A lot has been happening on the Catholic front in the last few months. Some things make me hope that there will be a religious revival. There undoubtedly is a lot of optimism. Other things, on the other hand, instil the fear that this ‘promised land’ will prove to be an illusion. The high – and sometimes unrealistic – expectations of so many people will not be met and disappointment will follow.

These opposing feelings could in themselves create a positive tension. Pope Francis presented Catholics with many challenges. Grappling with them is not easy. The strivings to translate into a concrete plan the Pope’s metaphor of the Church as a battlefield hospital is difficult as it includes breaking new ground in pastoral strategy. Similarly challenging is the desideratum to transform the theology of mercy into the structures of mercy. Are these wishes realistic hopes or just mirages?

The media are partly to blame for this roller-coaster effect of highs and lows. As I wrote more than once in this commentary, the coverage of Pope Francis was framed in such a way as to describe him as a pop Pope or an instant saviour who will single-handledly save the Church. A brave new future beckons the Church; the media wants us to believe.

Mondadori, for example, has just started the publication of a new magazine called Il Mio Papa with a print run of three million. This came hot on the heels of the manipulative cover story in Rolling Stone, an American magazine specialising in popular culture and political news.

This coverage did Pope Francis no good as it only created unrealistic expectations that the Pope never promised or is even vaguely interested in delivering. He reacted against this coverage in his recent interview with Corriere della Sera. (Perhaps we are having too many papal interviews for comfort.)

He strongly criticised both the nascent ideological interpretations of what he says and the mythology that is being spun around his media-puffed-up persona. He reacted strongly:

“To portray the Pope as a kind of superman, a type of star, strikes me as offensive... The Pope is a man who laughs, weeps, sleeps soundly and has friends like everybody else. A normal person.”

The contradictory signals being sent by the Vatican from time to time are also partly responsible for the roller-coaster feeling of reeling from the sensation of hope to that of an illusion. The Vatican, for example, sent a questionnaire to episcopal conferences asking them to answer it after the widest possible process of consultation. This tied in with the ‘new’ spirit of openness and transparency that is being generated. But then it instructed the bishops to keep the results under wraps – a gesture of disrespect to the people consulted and a clear sign that old ways die hard.

The comments made by some bishops about the results of the questionnaire fill one with hope. Although the views expressed were largely critical of the official position of the Church on contraception and sexual morality, several bishops commented that the answers were food for thought. One particular bishop went so far as to describe them as a legitimate expression of ‘sensus fidelium’. On the other hand, the reaction of another report was that the faithful have to be correctly instructed; as if the teaching Church has nothing to learn from the learning Church!

Fortunately, the Maltese bishops will be among the episcopal conferences that will eventually publish the results. Work is being done on the analysis of a sample of 1,500 answers out of the over 7,000 responses received. One looks forward to this publication.

Another sign that things are moving ahead was the meeting of the College of Cardinals to discuss family matters. Of particular interest was the address by Cardinal Walter Kasper.

Kasper is not foreign to controversies about whether Catholics who are divorced and remarried could receive communion. In 1993, when he was Bishop of Rottenburg-Stuttgart, Germany’s fourth largest Catholic diocese, together with two other bishops, had issued pastoral directives indicating when such a thing is possible. The then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who was the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, put a stop to the plan.

Kasper returned to the subject in the keynote speech referred to previously. During his two-hour address, he posed several questions, some of them hypothetical, while suggesting that divorced and civilly remarried Catholics might sometimes be allowed to receive Communion even without an annulment of their first, sacramental marriage.

The first Vatican reaction to the address was that it should not be published. This decision undermined the transparent process of preparation for the October Synod. Cardinal Reinhard Marx of Munich, a member of the Council of Cardinals advising Pope Francis, urged the Pope to release the speech.

The decision not to publish was both inappropriate and extremely unwise. How could it be that someone inside the Vatican could have thought that the speech could have been kept secret, particularly when 200 copies of the talk were in circulation? Within a few days, summaries as well as full versions of the speech were published by leading media outlets.

Pope Francis presented Catholics with many challenges. Grappling with them is not easy

Kasper’s well-crafted and balanced exposition brought more than a glimmer of hope to those Catholics whose marriage was irrevocably broken and who have since entered a new marriage.

They feel that it would be morally wrong to abscond on their new responsibilities and still yearn for full participation in the Church’s life through communion. Others criticised Kasper, saying that he unrealistically raised people’s hope in vain.

Cardinal Gerhard Müller, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, said some time ago that one cannot change the teaching of the Church just because it cannot be understood. Marx reacted by saying that Müller’s position does not end the discussion.

There have been plenty of discussions about communion by the divorced and remarried in recent years. The Synod about the Eucharist of 2005 and the subsequent post-Synodal Exhortation Sacramentum Caritatis (The Sacrament of Love), for example, had opted for the continuation of the official current practice on the matter.

Is it realistic to expect that this coming Synod will (or perhaps ‘can’) change this position and opt for a solution similar to that proposed by Kasper and Archbishop Robert Zollitsch, who besides heading the archdiocese of Freiburg, Germany, is also the chairman of the German Bishops’ Conference?

Notwithstanding the high hopes raised, I believe the answer would be in the negative.

joseph.borg@um.edu.mt

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