" La questione fatale del divorzio " : Get ready. We’re going to be hearing a lot more on this subject in the very near future.

A Revolution on Marriage – in Rome?

By Robert Royal 

On Saturday, Il Foglio, the most important conservative newspaper in Italy, published the complete text of a long opening discourse given at the Vatican by Cardinal Walter Kasper to the Consistory on the Family, a preparatory meeting for the Extraordinary Synod on the Family that will take place October 5-19 in Rome. 

http://www.ilfoglio.it/media/uploads/2011/VaticanoEsclusivo.pdf

The text is still only available in Italian (though some of the significant passages are in English here). But that won’t last long because the good Cardinal, as he described it, has “posed questions,” highly controversial questions, about the pastoral treatment of divorced and remarried Catholics, particularly whether they can be re-admitted to Communion.

The lecture was not intended to remain secret – in fact, it was going to be published in book form, presumably with other materials. But appearing suddenly as it has, and with seemingly revolutionary suggestions drawn from some ancient practices, it’s bound to become a hot topic in coming months. Some commentators are already saying that if the Church does not permit the divorced and remarried to receive Communion now, we will have another period of widespread shock and anger, similar to what followed Paul VI’s 1968 publication ofHumanae vitae, which re-affirmed Christian teaching on contraception.

That gets several carts before several horses. Kasper’s text is cautious and tentative – though he seems to point in a revolutionary direction. He affirms Jesus’ prohibition of divorce while probing how to deal with what has become a difficult modern problem.

Just about every Catholic today knows someone in irregular matrimonial circumstances. Divorce, even among practicing Catholics, is all-too-common and – given the sexual madness and economic and cultural pressures of modern societies – not always the fault of one of the parties. That’s one reason that several popes – John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and now Francis – have suggested exploring pastoral solutions. The Vatican spokesman Fr. Federico Lombardi has said that Kasper's thinking is in tune with the pope's.

That said, however, the lecture gives the appearance of trying to do something that, at least on the surface, seems self-contradictory. Kasper speaks of the need for a “paradigm shift” in which the Church should become a Good Samaritan to those crying out for relief. But in the very same passage, he affirms the indissolubility of marriage, which “cannot be abandoned or undone by appealing to a superficial understanding of cheapened mercy.”

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