The Bishops’ latest pastoral letter drives home the message that even if “all over the world one finds divorce” the teaching of Jesus Christ would remain unchanged and that “it is our attitude which must undergo a change and not marriage”.
The bishops steered clear from addressing directly the sin or no sin controversy and the trust of their message is: “May Jesus’ words be a light for the Christian conscience: a moral responsibility which must be upheld. It is to Jesus himself that the Christian must be accountable, even in this matter of marriage and divorce. Moreover, when faced with the words of Jesus, every Christian must shoulder his responsibility and participate in the mission of fulfilling and protecting his teachings. We appeal to all Christians, be it in their calling as Christians as well as in their role within society, to spread the words of Jesus as part of their mission.”
Time will tell whether what they said is enough to quell the prevailing confusion and provide clear official answers to the questions that cropped up.
Addressing a Human Life International World Prayer Congress in Rome earlier this month, Archbishop Raymond Leo Burke, Prefect of the Church’s Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura, said our culture teaches us to believe what is convenient and to reject what is difficult for us or challenges us. “Thus,” he warned, “we can easily fall into ‘cafeteria Catholicism’, a practice of the faith, which picks and chooses what part of the deposit of faith to believe and practice.”
The pastoral letter follows a position paper on divorce drawn up by seven prominent priests (one would have expected the Bishops to speak first and the priests then build on the Bishops’ official teaching). They said that, to reach a good moral judgment on whether they want or not the introduction of divorce law, Catholics “must, in a responsible manner, form our conscience and then decide according to this conscience”.
The priests said the Catholic, who, not caring about having an informed and formed conscience, decides to follow one’s whim, without seriously paying attention to the teaching of God’s word and of the Church but only follows one’s feelings, one’s own thoughts or personal advantage, if not also one’s prejudices, should realise one is not doing one’s duty as a Catholic. They warned: “One is responsible for such action before God and may possibly be sinning.”
It would surely have been to the benefit of all had the Bishops used their latest pastoral letter to provide their own official guidance on how Catholics who want to remain in full union with the Church are expected to behave in such delicate circumstances. For instance, what is their advice to a Catholic who, in spite of all the efforts to decide according to a properly informed and formed conscience on approving or not the introduction of divorce, as a believer and as a citizen continues to feel to be divided one against the other within the same individual?
Vatican Council II described Bishops as “authentic teachers, that is, teachers endowed with the authority of Christ, who preach to the people committed to them the faith they must believe and put into practice” (Lumen Gentium, 25). Moreover, among the tasks of their Episcopal ministry, Catholic bishops have a special responsibility for building and safeguarding the unity and harmony of the Church.