Clash of the Cardinals

The strict Catholic view is difficult to uphold in practice. In our modern society marriage is in chaos and to tell the truth, a strong and stable second marriage can be better than many of the alternatives. Cardinal Kaspar is right that there can be positive aspects to a solid and stable second marriage. The problem is an underlying one. He is allowing himself to be guided by utilitarian and sentimental arguments. He sees the practicality and usefulness of a second marriage. He sees the “loving response” and the “merciful approach”, but that is too often not much more than understandable and laudable sentimentality. While these arguments are helpful they cannot be the only arguments.

The usefulness and sweetness of that second marriage must also be balanced by the teaching of the Lord and the need for the Church to uphold the indissolubility of marriage and the public nature of the sacrament.

As a parish priest I face this tightrope all the time. A couple come to be married in church but they are living together and do not practice the Catholic faith. How do I welcome them, affirm their love, encourage them to get married but also teach them that living together destroys marriage, undermines the church’s teaching, sets a scandalous example and in the long run does not support marriage but helps to destroy it?

My own view is that we are in transition from a universal acceptance of a Christian understanding of marriage to a situation where the Christian understanding of marriage will be unique and unusual in a modern society where any version of marriage will be accepted. When that transition is complete it will be understood by all who want a Catholic marriage just what a marriage is. When they are well catechized in what Catholic marriage is, then the prohibition of divorce and remarriage will make more sense and will be be able to be upheld with more consistency.

Until we go through this transition we will all have to continue to struggle with the huge mess we are in and hope that by upholding the timeless teachings of the faith we will emerge from the chaos with a smaller, and more lean church, but one in which Catholics marry Catholics and form strong Catholic families which will be lights to an increasingly dark and chaotic civilization.

In other words, we should not be conformed to the world but be transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit. Cardinal Kaspar is living in that old dispensation in which the society he lives in is, by default, Catholic. He therefore conforms to the world without even knowing it. Cardinal Burke knows that he lives in a society which is not Catholic and is increasingly anti Catholic and summons the Church to stand firm and strong in its witness to the Lord’s teaching–the only teaching which can possibly uphold the sanctity of the sacrament of marriage in a world that wishes to destroy marriage altogether.

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