It’s a victory for the status quo but all is not yet lost for Francis

By Andrew Brown
Guardian (UK)
October 24, 2015

http://www.theguardian.com/world/commentisfree/2015/oct/24/vatican-family-synod-divorce-pope-francis-commentary

Pope Francis waves as he leaves at the end of the Synod of bishops at the Vatican. Photo by Alessandra Tarantino

Pope Francis appears to have been defeated after a bruising battle with conservative Catholic forces over his attempt to humanise the treatment of divorced and remarried couples. A second meeting of bishops from around the world, in a “synod on the family”, will probably end with no movement on the inflamed question of whether some divorced and remarried couples can be admitted to communion.

This may be scored as a draw between liberals and conservatives, but it has been contested as venomously as a Test match draw – and almost as publicly. Briefings, leaks, reports – vehemently denied – that the pope has a brain tumour, and threats of schism have all been used. According to the conservative Catholic blogger Damian Thompson, the next conclave – an occurrence which would require Francis’s resignation or death – can’t come soon enough for many conservatives. And this is the least hysterical language from that side.

The German delegation, broadly liberal, has issued a stinging denunciation of the conservative Australian Cardinal George Pell for language which was “false, imprecise and misleading.” In an interview with the French newspaper Le Figaro, Pell had accused the liberal German cardinal Walter Kasper of opposing Pope Benedict XVI, and this must have seemed a wholly unforgivable attack. The German cardinals said the words had “offended against the spirit of the synod and its fundamental rules … We distance ourselves decisively from this.”

It will take a long time for the wounds to heal. Such open denunciations of senior cardinals by one another are quite unprecedented in recent history. Pell was personally chosen by the pope to clean up the Vatican’s finances, while among the Germans who signed the letter were Gerhard Müller, the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the enforcer of doctrinal orthodoxy, and Christoph Schönborn, the favourite pupil of Benedict XVI.

Müller, as it happens, is on the same conservative side about change as Pell but passions are running high. What makes the whole spectacle astonishing is that they are arguing over something which already happens, and everyone knows must happen. Catholics get divorced and remarried at about the same rate as everyone else. If a remarried Catholic couple in good standing with the congregation present themselves at the communion rail, they will not be turned away as sinners.

Officially, however, they are adulterers, living in sin, who renew their sinful status every time they have sex. The only way out of this is to get a certificate annulling the first marriage, a chancy, prolonged and sometimes humiliating bureaucratic procedure. For conservative Catholics, this principle is a central part of their faith. For outsiders, it seems part of a lack of realism about sex, credible only to a body where policy is made by celibate men.

What makes the official position so damaging is that it implies that having sex makes committed relationships more sinful and less loving. That is so contrary to the way lay people experience their lives that it cannot be respected. On the other hand, it is all of a piece with the church’s condemnation of artificial birth control, another dogma which is, in practice, utterly ignored.

The Catholic church in Europe and the US is sharply divided between liberals and conservatives, mostly over issues of sexual morality. The liberal faction in the rich and influential German church, led by Cardinals Kasper and Marx, had hoped to tidy the situation by allowing some remarried couples to undergo a “penitential journey”, repenting of the failure of their first marriages before the church would admit them to communion in their second ones. It seems clear that Francis was in favour of this solution. As pope, he can of course impose it if he wants to. He hoped, however, that free and honest discussions among the bishops would produce a clear majority in favour of his preferred plan. This hasn’t happened. The fury of the German church makes that clear.

So what will Francis do? In his early career he was so autocratic as leader of the Jesuits in his native Argentina that when his period in office finished he was exiled by them to the provinces. Relations with his fellow Jesuits have never entirely healed. This makes it doubtful that he will attempt to impose a solution on the conservatives today.

His immediate predecessors, John Paul II and Benedict XVI, worked tirelessly for 30 years to impose their views on liberals. Between them, they appointed the great majority of the bishops now disputing their legacy. In one sense, this divided synod is a testimony to their failure to ensure a conservative succession as much as to Francis’s inability to drive through a more liberal line.

And this may be Francis’s real victory: by showing that disagreement on these matters is possible, he is encouraging Catholics to think for themselves. God knows where that could end.