Question 10.168

10.168 Last December [2014] Reinhard Cardinal Marx, president of the German Bishops’ Conference, said: “Throughout the world, the search for a theologically responsible and pastorally appropriate way of assisting Catholics who are divorced or divorced and civilly remarried is one of the urgent challenges for pastoral ministry to families and married couples in the context of evangelization.” What is your viewpoint on this subject, which figured among the questions at the last synod in October 2014?

I have a lot of respect for Reinhard Cardinal Marx. But this very general statement seems to me to be the expression of mere ideology that they want to impose hastily on the whole Church. In my experience, specifically after twentythree years as archbishop of Conakry and nine years as secretary of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, the question of “Catholics who are divorced or divorced and civilly remarried” is not an urgent challenge for the Church of Africa or Asia. On the contrary, this is an obsession of some Western Churches that want to impose so-called “theologically responsible and pastorally appropriate” solutions that radically contradict the teaching of Jesus and of the Church’s Magisterium.

The primary urgent task in mission countries is to design a pastoral ministry whose sole objective is to answer the question: What does it mean to be truly Christian in the present historical and cultural situation of our globalized societies? How can we form fearless, generous Christians, zealous disciples of Jesus? For a Christian adult, faith in Christ cannot be an intuition, an emotion, or a feeling. For a Christian, the faith must become the shape, the mold of his whole life, private and public, personal and social.

Whatever the current difficulties may be, Christ’s disciples must assert the demands of faith in Christ without reticence and without compromise, in theory and in practice, because they are the demands and precepts of God.

The second urgent task is to form solid Christian families, for the Church, which is God’s family, is built on the foundation of Christian families that are sacramentally united and witnesses to this momentous mystery that Christ has given to us eternally.

The truth of the Gospel must always be lived out in the difficult crucible of involvement in social, economic, and cultural life as a whole. Faced with today’s moral crisis, in particular the crisis of marriage and the family, the Church can contribute to the search for just and constructive solutions, but she has no other option but to take part in that search by vigorously citing the unique and distinctive things that faith in Jesus Christ brings to the human enterprise. In this sense, it is not possible to imagine any conflict or tension whatsoever between magisterial teaching and pastoral practice. The idea of putting magisterial teaching in a beautiful display case while separating it from pastoral practice, which then could evolve along with circumstances, fashions, and passions, is a sort of heresy, a dangerous schizophrenic pathology.

I therefore solemnly state that the Church in Africa is staunchly opposed to any rebellion against the teaching of Jesus and of the Magisterium.

If I may make a historical reference: in the fourth century, the Church of Africa and the Council of Carthage decreed priestly celibacy. Then, in the sixteenth century, that same African Council served as the foundation on which Pope Pius IV based his arguments against pressures from the German princes, who asked him to authorize the marriage of priests. Today, too, the Church of Africa is committed in the name of the Lord Jesus to keeping unchanged the teaching of God and of the Church about the indissolubility of marriage: what God has joined, let no man put asunder.

How could a synod go back on the constant teaching that was unified and explained in greater depth by Blessed Paul VI, Saint John Paul II, and Benedict XVI?

I place my trust in the fidelity of Francis.

In January 2015, I had the honor of accompanying him during his journey to Sri Lanka and the Philippines. In Manila, his talk on the family was particularly forceful: “Let us be on guard against colonization by new ideologies. There are forms of ideological colonization which are out to destroy the family. They are not born of dreams, of prayers, of closeness to God or the mission which God gave us; they come from without, and for that reason I am saying that they are forms of colonization. Let’s not lose the freedom of the mission which God has given us, the mission of the family. Just as our peoples, at a certain moment of their history, were mature enough to say ‘no’ to all forms of political colonization, so too in our families we need to be very wise, very shrewd, very strong, in order to say ‘no’ to all attempts at an ideological colonization of our families. We need to ask Saint Joseph, the friend of the angel, to send us the inspiration to know when we can say ‘yes’ and when we have to say ‘no’. … I think of Blessed Paul VI. At a time when the problem of population growth was being raised, he had the courage to defend openness to life in families. He knew the difficulties that are there in every family, and so in his Encyclical he was very merciful towards particular cases, and he asked confessors to be very merciful and understanding in dealing with particular cases. But he also had a broader vision: he looked at the peoples of the earth and he saw this threat of families being destroyed for lack of children. Paul VI was courageous; he was a good pastor and he warned his flock of the wolves who were coming. From his place in heaven, may he bless this evening!”