Cardinal Walter Kasper's 'Gospel of the Family'

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2014-03-10 15:20:09 A+ A- print this page Invia articolo

Vatican Radio) The Gospel of the Family is the title of a book, to be published this week in German and Italian, featuring the reflection with which Cardinal Walter Kasper introduced the forthcoming Synod on the family to cardinals gathered with Pope Francis at February’s consistory. The retired German cardinal, who previously headed the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, made headlines when his words on why the Church must support divorced and remarried Catholics were leaked in the Italian press.

But Kasper told us the main purpose of his speech to the cardinals was to deepen the theological understanding of challenges facing the family, ahead of the first synod on that subject to be held in the Vatican next October. While the Church must remain faithful to its teaching on the indissolubility of the sacrament of marriage, he said, it is vital to “help, support, encourage” those experiencing difficulties in their family life….

Listen to Philippa Hitchen’s interview with Cardinal Walter Kasper:.. RealAudioMP3

“I told the Pope from the very beginning that I have my opinions and the Pope encouraged me to speak about my opinions – he wanted an open discussion about an urgent problem….

http://en.radiovaticana.va/news/2014/03/10/cardinal_walter_kaspers_gospel_of_the_family/en1-780188

There is an audio of the interview at the link. Cardinal Kasper yesterday has started to receive the predictable backlash, as seen in this article:

A Rival Good to God’s: On Cardinal Kasper’s Divorce Proposal

April 29, 2014
by Tom Piatak

Divorce and remarriage looms large in one of the greatest Catholic novels of the last century. The narrator of Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited, Charles Ryder, is in love with Julia Flyte, and the two plan to cement their happiness by marrying once their respective divorces are finalized. Julia begins to have doubts when her brother Bridey refers to her and Charles “living in sin,” and she admits to Charles the accuracy of Bridey’s phrase: “‘Living in sin’; not just doing wrong, as I did when I went to America; doing wrong, knowing it is wrong, stopping doing it, forgetting. That’s not what they mean. That’s not Bridey’s pennyworth. He means just what it says in black and white.”

Julia overcomes these doubts, but calls off the marriage after she witnesses her father, long estranged from the Church, accept absolution on his deathbed. When Charles asks what she will do, Julia replies:

Just go on—alone. How can I tell what I shall do? You know the whole of me. You know I’m not one for a life of mourning. I’ve always been bad. Probably I shall be bad again, punished again. But the worse I am, the more I need God. I can’t shut myself off from his mercy. That is what it would mean; starting a life with you, without him. One can only hope to see one step ahead. But I saw today that there was one thing unforgivable—like things in the schoolroom, so bad they were unpunishable, that only mummy could deal with—the bad thing I was on the point of doing, that I’m not quite bad enough to do; to set up a rival good to God’s. Why should I be allowed to understand that, and not you, Charles? It may be because of mummy, nanny, Cordelia, Sebastian—perhaps Bridey and Mrs. Muspratt—keeping my name in their prayers; or it may be a private bargain between me and God, that if I give up this one thing I want so much, however bad I am, he won’t quite despair of me in the end.

Julia Flyte is, of course, a fictional character. But her attitude is thoroughly Christian. As St. John Paul II wrote in Familiaris Consortio: “The situation is similar for people who have undergone divorce, but, being well aware that the valid marriage bond is indissoluble, refrain from becoming involved in a new union and devote themselves solely to carrying out their family duties and the responsibilities of Christian life. In such cases their example of fidelity and Christian consistency takes on particular value as a witness before the world and the Church. Here it is even more necessary for the Church to offer continual love and assistance, without there being any obstacle to admission to the sacraments.”

The message being sent to the real life Julia Flytes by Cardinal Kasper’s proposal to admit remarried divorcees to Holy Communion without an annulment of their prior marriage is precisely the opposite. Rather than being praised as exemplars of “fidelity and Christian consistency,” divorced people who make the often great effort to live by Church teaching are being told that their sacrifice was needless. They should have done what they wanted and ignored what the Church taught. English priest Fr. Ray Blake recently highlighted a poignant example of this on his blog, where he recounted the case of “a man … who for over two decades has been living heroically in a ‘brother/sister’ relationship with an equally heroic woman whose first marriage broke down after ten years…. The man having read the text of the Cardinal’s speech asked, ‘Father, have we wasted the last 22 years?’ He said that he now felt his faith was undermined, that the struggle he and his ‘wife’ had engaged in was by the Cardinal’s teaching meaningless and vainglorious…. There are many men and women in this situation, the sacrifices they have made have been truly heroic, for me they are signs of grace and often heroic virtue, now it seems that they might well have wasted their lives, this is another of the signs that is being given.”

http://www.crisismagazine.com/2014/a-rival-good-to-gods-cardinal-kaspers-divorce-proposal?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+CrisisMagazine+%28Crisis+Magazine%29

In this thought-provoking address given to the College of Cardinals, Cardinal Walter Kasper, whom Pope Francis has called "a superb theologian," discusses everything that is beautiful about the family without avoiding its problems.

According to Cardinal Kasper, the family functions as a small "domestic church" that can be a privileged route to evangelization. He speaks of this "domestic church" in a broad sense that includes the nuclear family as well as communities, parish groups, and other organizations.

Cardinal Kasper considers the rediscovery of the "gospel of the family," the family's place in the order of creation, and the vision of the family in the Book of Genesis and in God's plan. The cardinal then reflects on the structures of sin within the family, including family problems, tensions between men and women, and the suffering of women and mothers.

Finally, he concludes with a discussion of the family in the Christian order of redemption, drawing from the gospels and other New Testament texts about the family, such as St. Paul's Letter to the Ephesians. He discusses marriage as a sacrament and its sanctifying grace.

The cardinal also mentions the issue of those who have remarried after divorce. He stresses the need to unite pastoral care, the words of Jesus, and an understanding of divine mercy in responding to these Catholics.

Walter Kasper is a German cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church. He is president Emeritus of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, having served as its president from 2001 to 2010.

http://www.columba.ie/index.php/the-gospel-of-the-family.html