Douthat,
Ross
Sep 13, 2015
IT'S
been 18 months since Pope Francis invited Cardinal Walter Kasper to raise anew
the argument that divorced and remarried Catholics should be allowed to receive
communion. That invitation touched off a civil war within the church's
hierarchy, pitting cardinal against cardinal, theologian against theologian;
the conflict has reverberated across books, speeches, and op-ed pages, and it's
dominated the church's synod on the family, whose second meeting looms this
fall.
It's clear that this was all intentional: That Francis
wanted a big internal argument over marriage and communion, that he
deliberately started this civil war.
The question that remains unanswered, though, is how the
pope intends to finish it.
Ever since last fall, Vatican tea-leaf readers have been
busy, looking for signs that Kasper might be falling out of favor, or
alternatively, for evidence that Francis might be stacking the synod's deck in
favor of communion for the remarried.
Now, though, the pope has actually made a major move on
marriage. He's changing canon law governing annulments, making it much easier
for divorced Catholics to have their first marriage declared invalid, null and
void.
The changes do not merely streamline the existing annulment
process, as many expected, by removing a mandatory review of each decision.
They promise a fast-track option, to be implemented at the discretion of local
bishops, that would allow annulments to be granted in no more than 45 days if
both parties consent and certain personal factors are involved. Since that list
of factors seems capacious and varied, in effect the pope is offering bishops
the chance to expedite most annulment petitions involving consenting
ex-spouses, without fear of rebuke from Rome.
This is a major liberalization of the church's rules,
probably the most significant of Francis' pontificate to date. In the United
States, home to about half the world's annulments, the process already errs on
the side of the petitioners, but even in the U.S. the path is lengthy and
rigorous; it's just that the American Catholic Church has the resources and personnel
to keep the wheels moving. Whereas the new policy might actually make the
process easier than secular divorce, depending on what individual bishops
choose to do.
What the new rules do not do, however, is explicitly change
the church's teaching on the indissolubility of marriage, in the way that
admitting the remarried to communion absent an annulment would. This may seem
like theological hair-splitting, but from the point of view of Catholic unity
it's crucial. Fast-tracking annulments weakens the credibility of Catholic
doctrine, in both implication and effect. But it does not formally reverse the
church's teaching about the nature of marriage and communion.
Which is why annulment reform has long been seen as a
possible compromise between the two sides of this Catholic civil war. What
Francis has done is clearly a liberal move, more liberal than I expected. But
it's still not the wider opening on sex and marriage that many progressive
Catholics sought, since it doesn't imply (as Kasper's proposal does) that
cohabiting and same-sex couples -- and, in African societies, the polygamous --
might also be welcomed to communion. And while it gives conservative Catholics
grounds for dismay and critique, it doesn't directly undercut belief in the
pope's infallibility or the permanence of doctrine.
But what does it mean that Francis has made this move
pre-emptively, before the next half of the synod begins? Perhaps, as the
veteran Vaticanista John Allen suggests, he wants to dial down the synod's
temperature, avoid more pitched battles over Kasper's proposal, and create
"space for other issues to emerge." This seems plausible, especially
since the new rules address many of the cases that presumably made the Kasper
proposal appealing in the first place.
At the same time, advocates of opening communion more
directly aren't obviously giving up the fight -- and their ranks still include
many of Francis' friends and allies, in his own Jesuit order and the hierarchy.
From the liberal perspective, the new annulment rules may simply move the goal
posts farther in their direction, setting up a future settlement that's even
more favorable to their ambitions.
For instance: They might hope the annulment ruling's
emphasis on the local bishop's authority would be extended to issues of
sexuality generally -- that Francis, in a post-synod document, would avoid
overtly endorsing communion for people in irregular situations, but use
language that makes it clear to bishops that they need fear no repercussions if
they go the liberal way. (Indeed, by tolerating a German hierarchy in open
revolt on these issues, the pope is effectively doing this already. )
What this liberal-friendly settlement wouldn't do, however,
is actually settle anything for the church. Instead, it would harden the
church's existing divisions, with increasingly divergent Catholicisms in
different parishes, dioceses, and countries.
Which remains the great danger of Francis' current course.
He may have planned to start a civil war and then cleverly resolve it. But he
could end up making that conflict more enduring, a split that widens and a
wound that doesn't heal.
