È uscito di recente
Oltre Atlantico il numero, in inglese, della rivista Communio, dedicato
monograficamente al tema Marriage: Theological and Pastoral Considerations, in cui vi
sono una serie di contributi di illustri prelati, vescovi e teologi che, con
argomentazioni pregnanti, si oppongono a quello che ormai noto come “teorema
Kasper”. Riproduciamo l’Introduzione a questi saggi con una sintesi
degli stessi:
Introduction: Marriage
In view of the upcoming Extraordinary Meeting of the
Synod of Bishops addressing the theme of “Pastoral Challenges to the Family in
the Context of Evangelization,” the present issue of Communio focuses on the questions of the nature
and pastoral care of marriage and the family.
Cardinal Angelo Scola, in “Marriage and the Family Between Anthropology and the Eucharist:
Comments in View of the Extraordinary Assembly of the Synod of Bishops on the
Family,” explains the need for an adequate anthropology when addressing the
reality of marriage. He writes that such an anthropology is directly connected
to the gospel of the family, which in turn is fertile ground for an
understanding of the profound connection between the sacraments of marriage and
the Eucharist, the development of which the Church has cared for throughout its
history. These two sacraments, the Cardinal says, are intrinsically related in
and through the nuptial dimension of love, a mystery only perceivable within a
true anthropology of the human being. In addressing the recent pastoral
concerns about the predicament of married and divorced people within the
Church, the Cardinal first asks us to keep in mind that the eucharistic
sacrifice quite simply is the definitive condition within which matrimonial
consent exists, and second suggests that the bishop be given a greater direct
interest in pastoral issues involving individual marriages.
In his article, “Marriage and the Family Within the Sacramentality
of the Church: Challenges and Perspectives,” Cardinal Marc Ouellet explores
and gives a theological basis for a renewal of the pastoral care of the family.
Christian spouses receive a real participation in Christ’s love for the Church
and are intimately associated with the permanent sacramental celebration of
this nuptial mystery, the Eucharist. The Cardinal explores the wide reach of
non-sacramental mercy while clarifying the sacramental reason for the Church’s
discipline regarding civilly divorced and remarried Catholics. The latter’s
abstention from Holy Communion is a witness to Christ’s indestructible Covenant
and an acknowledgment of God’s mercy, which remains active in their lives. The
truth of the Covenant is a source of healing and pastoral renewal, which places
the family at the heart of the Church’s mission.
José Granados, DCJM, in “The Sacramental Character of Faith: Consequences for the Question
of the Relation Between Faith and Marriage,” argues that faith and sacraments
are connected, not only because the sacraments are sacraments of faith, but
also because faith has a sacramental structure. This perspective, which
enriches our understanding of the act of faith, sheds light also on the role of
faith in the celebration of marriage. The comparison between sacrament and
faith helps us to see that the faith has a strict relation too, both with the
original, creaturely experience of man and woman, and with their membership in
the Body of Christ in the Church. Three elements appear necessary, then, in
order to explain the role of faith within matrimonial consent: the acceptance
of the creaturely truth of marriage, baptism as incorporation in the spousal
body of Christ and the Church, and the free acceptance of this fact of
belonging to the Church’s faith, expressed in the acceptance of the canonical
form. In keeping with the essence of matrimonial consent, the pastoral approach
will take care to insist on the truth of human love as a journey of initiation
into the faith, and to reinforce the ecclesial membership of the bride and
groom (as opposed to the modern privatization of marriage), assuring them above
all of follow-up pastoral care in their first years of marriage.
Antonio López, FSCB, reflects on the question, “Marriage’s Indissolubility: An Untenable
Promise?” In it, he explores the nature of indissolubility while recognizing
the many challenges married couples face in his article. Whereas an
understanding of the person as self-originating freedom sustains the prevalent
view of marriage as a negotiable contract, “only an anthropology informed by
the gift-character of man’s ... being can adequately account for marriage as
an indissoluble union.” As a sacrament, married love discovers its source and
fulfillment, for “spouses are given the grace to love ... with the
unconditional, gratuitous love of Christ.” Affirming through sacrifice the
truth of their vocation to marriage and thus welcoming each other anew, spouses
allow their indissoluble communion to be a sign of God’s enduring mercy in the
world.
In “The Merciful Gift of Indissolubility and the Question of Pastoral
Care for Civilly Divorced and Remarried Catholics,” Nicholas J. Healy, Jr., reflects on the proposal of Cardinal Walter
Kasper to allow civilly divorced and remarried Catholics to receive the
Eucharist. After recalling the recent history of this question, Healy
summarizes Kasper’s arguments as set forth in his address to the Extraordinary
Consistory in February of 2014. Interpreting John Paul II’s account of
indissolubility as “grounded in the personal and total self-giving of the
spouses” (Familiaris consortio,
20), Healy suggests that Kasper’s proposal fails to consider adequately the
sacramental bond itself as an abiding source of forgiveness and mercy.
D.C. Schindler, in his article, “The Crisis of Marriage as a Crisis of Meaning: On the
Sterility of the Modern Will,” proposes that one of the root causes of the
crisis of marriage today is an impoverishment in our sense of the will. In the
modern conception of freedom, the will is essentially a power to choose, which,
as a power, retains a certain sovereignty over its object even in the choices
it has made. As a contrast to this, the essay presents the classical view of
freedom, each act of which is a choice of the good and so analogously a form of
self-giving love. Marriage is thus interpreted as the perfect freedom that is
essentially generative of a bond that unites spouses beyond the apparent limits
of their individual existence.
In “‘What God Has Conjoined, Let No Man Put Asunder’:
A Meditation on Fruitfulness, Fidelity, and the Conjugal Embrace,” Adrian J. Walker offers
a meditation on the conjugal embrace, its signification for marriage, and why
contraception already separates the spouses from God, and therefore from each
other. Because the body is saturated with “living soul,” the conjugal act—which
only truly exists with its twin ends of fruitfulness and fidelity intact—is a
symbol both of the spouses’ love for each other, and of their marital bond that
is constituted in the love of God. Sexual union that is not open to both
fidelity and fruitfulness, argues Walker, drives a wedge of divorce into the
very heart of the relationship between the spouses.
David S. Crawford approaches the topic of “Gay Marriage, Public Reason,
and the Common Good” from a new direction. He does not ask how “gay marriage”
might affect the common good, but rather how our assumptions about the common
good give rise to a form of both public reason and sexuality whose clearest
expression in fact occurs in “gay marriage.” He argues that our cultural
re-conception of the common good has made the Catholic understanding of
marriage and the family not only largely unintelligible but has replaced it
with a paradigm for marital and sexual love that is already universally “gay.”
Fabrizio Meroni, PIME, in his “Pastoral Care of Marriage: Affirming the Unity of Mercy and
Truth,” argues that the mission of the Church is pastoral because of her divine
motherhood: the Bride of Christ, pregnant of the Holy Spirit, conceives, gives
birth, and nurtures the children she receives gratuitously from God. Marriage
can never be simply one among many objects of her pastoral care. Insofar as
life in the family of God is the reason for her creation and for her existence
in the Cross as Christ’s Spouse, marriage as such becomes the real subject,
foundation, and active structure of any serious and true pastoral work of the
ecclesial community. Pastoral activity should be molded and structured upon
marriage and family since the gift of full life needs to be shared in an
essentially personal way. The future of humanity and of the Church thus passes
through the family founded on man and woman’s indissoluble and fruitful
marriage.
In Retrieving the Tradition, we
offer John Paul II’s address
from 1982 on “God’s Gift of Life and Love: On Marriage and the Eucharist.” The
pope unfolds the intrinsic sacramental relation between the Eucharist and
Christian marriage. God’s Covenant with mankind, culminating in Christ’s
self-gift to the Church, draws humanity into communion with the Trinity. The
Eucharist, which makes this supreme gift accessible to us, is “intimately
bound” to the conjugal covenant; for in the spouses’ love, transformed by the
“gift of God,” the new Covenant itself is accomplished. Through a paschal
journey of conversion and growth, Christian marriage builds up the Church and
becomes a sign to the world of the new and eternal Covenant that dwells in it.
Also in Retrieving the Tradition, we
recall the renowned patristic scholar Henri Crouzel, SJ’s
article, “Divorce and Remarriage in the Early Church: Some Reflections on
Historical Methodology.” In this article, written in 1977, Crouzel examines the
interpretive principles, hypotheses, and habits of method informing
contemporary theologians’ attempts to ground a revision of the Church’s
practice regarding divorce and remarriage in the early Christian tradition.
Offering ample textual evidence from the Fathers, including discussions of the
most commonly cited texts of Origen and Basil, Crouzel demonstrates that the
patristic evidence, when read according to the criteria of adequate historical
method, does not support such argumentation. As is evident from the text,
Crouzel’s article is by no means an apology for the tradition, but rather a
forceful argument for the integrity of historical research.
Finally, we print David L. Schindler’s
Eulogy for Stratford Caldecott, delivered at St. Aloysius Church, the Oxford
Oratory, on 31 July 2014, the feast day of St. Ignatius of Loyola. Caldecott, a
longtime Board Member of the American Communio and dear friend of its editors,
and well-known to all of its readers, passed away on 17 July, after a
protracted struggle with cancer. Requiescat
in Pace.
—The Editors
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