Dilution of Doctrine
by Ross Douthat, New York Times:
LAST weekend Tim Kaine, the Democratic vice-presidential nominee and a churchgoing Catholic, briefly escaped obscurity by telling an audience of L.G.B.T. activists that he expects his church to eventually bless and celebrate same-sex marriages.
In short order his bishop, Francis X. DiLorenzo of Richmond, Va., had a statement out declaring that the Catholic understanding of marriage would remain “unchanged and resolute.”
In a normal moment, it would be the task of this conservative Catholic scribbler to explain why the governor is wrong and the bishop is right, why scripture and tradition make it impossible for Catholicism to simply reinvent its sexual ethics.
But this is not a normal moment in the Catholic Church. As the governor was making his prediction, someone leaked a letter from Pope Francis to the Argentine bishops, praising their openness to allowing some divorced-and-remarried Catholics to receive communion.
The “private” letter was the latest move in a papal dance that’s been going on since Francis was elected. The pope clearly wants to admit remarried Catholics to communion, and he tried by hook and crook to get the world’s bishops to agree. But he faced intense resistance from conservatives, who pointed out that this reform risked evacuating the church’s teaching that sacramental marriages are indissoluble and second marriages adulterous.
The conservative resistance couldn’t be overcome directly without courting a true crisis. So Francis has proceeded indirectly, offering studied ambiguity in official publications combined with personal suggestions of where he really stands.
This dance has effectively left Catholicism with two teachings on marriage and the sacraments. The traditional rule is inscribed in the church’s magisterium, and no mere papal note can abrogate it.
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