by Mark de Vries
Cardinal Walter Kasper has come increasingly under fire from fellow cardinals and others in the
Church for his comments about marriage, divorce and Communion.
In general it is hard to disagree with much of what the cardinal says. He is right that the synod is being reduced to this single topic. His words about the importance of family and the Church’s defence of and communication about it are also important, as are his concerns for those in a good, Christian, loving second relationship while their first marriage is still
canonically valid. There is a problem there, but not with the quality of the second relationship.
And that’s where the problem lies. Too many people shift the focus to those second relationships and how the mean Church wants to destroy them and the happiness of those involved. That is a clear untruth. The fact remains that a marriage is a sacrament, and therefore something that can’t be broken by human hands (we simply need to listen to Christ’s words: “What God has joined, let not man put asunder” (Mark 10:9)). So when a marriage exists (we’re looking at existence here, not quality), there can’t be a second marriage next to
it. This is, in essence, the basis of the argument. All discussion and pastoral care need to be built on it.
Cardinal Kasper’s mistake, in my opinion, is that he sweeps aside this basis when he says, “One can’t turn [the Gospel] into just a legal codex alone and then say that there can be no discussion about this point any more. That makes the synod a joke.”
There must be discussion, certainly. But there are also parameters, which are set by Christ. If we want to follow him, we must accept and work within his parameters. The Codex of Canon Law is the result of centuries of understanding those parameters and translating them for a host of situations, places and times.
Excerpted from a blog by Mark de Vries, a 35-year-old lay Catholic from the Netherlands.