By Maike
Hickson
 |
Cardinal
Óscar Andrés Rodríguez Maradiaga, a close collaborator of
Pope Francis, attends
the opening Mass of the Extraordinary Synod
on the Family at St. Peter's
Basilica on October 5, 2014.
 |
However, this time, it is not organized by the Germans, the
Swiss, and the French. They had already convoked and hosted a similar
conference at the end of May 2015, which had caused noticeable irritations. One
even considered it to be a “Shadow Synod” and a “Secret Gathering” with the
intent to plan the liberal agenda of the Synod in the Fall of 2015 in Rome.
Indeed, there spoke [at that May Conference] some of the sharpest opponents of
the Catholic teaching on marriage and the family.
After comparing the upcoming conference with the well-known
25 May “Shadow Council,” von
Gersdorff gives us some more information:
The most important Man of the Church at the September 2015
conference will be Cardinal Óscar Rodríguez Maradiaga from Tegucigalpa,
Honduras. In spite of [sic] his Latin-American origin, Cardinal Maradiaga
represents a strongly liberal position. Numerous speakers defend the
abstruse positions of Cardinal Walter Kasper, such as, for example, the German
theologian Eberhard Schockenhoff. The conference is being organized by the “International
Academy for Marital Spirituality,” a clearly liberal institution.
The intention of these new [strategic and tactical] initiatives and statements
is arguably to remove the Germans [their liberalizing bishops and laymen alike]
out of the line of fire. With their earlier attacks against the Catholic
teaching and their partially arrogant advances, the Germans had provoked
international resistance and maneuvered themselves into isolation.
The following information is taken from the leaflet of the
INTAMS organization itself which now organizes the September 2015 event. After
quoting Pope Francis' words that the Church has to grow in the understanding of
the Faith of the Apostles and in an understanding of the contemporary situation,
the leaflet comments:
This can’t be done, however, without listening to the voices
of all the faithful, especially those in families and committed relationships
[sic] who day by day live their faith and hope in an authentic way. Attention
must also be paid to the “contemplation and study made by believers, who
treasure these things in their hearts” – a phrase which the Second Vatican
Council uses to describe the work of academic theologians (Dei Verbum, 8). […]
This international Symposium, which is open to everyone interested, will
provide renewed reflection as well as fresh perspectives on a number of issues
that need to be addressed, such as the relation between doctrine and pastoral
practice, the sense of the faithful, an ethics of mercy, and indissolubility in
the context of a contemporary theology of marriage.
When one considers the list of proposed speakers, three names
are prominent: Cardinal Maradiaga, close adviser of the pope himself, as well
as two German theologians who are known for their progressive attitudes toward
the moral teaching of the Church. The one, Professor Eberhard Schockenhoff, had
been a prominent participant at the above-mentioned “Shadow Council” where he
already spoke about the “life realities” which the Church purportedly has to
take into account. He now will speak at the conference on “Indissolubility and
Theology of Marriage.” Professor Jochen Sautermeister, the second German
theologian, will speak later at the September 2015 conference on “An Ethics of
Mercy.”
Let us first turn to Professor Schockenhoff. After the first
Synod of Bishops on Marriage and the Family, he made a statement in defense of
an ostensible liberal attitude toward “remarried” divorcees and even toward
homosexual couples. He said on May 29, 2015 in an interview with the German Catholic radio,
Domradio.de:
As a theologian, I do not expect that everything will be
expressed in a fundamentally different and new way [at the October 2015 Synod
on the Family]. For me, a positive [sic] outcome of the Synod would be of
course desirable, because it would show that the Catholic Church is able to
reform itself, and that the following principle is also important for it:
namely, that the search for more adequate forms of expression of its Faith will
continue. But, for me as a theologian, the substantial reasons for positions
which I represent are the ones that count. For example, concerning the question
as to how to deal with remarried divorcees; the reasons for a respectful,
accepting treatment also of those people who live in same-sex living [sic]
partnerships. If this would now lead to an official recognition by the Synod,
then that is good. But, if that fails, then the reasons are not thereby
devalued. They, of course, are still valid. And that is the reason why I look
forward to it [the Synod] with a certain detachment.
The second German theologian, Jochen Sautermeister of Munich,
published an article in 2014 in the Catholic journal, Herder Korrespondenz, in
which he shows himself to be a “Kasperite.” The title of his article is “To
Assess Correctly the Life Realities: Challenges For the Pastoral Care For
Marriages and the Family According to the Gospels,” and it was published in the
special edition 2/2014 of that journal. In it, Sautermeister not only
repeatedly quotes Cardinal Walter Kasper's speech to the College of Cardinals
of February 2014, but he also makes it clear that he is in favor of a more
“understanding” attitude toward those Catholics who live in the state of sin.
He even goes so far as to claim that the Church representatives have to learn
to question themselves and to doubt their own views and interpretations:
This capacity of questioning oneself respectively the
capacity to question one's own point of view and one's own interpretation is an
important precondition in order to get closer to the realities and in order to
be more just toward people and to enter into a true encounter with them – at
least under the condition that closed-in interpretations of the world, of life
and of actions are not any more possible [anything goes?]. To put it simply:
The competence to perceive means to be able to recognize and control one's own
structures of prejudices in encountering other people.
In the context of the Church moral teaching on marriage and
the family, these comments can only lead to a liberalizing, laxer attitude
toward sin; namely, to question one's own standards (which flow from Christ's
words), rather than rebuking the sinner for his own sinful conduct, in order to
help him free himself from his sin.
The whole tone of Professor Sautermeister's article reminds
one of the “Shadow Council” with its sustained dwelling on subjectivity and private
conscientious decisions. The Church thereby is asked to omit her own moral
witness and her own role as a moral agent in this world. For example,
Sautermeister stresses the independence of the conscience of “modern man” from
the Church's teaching, when he says that these themes of the Synod are
controversial, indeed, because they touch upon existential life-realizations of
people who consider themselves to be mature subjects of their actions and who
do not want to see their own lives to be subjected to a moral-religious
interpreting authority from the outside [sic], but who, rather, consider
themselves as Christians, even in their own conscientious competence.
Sautermeister hopes that “God's love and the Gospels are not
easily subjected to one's own knowledge available and disposable at our
discretion, but, rather, that one believes and hopes that God's love can be
effective through every kind of human weakness and guilt, through every kind of
death.”
After these quotes, one may easily see that this upcoming
conference, promoted by Cardinal Maradiaga, will be another “Kasperite” event,
or worse, and will follow up on the meretricious themes of the “Shadow
Council.” Important in this context, also, is the fact that the organization
which stands behind this new conference, the International Academy for Marital
Spirituality (INTAMS), had earlier hosted a Day of Study at which another
progressive German theologian, Father Martin Lintner, OSM, was a speaker. As
INTAMS says on its own website:
13 October 2014, Lay Centre, Rome:
INTAMS brought together a panel of four theologians to
dialogue with John L. Allen on "Marriage and the Family Today: Pastoral
Challenges and Hopes in Light of the Extraordinary Synod on the Family".
The panel was composed of Philippe Bordeyne, rector at the Institut Catholique
de Paris, Martin M. Lintner, OSM, moral theologian at the
Philosophisch-Theologische Hochschule in Brixen, Thomas Knieps and Aldegonde
Brenninkmeijer-Werhahn. They offered some thought-provoking theological
reflections on the theme of marriage and the family today.
Edward Pentin reported in July 2015 how that very same man,
Martin Lintner, has caused a scandal worldwide after some of his progressive
claims about marriage and the family had been reported by the German branch of
Vatican Radio, together with a picture showing two lesbians kissing.
Radio Vatikan reported that Lintner hoped for a more liberal
attitude of the Church toward homosexual couples:
Nevertheless: Not only the discussions during the
Extraordinary Synod of Bishops last fall 2014 – but also the recent working
paper for the upcoming Synod on the Family in October 2015 – both show,
according to Lintner, a “change of mind” in dealing with homosexual persons:
“The Church becomes more sensible toward the experiences of suffering by the
concerned persons and by families in which homosexual persons are living.” This
development seems to the moral theologian from the South Tirol — and a member of
the Servite Order — “significant, even if the Church stresses that a homosexual
partnership has to remain different from a marriage.”
What else do the faithful Catholics need to know about the
state of our beloved Church when high-ranking prelates – even with special
access to the pope – are allowed to promote a set of teachings that are in
direct opposition to the teaching of Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself? May this
conference soon be called off. May the Magisterium of the Catholic Church close
this chapter quickly and firmly restate the traditional moral teaching of the
Church, which has been a blessing for so many happy and fruitful families over
the centuries.
Source: LifeSiteNews
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