Is Church History About To Repeat Itself?

A friend sent me an email recently in which he wondered if Pope Francis will face a "Humanae Vitae moment" at the Synod on the family next October. The substance of his reflection is that the Pope will be unable to satisfy the demands of the German bishops, the media and liberal Catholics and permit the admission of divorced and civilly remarried Catholics to the Eucharist, and this will lead to a situation for Francis which will mirror that faced by the Venerable Paul VI in 1968 following his refusal to endorse the use of artificial contraception. This has been suggested by a few people in the past couple of weeks. 

I have been thinking about this for the last while, and reflecting on it with some theologian friends, and I think it is possible that this might actually happen. Ultimately it will depend on how Francis deals with the situation, but I have to admit the Holy Father is being pushed further and further into a corner by growing expectations.  

Let's explore this for a moment. We are all aware of the media hype that surrounds the Holy Father. Okay, we can put to one side for a moment his ambiguity, his lack of theological precision and the now growing need for Fr Lombardi or other Vatican officials to clarify points made by the Pope due to his spontaneous utterances. The Holy Father's style is different from John Paul's and Benedict's - he is more free and ambiguous in his speech and I think we'll just have to get used to this for this Pontificate (although rumours have it a senior ranking Churchman has taken the Pope to one side and has had a "chat" with him on this ambiguity so we might see a change there - might). But all that said, I do not doubt his orthodoxy.  

However the media and liberals have been engaged in creating a virtual Francis, one who eschews doctrine and wants to demolish the Church and rebuild it as a more liberal organisation founded on the shifting sands of relativism and human emotions. At the moment it can be hard to distinguish between Francis and the virtual Francis because the secular media control most of the airwaves and Francis's free ways do not help matters. As we have seen here in Ireland with the recent abortion issue, the media set the agenda and can actually push public representatives and even the electorate in a particular direction - one which favours their point of view and political persuasion. Such is the power of the image and careful control of reporting and opinion. In a similar way, the media are presenting the virtual Francis as the reality and selectively reporting on what he says so as to lead the public to accept their man as the real man.

In this context, then, it may well be that the media and liberals will be attempting to use their power to push various issues in a particular direction. They may well be naïve enough to think that Francis will go in that direction (but he is, as we all know now, his own man), and so they are sowing expectations that Church teaching on marriage and the Eucharist may well be changed "for pastoral reasons". There are those in the Church who seem to think this as many pastors have already allowed divorced and civilly remarried couples receive Holy Communion in anticipation of the Pope changing the rule. This is very much like the situation in the 1960s with regard to contraception - many bishops and priests were then advising Catholics to use contraception because they believed Pope Paul was going to permit it.  

But will Francis change the rule? I do not think he will, not because he won't but, as I said before, because he can't. Even though it is a personal and painful issue for many, it is at its core an issue of the moral law. I have no doubt that Francis realises this and knows that to change the rule is to admit that adultery is no longer a grave sin, and such a change will undermine the nature of Christian marriage and lead the faithful into error, something as Pope he cannot do. There is much to be done on this painful issue, and the synod will reflect on what possibilities lie before us - one of which is a reconsideration of the annulment process and perhaps even the issue of canonical form as suggested by Ed Peters in a recent article. Such a synod is long overdue and, given the challenges to marriage, it is necessary. 

I hope Pope Francis is also aware that to change the rule will have other consequences with regard to marriage: this is not just about the divorced and civilly remarried receiving Communion - it is about the nature of marriage. We had a similar situation in 1968: Pope Paul realised that contraception was broader than controlling fertility in the short term, but rather an issue of life, marriage and the family. Paul prophetically understood that contraception would led to the undermining of respect for life because it placed life under the control of human beings and left it up to them to decide whether life begins or not, and, as we have seen, if life has begun whether it will be allowed continue or not. Rendering the sexual act barren through artificial means would also lead to other problematic issues regarding the integrity of the human person and the family. 

So too with this issue on marriage. To change the rule would undermine sacramental marriage and endorse situations in which Catholic marriage can be put to one side and other unions legitimised. Remember receiving Communion is not just a personal act, it is an ecclesial act: admitting those in what are seen as irregular unions under the moral law to the Eucharist will be seen to legitimise those unions. This will have many consequences. For one it will open the door to a form of legitimising same sex unions: how could the Church refuse the Eucharist to those in a same sex union when it allows it for the divorced and civilly remarried? To be consistent, she can't: she will have already undermined and put aside the moral law. 

If the Pope were to grant the German bishops what they want, he would leave the decision about the validity of a sacramental marriage to the subjective opinion of the spouses. This too would have serious consequences for marriage and for women in particular - what is stopping a man who is tired of his wife to decide in his heart of hearts that the marriage was not valid and so put her to one side with the, albeit reluctant, approval of the Church? An English king tried to do that once.

We may well be facing another troublesome period in the Church, not quite unchartered waters, but stormy ones, and the now popular Francis may well suddenly find himself presiding over another period of defections, and this will be painful for him and for all of us. It will, I suppose, depend on how the media and liberals want to proceed - will they ignore the Post-Synodal Exhortation and continue to mislead, or will they decide the decision is too obvious to ignore and turn on Francis? I do not know, it's all in the air. But one thing I do know: we need to pray for the Holy Father, and pray hard: first that he will do the right thing, and then that God will sustain him as what may be a very difficult cross will be laid on his shoulders - one which may well kill him in the end, as Paul VI's did.

Perhaps we might commend him to the care and intercession of the Venerable Paul VI.

Praise The Heroes

The Paralympics are well underway in London - I'm not getting much of a chance to follow the events, but by all accounts the performances of the athletes are wonderful.  I caught a quick glimpse of the opening ceremony - bright and colourful, although the emphasis on science and technology was a bit one sided.  Anyway, the Paralympic movement is a marvellous one, as is the Special Olympics movement, because they bring us face to face with the fact that disability is not always a barrier to men and women pursuing active lives.  Indeed these two movements are very much pro-life movements.

In relation to this Madeleine Teahan has an interesting argument in an article on the Catholic Herald website.  She asks : "How can you cheer for our Paralympians and support Britain's abortion laws?"  In response, you can't without being a hypocrite.  Many of those who will clothe themselves in glory in these couple of weeks would have been prime candidates for "termination" in the UK, and here in Ireland people with similar disabilities are used as the hard cases by the pro-abortion lobby to lobby for the legalisation of the procedure here.   It is enough to turn your stomach as you listen to pro-abortion advocates, politicians among them, waxing lyrical about these athletes's heroism and shining example.  But then I suppose we have to realise that they are so blinded by their inhuman ideology they actually cannot see their hypocrisy.

But let us celebrate the achievements of these wonderful athletes - they are a credit to the human race and remind us of the ineffable dignity of the human person who can overcome even the greatest obstacles.  Every life is precious and good, and every person conceived has a vocation and a part to play in the building up of humanity. As we see in the labours of each of these individuals, if one life is destroyed, humanity and the world are impoverished.

John Waters has an excellent article on abortion in his column in The Irish Times today - he reflects on how the pro-abortion brigade have tried to scupper debate and demonise the pro-life lobby.

Another interesting article to bring to your attention: an animal rights group are accusing a priest of "murdering" a stray cat - indeed they went as far as coming into the middle of Mass to protest.  The protesters say that he refused to allow the rescue of a cat which was supposedly trapped on his roof.  Apparently there was no sign of a cat on the roof, and as anyone who has ever had a cat knows if they end up on a roof, most tend to be able to get down again.  The protesters remained outside the priest's house protesting until the early hours of the morning.  Crazy people.

And here is an insightful argument on how contraception has become so prevalent in our society, one doctor seemed to be pushing it on a patient as if she were recommending vitamin tablets.

Is The Giving Hand Failing?

Two interesting, but connected stories.  One is the recent campaign by UNICEF to raise a million euro in two weeks.  Their tag line is that 22,000 children will die today: "are you ok with that?"  I first saw a campaign advert when I got back from Italy: a large banner hanging down the side of Liberty Hall in Dublin - Ireland's only skyscraper.  On that particular banner the actor Liam Neeson poses with "Zero" written on his hand.  The full text tells us that "Every day, 22,000 children die from preventable causes we can prevent".  I smiled when I saw it. There are more children than that dying in the world every day from preventable causes, but UNICEF is not bothered to champion them - they are the approximately 115,000 who die in abortions each day.

The second story concerns the recent comments by the Papal Nuncio to the United Nations, Archbishop Francis Chullikatt.   He asks the question that, given the fact that we do have the means to bring poverty to an end, do we really have the will?  He was speaking before the UN General Assembly's Second Committee which deals with economic and financial matters.  He spoke about the need for global solidarity rather than following "a feeling of vague compassion or shallow emotion".  Eradicating poverty, he pointed out, should not be a matter of charity, but rather an obligation of the international community.

The two stories are linked: both concern the effectiveness of the UN and its various agencies, and, of course the role ideology plays in the organisation.  As I mentioned in a previous blog, such agencies tend toward the easy solution, a solution which tends to create more problems than it solves.   I note, for example, in the global battle against poverty, contraception is an important factor in the aid given.  How many emergency response teams include contraception and abortion kits in their shipments to countries in need?  You get the sense that it is presumed that the solution to poverty in developing countries is to prevent children being born - no children, no mouths to feed.   In this regard it is important to note that UNICEF, a UN agency dedicated to the care of children, is pro-abortion, and is, in fact, an important global agency involved in promoting abortion services and "rights".

How seriously does the UN take the problem of poverty and need in the world?  I'm not suggesting that there are not well-meaning people working for the UN doing what they can to help the poor, but the organisation itself is a hotch-potch of ideologies, and these ideologies tend to dictate the nature of the aid given to the poor.  The Papal Nuncio is right to question the UN commitment to end poverty, not putting words in his mouth, I personally think the organisation has an agenda and certain people in it use philanthropy to promote that agenda. 

The UN is not the only organisation to be tainted with such ideology.  I am aware of certain aid agencies who promote the same ideology in their work.  Even Catholic agencies have embraced these ideologies in direct contradiction to Church teaching, either providing contraception and abortion service themselves, or providing funding to organisations that do.  For this reason I am very careful about where my money goes.  Personally I support the Little Way Association - in doing so I know my money goes directly to those in need via the Church's structure (to projects directly sent through local bishop who passes it on - 100%).  The organisation is staffed by volunteers, usually retired people, so little is spent on administration, and the monies put towards it come from separate donations specifically earmarked for admin. 

In Ireland we have a saying, usually directed towards a generous benefactor, "May your giving hand never fail" (as you can see that particular blessing is tainted with future expectation!).  One has to wonder is the giving hand of aid agencies ultimately failing and adding to global poverty as they put their agendas first? 

UPDATE
Excellent article by John Mallon on CatholicVote.org on the topic of abortion.  Well worth a read.