippery Slopes

Whenever 'liberalising' laws are passed, or campaigns are pursued, and backwards folk like me point out the possible next steps and consequences, we are accused of a fallacious 'slippery slope' argument.

So it was with interest that I read Johamn Hari's piece in the Guardian online which is the start of a campaign to break the 'taboo' against incest.

I remember back when Section 28 was being debated, I thought it was probably unnecessary.  After all, we were assured, nobody would want to promote homosexuality in the classroom: this was simply the stuff of bigotry.  Yet what followed? 

When the Civil Partnership legislation was proposed, we were told that nobody would then campaign for same sex 'marriage'.  Yet what followed?

So incest (along with polyamory and all manner of other 'taboos') will soon be found to be acceptable to all but old bigots like me…

Sub tuum praesidium confugimus, Sancta Dei Genetrix.
Nostras deprecationes ne despicias in necessitatibus nostris,
sed a periculis cunctis libera nos semper,
Virgo gloriosa et benedicta.

It's not working: let's do more of the same...

I was interested to read this article on anti-bullying programmes at MercatorNet.  I don't know enough about the background and the research to come to an informed view, but the thesis resonated with me.  As did Izzy Kalman's interesting analysis… done some years ago, about why anti-bullying programmes might not have the desired results.

To take the second point first, Kalman suggests that actions have consequences; and frequently they have unintended consequences, which undermine the outcomes intended by those taking the actions.  This is classic open systems stuff, about which I have blogged more than once (follow the label).

But the Mercator.net article caught my attention because of the phenomenon of research demonstrating that something isn't working - and the researchers concluding that we should therefore do more of it, to get the intended result.

That isn't necessarily an incorrect conclusion, but it is certainly open to question. Consider a drug such as aspirin: if one tablet doesn't stop a headache, a second tablet may be advisable; but not another twenty.  We really need to understand a little more about why it is not working to discover whether an increased dosage is the right solution.

But this finding and conclusion is of course identical with those relating to sex education for children.  And I suspect there is something else going on here.  

I am not, for a moment, impugning the academic integrity of the researchers; but I do think that Lewis' observation, which I have quoted before, comes into play:

It is therefore useless to appeal to experience before we have settled, as well as we can, the philosophical question.

So it seems to me that the researchers, understandably enough, start with a philosophical assumption in favour of education.

However, when interrogated, that assumption reveals its flaws. For the assumption at root is that bad behaviour (in this case bullying; in the other, sexual irresponsibility) is caused by ignorance. 

However, we know that ignorance is only one of the causes of sin. Therefore to seek to address all sinful behaviour by education alone is a flawed strategy.

I would go further, and say that in some arenas (certainly sexuality, and quite possibly bullying) education - in the form that is meant here, at any rate, is more likely to exacerbate the problem than to solve it. 

What is really needed on the supernatural level is grace; and on the natural level, character, which is formed by the practice of the virtues. Of course education has a role there too, but in a rather different sense.