“We cannot do anything against the truth,
but only for the truth” (2 Cor. 13: 8)
A Prophetic Voice of Four Cardinals of the
Holy Roman Catholic Church
Out of “deep pastoral concern,” four
Cardinals of the Holy Roman Catholic Church, His Eminence Joachim Meisner,
Archbishop emeritus of Cologne (Germany), His Eminence Carlo Caffarra,
Archbishop emeritus of Bologna (Italy),
His Eminence Raymond Leo Burke, Patron of the Sovereign Military Order of
Malta, and His Eminence Walter Brandmüller, President emeritus of the
Pontifical Commission of Historical Sciences, have published on November 14,
2016, the text of five questions, called dubia (Latin for “doubts”), which
previously on September 19, 2016, they sent to the Holy Father and to Cardinal
Gerhard Müller, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith,
along with an accompanying letter. The Cardinals ask Pope Francis to clear up
“grave disorientation and great confusion” concerning the interpretation and
practical application, particularly of chapter VIII, of the Apostolic
Exhortation Amoris Laetitia and its passages relating to admission of remarried
divorcees to the sacraments and the Church’s moral teaching.
In their statement entitled “Seeking
Clarity: A Plea to Untie the Knots in Amoris Laetitia,” the Cardinals say that
to “many — bishops, priests, faithful — these paragraphs allude to or even
explicitly teach a change in the discipline of the Church with respect to the
divorced who are living in a new union.” Speaking so, the Cardinals have merely
stated real facts in the life of the Church. These facts are demonstrated by
pastoral orientations on behalf of several dioceses and by public statements of
some bishops and cardinals, who affirm that in some cases divorced and
remarried Catholics can be admitted to Holy Communion even though they continue
to use the rights reserved by Divine law to validly married spouses.
In publishing a plea for clarity in a matter
that touches the truth and the sanctity simultaneously of the three sacraments
of Marriage, Penance, and the Eucharist, the Four Cardinals only did their
basic duty as bishops and cardinals, which consists in actively contributing so
that the revelation transmitted through the Apostles might be guarded sacredly
and might be faithfully interpreted. It was especially the Second Vatican
Council that reminded all the members of the college of bishops as legitimate
successors of the Apostles of their obligation, according to which “by Christ’s
institution and command they have to be solicitous for the whole Church, and
that this solicitude, though it is not exercised by an act of jurisdiction,
contributes greatly to the advantage of the universal Church. For it is the
duty of all bishops to promote and to safeguard the unity of faith and the
discipline common to the whole Church” (Lumen gentium, 23; cf. also Christus
Dominus, 5-6).
In making a public appeal to the Pope,
bishops and cardinals should be moved by genuine collegial affection for the
Successor of Peter and the Vicar of Christ on earth, following the teaching of
Vatican Council II (cf. Lumen gentium, 22);, in so doing they render “service
to the primatial ministry” of the Pope (cf. Directory for the Pastoral Ministry
of Bishops, 13).
The entire Church in our days has to
reflect upon the fact that the Holy Spirit has not in vain inspired Saint Paul
to write in the Letter to the Galatians about the incident of his public
correction of Peter. One has to trust that Pope Francis will accept this public
appeal of the Four Cardinals in the spirit of the Apostle Peter, when St Paul
offered him a fraternal correction for the good of the whole Church. May the
words of that great Doctor of the Church, St Thomas Aquinas, illuminate and
comfort us all: “When there is a danger for the faith, subjects are required to
reprove their prelates, even publicly. Since Paul, who was subject to Peter,
out of the danger of scandal, publicly reproved him. And Augustine comments:
“Peter himself gave an example to superiors by not disdaining to be corrected
by his subjects when it occurred to them that he had departed from the right
path” (Summa theol., II-II, 33, 4c).
Pope Francis often calls for an outspoken
and fearless dialogue between all members of the Church in matters concerning
the spiritual good of souls. In the Apostolic Exhortation Amoris laetitia, the
Pope speaks of a need for “open discussion of a number of doctrinal, moral,
spiritual, and pastoral questions. The thinking of pastors and theologians, if
faithful to the Church, honest, realistic and creative, will help us to achieve
greater clarity” (n. 2). Furthermore, relationships at all levels within the
Church must be free from a climate of fear and intimidation, as Pope Francis
has requested in his various pronouncements.
In light of these pronouncements of Pope
Francis and the principle of dialogue and acceptance of legitimate plurality of
opinions, which was fostered by the documents of the Second Vatican Council,
the unusually violent and intolerant reactions on behalf of some bishops and
cardinals against the calm and circumspect plea of the Four Cardinals cause
great astonishment. 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.
Such apodictic merciless judgments reveal
not only intolerance, refusal of dialogue, and irrational rage, but demonstrate
also a surrender to the impossibility of speaking the truth, a surrender to
relativism in doctrine and practice, in faith and life. The above-mentioned
clerical reaction against the prophetic voice of the Four Cardinals parades
ultimately powerlessness before the eyes of the truth. Such a violent reaction
has only one aim: to silence the voice of the truth, which is disturbing and
annoying the apparently peaceful nebulous ambiguity of these clerical critics.
The negative reactions to the public
statement of the Four Cardinals resemble the general doctrinal confusion of the
Arian crisis in the fourth century. It is helpful to all to quote in the
situation of the doctrinal confusion in our days some affirmations of Saint
Hilary of Poitiers, the “Athanasius of the West”.
“You [the bishops of Gaul] who still remain
with me faithful in Christ did not give way when threatened with the onset of
heresy, and now by meeting that onset you have broken all its violence. Yes,
brethren, you have conquered, to the abundant joy of those who share your
faith: and your unimpaired constancy gained the double glory of keeping a pure
conscience and giving an authoritative example” (Hil. De Syn., 3).
“Your [the bishops of Gaul] invincible
faith keeps the honourable distinction of conscious worth and, content with
repudiating crafty, vague, or hesitating action, safely abides in Christ,
preserving the profession of its liberty. For since we all suffered deep and
grievous pain at the actions of the wicked against God, within our boundaries
alone is communion in Christ to be found from the time that the Church began to
be harried by disturbances such as the expatriation of bishops, the deposition
of priests, the intimidation of the people, the threatening of the faith, and
the determination of the meaning of Christ’s doctrine by human will and power.
Your resolute faith does not pretend to be ignorant of these facts or profess
that it can tolerate them, perceiving that by the act of hypocritical assent it
would bring itself before the bar of conscience” (Hil. De Syn., 4).
“I have spoken what I myself believed,
conscious that I owed it as my soldier’s service to the Church to send to you
in accordance with the teaching of the Gospel by these letters the voice of the
office which I hold in Christ. It is yours to discuss, to provide and to act,
that the inviolable fidelity in which you stand you may still keep with
conscientious hearts, and that you may continue to hold what you hold now”
(Hil. De Syn., 92).
The following words of Saint Basil the
Great, addressed to the Latin Bishops, can be in some aspects applied to the
situation of those who in our days ask for doctrinal clarity, including our
Four Cardinals: “The one charge which is now sure to secure severe punishment
is the careful keeping of the traditions of the Fathers. We are not being
attacked for the sake of riches, or glory, or any temporal advantages. We stand
in the arena to fight for our common heritage, for the treasure of the sound
faith, derived from our Fathers. Grieve with us, all you who love the brethren,
at the shutting of the mouths of our men of true religion, and at the opening
of the bold and blasphemous lips of all that utter unrighteousness against God.
The pillars and foundation of the truth are scattered abroad. We, whose
insignificance has allowed of our being overlooked, are deprived of our right
of free speech” (Ep. 243, 2.4).
Today those bishops and cardinals, who ask
for clarity and who try to fulfill their duty in guarding sacredly and
faithfully interpreting the transmitted Divine Revelation concerning the
Sacraments of Marriage and the Eucharist, are no longer exiled as it was with
the Nicene bishops during the Arian crisis. Contrary to the time of the Arian
crisis, today, as wrote Rudolf Graber, the bishop of Ratisbone, in 1973, exile
of the bishops is replaced by hush-up strategies and by slander campaigns (cf.
Athanasius und die Kirche unserer Zeit, Abensberg 1973, p. 23).
Another champion of the Catholic faith
during the Arian crisis was Saint Gregory Nazianzen. He wrote the following
striking characterization of the behavior of the majority of the shepherds of
the Church in those times. This voice of the great Doctor of the Church should
be a salutary warning for the bishops of all times: “Surely the pastors have
done foolishly; for, excepting a very few, who either on account of their
insignificance were passed over, or who by reason of their virtue resisted, and
who were to be left as a seed and root for the springing up again and revival
of Israel by the influences of the Spirit, all temporized, only differing from
each other in this, that some succumbed earlier, and others later; some were
foremost champions and leaders in the impiety, and others joined the second
rank of the battle, being overcome by fear, or by interest, or by flattery, or,
what was the most excusable, by their own ignorance” (Orat. 21, 24).
When Pope Liberius in 357 signed one of the
so called formulas of Sirmium, in which he deliberately discarded the
dogmatically defined expression “homo-ousios” and excommunicated Saint
Athanasius in order to have peace and harmony with the Arian and Semi-Arian
bishops of the East, faithful Catholics and some few bishops, especially Saint
Hilary of Poitiers, were deeply shocked. Saint Hilary transmitted the letter
that Pope Liberius wrote to the Oriental bishops, announcing the acceptance of
the formula of Sirmium and the excommunication of Saint Athanasius. In his deep
pain and dismay, Saint Hilary added to the letter in a kind of desperation the
phrase: “Anathema tibi a me dictum, praevaricator Liberi” (I say to you
anathema, prevaricator Liberius), cf. Denzinger-Schönmetzer, n. 141. Pope
Liberius wanted to have peace and harmony at any price, even at the expense of
the Divine truth. In his letter to the heterodox Latin bishops Ursace, Valence,
and Germinius announcing to them the above-mentioned decisions, he wrote that
he preferred peace and harmony to martyrdom (cf. cf. Denzinger-Schönmetzer, n.
142).
“In what a dramatic contrast stood the
behavior of Pope Liberius to the following conviction of Saint Hilary of
Poitiers: “We don’t make peace at the expense of the truth by making
concessions in order to acquire the reputation of tolerance. We make peace by
fighting legitimately according to the rules of the Holy Spirit. There is a
danger to ally surreptitiously with unbelief under the beautiful name of peace.”
(Hil. Ad Const., 2, 6, 2).
Blessed John Henry Newman commented on
these unusual sad facts with the following wise and equilibrated affirmation:
“While it is historically true, it is in no sense doctrinally false, that a
Pope, as a private doctor, and much more Bishops, when not teaching formally,
may err, as we find they did err in the fourth century. Pope Liberius might
sign a Eusebian formula at Sirmium, and the mass of Bishops at Ariminum or
elsewhere, and yet they might, in spite of this error, be infallible in their
ex cathedra decisions” (The Arians of the Fourth Century, London, 1876, p.
465).
The Four Cardinals with their prophetic
voice demanding doctrinal and pastoral clarity have a great merit before their
own conscience, before history, and before the innumerable simple faithful
Catholics of our days, who are driven to the ecclesiastical periphery, because
of their fidelity to Christ’s teaching about the indissolubility of marriage.
But above all, the Four Cardinals have a great merit in the eyes of Christ.
Because of their courageous voice, their names will shine brightly at the Last
Judgment. For they obeyed the voice of their conscience remembering the words
of Saint Paul: “We cannot do anything against the truth, but only for the
truth” (2 Cor 13: 8). Surely, at the Last Judgment the above-mentioned mostly
clerical critics of the Four Cardinals will not have an easy answer for their
violent attack on such a just, worthy, and meritorious act of these Four
Members of the Sacred College of Cardinals.
The following words inspired by the Holy
Spirit retain their prophetic value especially in view of the spreading
doctrinal and practical confusion regarding the Sacrament of Marriage in our
days: “For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but
having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their
own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off
into myths. As for you, always be sober-minded, endure suffering, do the work of
an evangelist, fulfill your ministry” (2 Tim. 4: 3-5).
May all, who in our days still take
seriously their baptismal vows and their priestly and episcopal promises,
receive the strength and the grace of God so that they may reiterate together
with Saint Hilary the words: “May I always be in exile, if only the truth
begins to be preached again!” (De Syn., 78). This strength and grace we wish
wholeheartedly to our Four Cardinals and as well as to those who criticize
them.
November 23, 2016
+ Athanasius Schneider, Auxiliary Bishop of
the Archdiocese of Saint Mary in Astana
