The crowd waved rainbow flags and according to media reports, sang "All You Need Is Love" by the Beatles.

The mid-September rites included Catholic priests reciting blessings for same-sex and heterosexual couples and, though held outside of Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki's cathedral, represented a bold ecclesiastical affront to the city's conservative archbishop.

Are these rites "weddings"?

That was a crucial issue raised by five cardinals in "dubia" (Latin for "doubts") questions sent to Pope Francis weeks before the Vatican's global "Synod on Synodality," which opened last week.

The five cardinals requested "yes" or "no" answers.

Instead, the pope offered a detailed analysis in which he restated established Catholic doctrines, noting that "the reality that we call marriage has a unique essential constitution that demands an exclusive name."

Thus, the Church should avoid rites giving the "impression that something that is not marriage is recognised as marriage".

Nevertheless, Pope Francis - writing in July - urged "pastoral charity" in this issue.

Thus, the "defense of objective truth is not the only expression of this charity, which is also made up of kindness, patience, understanding, tenderness, and encouragement.

Therefore, we cannot become judges who only deny, reject, exclude.

"For this reason, pastoral prudence must adequately discern whether there are forms of blessing … that do not transmit a mistaken conception of marriage.

"For when a blessing is requested, one is expressing a request for help from God, a plea for a better life, a trust in a Father who can help us to live better."

This drew praise from Francis DeBernardo, leader of the New Ways Ministry for Catholics seeking changes in centuries of Christian doctrine on sexuality.

"The allowance for pastoral ministers to bless same-gender couples implies that the Church does indeed recognise that holy love can exist between same-gender couples, and the love of these couples mirrors the love of God," he wrote.

The Pope's declaration represents "an enormous advance. … This statement is one big straw towards breaking the camel's back of the marginalised treatment LGBTQ+ people experience in the Church."

The Vatican's release of these "dubia" documents underlined the importance of the historic global synod - which will address issues in Church life including the ordination of women, the status of LGBTQ+ believers, clerical celibacy and changes for divorced Catholics seeking Holy Communion.

A strategic leader is Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich, who until recently led the Commission of the Bishops' Conferences of the European Union and was the Pope's choice as "relator general" for the synod, shaping official documents produced before and after the two-year process.

In a 2022 interview with the Catholic news agency KDA, he said Catholic teachings on "homosexual relationships as sinful are wrong...

"I believe that the sociological and scientific foundation of this doctrine is no longer correct.

"It is time for a fundamental revision of Church teaching, and the way in which Pope Francis has spoken of homosexuality could lead to a change in doctrine."

That kind of shift would shake centuries of doctrine, noted the "dubia" authors - American Cardinal Raymond Burke, German Cardinal Walter Brandmüller, Mexican Cardinal Sandoval Íñiguez, Guinean Cardinal Robert Sarah and Cardinal Joseph Zen, former Bishop of Hong Kong.

Thus, they asked: "Is it possible for the Church today to teach doctrines contrary to those she has previously taught in matters of faith and morals, whether by the Pope ex cathedra, or in the definitions of an Ecumenical Council, or in the ordinary universal magisterium" of bishops around the world?

Pope Francis discussed development in doctrines, and claims of absolute truth, during recent remarks in Lisbon, according to a transcript from the Jesuit journal La Civiltà Cattolica.

He criticised Catholics guilty of "backwardness," including Americans who let "ideologies replace faith" and cause divisions among Catholics.

"I would like to remind those people that indietrismo (being backward-looking) is useless and we need to understand that there is an appropriate evolution in the understanding of matters of faith and morals," he said.

Thus, it's important to accept that "our understanding of the human person changes with time, and our consciousness also deepens.

"The other sciences and their evolution also help the Church in this growth in understanding. The view of Church doctrine as monolithic is erroneous."

• Terry Mattingly leads GetReligion.org and lives in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. He is a senior fellow at the Overby Center at the University of Mississippi.
• First published in Religion Unplugged. Republished with permission.

Since that time, the positions I presented have received both substantial support and significant opposition.

The majority of those criticizing my article focused on its treatment of the exclusion of those who are divorced and remarried and members of the L.G.B.T. communities from the Eucharist.

Criticisms included the assertion that my article challenged an ancient teaching of the church, failed to give due attention to the call to holiness, abandoned any sense of sin in the sexual realm and failed to highlight the essential nature of conversion.

Perhaps most consistently, the criticism stated that exclusion from the Eucharist is essentially a doctrinal rather than a pastoral question.

I seek in this article to wrestle with some of these criticisms so that I might contribute to the ongoing dialogue on this sensitive question—which will no doubt continue to be discussed throughout the synodal process.

Specifically, I seek here to develop more fully than I did in my initial article some important related questions, namely on the nature of conversion in the moral life of the disciple, the call to holiness, the role of sin, the sacrament of penance, the history of the categorical doctrine of exclusion for sexual sins and the relationship between moral doctrine and pastoral theology.

The report of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops on the synodal dialogues held in our nation last year pointed to the profound sadness of many, if not most of the people of God about the broad exclusion from the Eucharist of so many striving Catholics who are barred from Communion because they are divorced and remarried or L.G.B.T.

In January, I proposed that three foundational principles of Catholic teaching invited a re-examination of the church's practice in this area.

The first is Pope Francis' image of the church as a field hospital, which points to the reality that we are all wounded by sin and all equally in need of God's grace and healing.

The second is the role of conscience in Catholic thought.

For every member of the church, it is conscience to which we have the ultimate responsibility and by which we will be judged.

For that reason, while Catholic teaching has an essential role in moral decision-making, it is conscience that has the privileged place.

As Pope Francis has stated, the church's role is to form consciences, not replace them. Categorical exclusions of the divorced and remarried and L.G.B.T. persons from the Eucharist do not give due respect to the inner conversations of conscience that people have with their God in discerning moral choice in complex circumstances.

Finally, I proposed that the Eucharist is given to us as a profound grace in our conversion to discipleship.

As Pope Francis reminds us, the Eucharist is "not a prize for the perfect, but a powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak."

To bar disciples from that grace blocks one of the principal pathways Christ has given to them to reform their lives and accept the Gospel ever more fully.

For all of these reasons, I proposed that divorced and remarried or L.G.B.T. Catholics who are ardently seeking the grace of God in their lives should not be categorically barred from the Eucharist.

In the weeks since my article was published, some readers have objected that the church cannot accept such a notion of inclusion because the exclusion of remarried women and men or L.G.B.T. persons from the Eucharist flows from the moral tradition in the church that all sexual sins are grave matter.

This means that all sexual sins are so gravely evil that they constitute objectively an action that can sever a believer's relationship with God.

I have attempted to face this objection head-on by drawing attention to both the history and the unique reasoning of the principle that all sexual sins are objectively mortal sins.

For most of the history of the church, various gradations of objective wrong in the evaluation of sexual sins were present in the life of the church.

But in the 17th century, with the inclusion in Catholic teaching of the declaration that for all sexual sins there is no parvity of matter (i.e., no circumstances can mitigate the grave evil of a sexual sin), we relegated the sins of sexuality to an ambit in which no other broad type of sin is so absolutely categorized.

In principle, all sexual sins are objective mortal sins within the Catholic moral tradition.

This means that all sins that violate the sixth and the ninth commandments are categorically objective mortal sins.

There is no such comprehensive classification of mortal sin for any of the other commandments.

In understanding the application of this principle to the reception of Communion, it is vital to recognize that it is the level of objective sinfulness that forms the foundation for the present categorical exclusion of sexually active divorced and remarried or L.G.B.T. Catholics from the Eucharist.

So, it is precisely this change in Catholic doctrine—made in the 17th century—that is the foundation for categorically barring L.G.B.T. and divorced/remarried Catholics from the Eucharist.

• Does the tradition that all sexual sins are objectively mortal make sense within the universe of Catholic moral teaching?
• It is automatically an objective mortal sin for a husband and wife to engage in a single act of sexual intercourse utilizing artificial contraception. This means the level of evil present in such an act is objectively sufficient to sever one's relationship with God.
• It is not automatically an objective mortal sin to physically or psychologically abuse your spouse.
• It is not automatically an objective mortal sin to exploit your employees.
• It is not automatically an objective mortal sin to discriminate against a person because of her gender or ethnicity or religion.
• It is not automatically an objective mortal sin to abandon your children.

The moral tradition that all sexual sins are grave matter springs from an abstract, deductivist and truncated notion of the Christian moral life that yields a definition of sin jarringly inconsistent with the larger universe of Catholic moral teaching.

This is because it proceeds from the intellect alone.

The great French philosopher Henri Bergson pointed to the inadequacy of any such approach to the richness of Catholic faith: "We see that the intellect, so skilful in dealing with the inert, is awkward the moment it touches the living.

Whether it wants to treat the life of the body or the life of the mind, it proceeds with the rigour, the stiffness and the brutality of an instrument not designed for such use…. Intuition, on the contrary, is moulded on the very form of life."

The call to holiness requires both a conceptual and an intuitive approach leading to an understanding of what discipleship in Jesus Christ means.

Discipleship means striving to deepen our faith and our relationship to God, to enflesh the Beatitudes, to build up the kingdom in God's grace, to be the good Samaritan.

The call to holiness is all-encompassing in our lives, embracing our efforts to come closer to God, our sexual lives, our familial lives and our societal lives.

It also entails recognising sin where it lurks in our lives and seeking to root it out.

And it means recognizing that each of us in our lives commits profound sins of omission or commission.

At such moments we should seek the grace of the sacrament of penance. But such failures should not be the basis for categorical ongoing exclusion from the Eucharist.

It is important to note that the criticisms of my article did not seek to demonstrate that the tradition classifying all sexual sins as objective mortal sin is in fact correct, or that it yields a moral teaching that is consonant with the wider universe of Catholic moral teaching.

Instead, critics focused upon the repeated assertion that the exclusion of divorced/remarried and L.G.B.T. Catholics from the Eucharist is a doctrinal, not a pastoral question.

I would answer that Pope Francis is precisely calling us to appreciate the vital interplay between the pastoral and doctrinal aspects of church teaching on questions just such as these. Continue reading

In his 'First Things' magazine article, conservative prelate and canon lawyer Thomas Paprocki (pictured) cites an unnamed cardinal's views on how the Church should minister to LGBTQ people and divorced and remarried Catholics.

While he doesn't name Cardinal Robert McElroy, Paprocki quotes directly from a 24 January article the cardinal wrote for America magazine.

In it, McElroy called for a Church that favours "radical inclusion" of everyone, regardless of circumstances and conformance with Church doctrine.

To back his views, Paprocki's essay cites several passages in the Code of Canon Law and draws on the Catechism of the Catholic Church and St Pope John Paul II's Ad Tuendam Fidem ("To Protect the Faith").

Pointing to these, he said anyone who denies "settled Catholic teaching" on issues like homosexuality and "embraces heresy" is automatically excommunicated from the Church.

The pope has the authority and the obligation to remove a heretical cardinal from office, or dismiss outright from the clerical state, Paprocki wrote.

Referencing McElroy's critique of "a theology of eucharistic coherence that multiplies barriers to the grace and gift of the eucharist," Paprocki claimed: "Unfortunately, it is not uncommon today to hear Catholic leaders affirm unorthodox views that, not too long ago, would have been espoused only by heretics."

Although McElroy and Paprocki were both available for comment, in a 28 February interview Paprocki said he did not intend to single out a particular cardinal for criticism. Rather, he "intended the discussion to be more rhetorical.

"I think the reason I did this is because this debate has become so public at this point that it seems to have passed beyond the point of just some private conversations between bishops."

The bishop's explanation struck some observers as disingenuous.

Jesuit Fr Tom Reese, a journalist who has covered the US bishops for decades, says Paprocki's essay reflects deep divisions in the US Catholic hierarchy, plus a level of public animosity, open disagreement and strident rhetoric among bishops.

Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI would not have tolerated it, he says.

"On the other hand, there wouldn't have been this kind of discussion under John Paul II because the Vatican would have shut it down.

"Francis has opened the Church up for discussion again and [conservative bishops] just don't like it. They're trying to shut it down by using this kind of inflammatory rhetoric, even against cardinals," Reese said.

Cathleen Kaveny, a law and theology professor, says Paprocki "should know better as a canon lawyer" than to accuse someone of heresy - which is a formal charge.

Paprocki is running together statements and teachings of different levels of authority in the Church and claiming any disagreement amounts to heresy. "And that's just false," Kaveny says.

"The underlying question ... is whether development in church doctrine can take place.

"I would recommend people read John Henry Newman on that, and look at the history of the church's teaching on usury while they're at it."

Source

• NCR Online

The emphasis is, at once, on a list of ideas about the universe, human life, purpose and what, if anything, is beyond the universe.

Once I have such a list, I can then tick the ones I also accept and a cross off those I consider weird, wrong or simply crazy.

Interestingly, this is the same way we approach various philosophies, political systems or any number of off-the-shelf spirituality books.

The world is a marketplace of various beliefs and you can either buy the "whole package" (a whole religion with every one of its beliefs — if you can list them all); the "lite version" (what you take as the key items you can believe and then skip the bits that look silly or awkward or just too complicated); or you can have the "pick & choose" selection that you make to order.

Ticking all the boxes

Few ever question the idea that, for example, if you wish to be a Catholic, then it's key that you sign-up to "all the Catholic beliefs".

Moreover, people sometimes say "I am no longer a Catholic" or "I could not be a Catholic" because "I no longer" or "cannot believe X, Y. or Z.

This focus on beliefs - statements that demand acceptance - is not only reinforced by our culture of ideologies, but by a long history of the western Churches fighting over which is the exact beliefs and statements of beliefs that are declared orthodox.

All this fighting, and this emphasis on having the right set of beliefs, makes it even harder to distinguish between a religion and a philosophy, or between a religion and a political party.

Indeed, for many Christians today the notion of a "party line" is almost identical with "orthodoxy" and with belonging to a religion.

A good example of this would be some Catholics, including some bishops, in the United States.

This confusion is demonstrated in these Catholics and bishops conduct debates or discussions with their fellow Christians - their brothers and sisters in Christ - with the same venom, bitterness and suspicion that they conduct their party politics.

While I might condemn such animosity-driven politics that damages the public forum and the common good, I am scandalized when I find the same style being used in the name of Christianity or Catholicism.

It is another instance of what I call "the Sin of Cain": sibling rising against sibling, made worse because it is done in the name of the God who is Father of each of us.

But is there any other way to view a religion?

Where do I belong?

Religion is also a means of belonging.

It gives me a home with others so that I can share a vision, help and be helped, and affirm with others all that is part and parcel of my humanity.

I need, we all need, to belong more than we need a box of doctrines or set of beliefs.

If I do not belong, my humanity is enfeebled.

I need to exercise care for others and I need the care of others.

Cut off, I wither.

While we might find Robinson Crusoe a good read, and there is a streak of devil-take-the-hindmost individualism in our culture, it is actually a vision of horror.

We really are social animals!

During these COVID-19 lockdowns, we have started to discover this as a reality in a way that we could not have imagined a year ago.

On the one hand, people's mental health is suffering when they are cut off from others. They know just how much they need to be with others and with Zoom, Skype and Facetime as poor substitutes, people need to know that they are not forgotten.

We need to belong!

The full verse reads: "See what love the Father has given us that we should be called children of God; and so we are".

On the other hand, we have discovered the joy and energy that comes from looking out for others.

Knowing that, somehow, we all belong to one another, we are, each of us, the keeper of our sisters and brothers.

We want to be able to know that there is an "us" and that we are working together. And - working with people we might never have met before COVID-19 - that belonging to the human family is more important than divisions caused by lists of beliefs that can set us at loggerheads.

Perhaps we need now to think of religion as belonging before we think of it as believing?

Frightening consequences of truly belonging

This is, of course, a frightening prospect for many people.

They love the idea that, for example, the Catholic Church is a monolith. Unflinching it stands there - and there are clear lines indicating who is "in" and who is "out".

This attracts many who see themselves as the great champions of faith and it appeals to those who want the Catholic Church as their enemy - and an enemy that is monolith is an easy target. Both sides see a very close link between religion and social control and cohesion.

However, the Church is first and foremost a place of belonging: we are welcomed into the Church at baptism. We become a brother or a sister of both the Christ and of one another - look at how we address one another at our formal gatherings - and we become daughters and sons of the Father in heaven - look at how we pray: "Our Father..."

It is as this community, this Church, that we profess our faith: it is our common vision, hope, and commitment.

It is not a series of questions on a form such as we might get at a customs barrier where you are excluded if you do not tick the right boxes.

Once one begins to think of the Church as a place of belonging, then the fireworks begin.

It must be a community of welcoming and acceptance that works together.

It must be a community that puts forgiveness and reconciliation close to its centre.

So a sacrament of reconciliation makes sense, but not if reconciliation and healing are seen as "payback time" or a moral rectitude test. Such a community must have healing at its centre, but not if that is seen as a re-modelling to a standard issue.

And we must work together because belonging must be an awareness of all our human bonds and belongings.

Consequently...

• Will this be a "home" where every race will be made to feel valued? Will Black Lives Matter in this place - along with people of every other colour? We might glibly say "yes" but we are less than 200 years since we Catholics defended slavery as acceptable within the divine plan!
• Will this be a place where we accept people as they are? "Yes" comes the resounding answer. But will the gay couple see their love as valued in this community as that of the straight couple?
• What about the couple; each divorced from their former partner and is willing to join up with us so that we have a common pilgrimage of faith?
• Will they have a place at our table where they can share the loaf and cup of the Lord with us as siblings? We all know too many clergy and groups who have used the Lord's Supper as if it were a reward for rule-keeping rather than food to help us travel on together.
• And, will we work together for humanity and the health of the planet? Again, "it goes without saying" is our response! But what about our being willing to change lifestyles and helping one another in putting pressure on governments for this?

The people of the covenant

Belonging sounds so sweet: it rapidly becomes the challenge to faith that is far more demanding than any ticking of credal boxes.

Faith can sound so much like an ideology that we can pervert to communities that make suffering humanity welcome into stifling agenda-driven parties.

Our history - back to the time of Abraham - is not that of God revealing secrets to us but of his making a covenant with us.

Jesus is not a guru. He never wrote a book to convey his ideas. Nor did he have a party-line.

Jesus is the one whom we look back to as making us a new people: children of the Father.

So in Christianity, as in Judaism, belonging is what is fundamental.

• Thomas O'Loughlin is a priest of the Catholic Diocese of Arundel and Brighton, emeritus professor of historical theology at the University of Nottingham (UK) and director of the Centre of Applied Theology, UK.
• His latest award-winning book is Eating Together, Becoming One: Taking Up Pope Francis's Call to Theologians (Liturgical Press, 2019).
• Image: Flashes of Insight

Archbishop Stephan Burger of Freiburg im Breisgau said the German bishops' conference "will revise" the ecclesiastical labor laws, according to a December 9 interview with the German news website Morgenweb.

He said the changes will be made in the interests of maintaining the Church's "credibility" in the eyes of the general public. Continue reading

The denial follows an article circulated by an Italian news agency claiming that Pope Francis had asked Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, president of the Pontifical Council for the Family, to draft a document to find "a solution" so that those who are "remarried divorced persons" could receive Communion.

The report, which was widely distributed through various news and media agencies in Italy, also claimed that the Holy Father's move was prompted by requests from "many Italian bishops".

But the pontifical council issued an announcement on April 25 to deny the report.

The brief statement said: "The Pontifical Council for the Family declares that there is no basis to the news, circulated by some press agencies, that a document on distributing Communion to remarried divorced persons is being prepared."

Especially in Europe, liberal Catholics have argued strongly for a change in the Church law that bars Catholics who are divorced and remarried (without annulment of the earlier marriage) from receiving the Eucharist.

Pope Benedict XVI called for a new outreach to divorced and remarried Catholics, urging priests to include them in pastoral plans.

Last October, the Synod of Bishops confirmed the need for pastoral care of Catholics living in irregular marital situations.

In the new book Pope Francis: Conversations with Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the Pontiff said: "It's a very strong value in Catholicism, marriage until separated by death. Still, today in Catholic doctrine the faithful who get divorced and remarry are reminded that they are not excommunicated. While they live in a situation on the margin of the sacrament of marriage, they are asked to integrate in the life of the parish."

Sources:

Catholic World News

Vatican Information Service

Daytona Beach News-Journal

Image: Cathedral Parish, Madison