During his first Angelus
address, Pope Francis recommended a work of theology that “has done me
so much good” because it “says that mercy changes everything; it changes
the world by making it less cold and more fair.” That book is Mercy: The Essence of the Gospel and the Key to Christian Life
by Cardinal Walter Kasper, which has just been published by Paulist
Press. Before serving as president of the Pontifical Council for
Promoting Christian Unity (2001-2010), Kasper was bishop of
Rottenburg-Stuttgart (1989-1999). He has taught theology at the
University of Tubingen, the Westphalian University of Munster, and the
Catholic University of America. Last week, associate editors Matthew
Boudway and Grant Gallicho spoke with the cardinal in New York. This
interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Commonweal: In your book
Mercy, you argue that mercy is basic to God’s nature. How is mercy key to understanding God?
Cardinal Walter Kasper: The doctrine on God was
arrived at by ontological understanding—God is absolute being and so on,
which is not wrong. But the biblical understanding is much deeper and
more personal. God’s relation to Moses in the Burning Bush is not “I
am,” but “I am
with you. I am
for you. I am going with
you.” In this context, mercy is already very fundamental in the Old
Testament. The God of the Old Testament is not an angry God but a
merciful God, if you read the Psalms. This ontological understanding of
God was so strong that justice became the main attribute of God, not
mercy. Thomas Aquinas clearly said that mercy is much more fundamental
because God does not answer to the demands of our rules. Mercy is the
faithfulness of God to his own being as love. Because God is love. And
mercy is the love revealed to us in concrete deeds and words. So mercy
becomes not only the central attribute of God, but also the key of
Christian existence. Be merciful as God is merciful. We have to imitate
God’s mercy.
CWL: Why is it so necessary to retrieve that understanding today?
Kasper: The twentieth century was a very dark
century, with two world wars, totalitarian systems, gulags,
concentration camps, the Shoah, and so on. And the beginning of the
twenty-first century is not much better. People need mercy. They need
forgiveness. That’s why Pope John XXIII wrote in his spiritual biography
that mercy is the most beautiful attribute of God. In his famous speech
at the opening of Vatican II, he said that the church has always
resisted the errors of the day, often with great severity—but now we
have to use the medicine of mercy. That was a major shift. John Paul II
lived through the latter part of the Second World War and then Communism
in Poland, and he saw all the suffering of his people and his own
suffering. For him mercy was very important. Benedict XVI’s first
encyclical was
God Is Love. And now Pope Francis, who has the
experience of the southern hemisphere, where two-thirds of Catholics are
living, many of them poor people—he has made mercy one of the central
points of his pontificate. I think it’s an answer to the signs of the
times.
CWL: It was reported that Pope Francis asked a young
Jesuit what he was working on, and when the man said he was studying
fundamental theology, the pope joked, “I can’t imagine anything more
boring!” It seems that Francis wants to emphasize the role of pastoral
theology. What does that mean for the practice of theology?
Kasper: I don’t see a contradiction between dogmatic
theology—which is what I studied—and pastoral theology. Theology
without a pastoral dimension becomes an abstract ideology. It was always
important during my time as an academic to visit parishes, hospitals,
and so on. When I was responsible for Catholic relations with the Third
World, I visited many slums in Africa, Latin America, and Asia. For me,
those experiences were important because the word of God is not a
doctrine. It’s an address to people. Pastoral work without a certain
doctrinal basis is not possible. It becomes arbitrary or just
good-natured behavior. Therefore dogmatic theology and pastoral theology
are interrelated; they need each other.
CWL: There’s obviously a connection between mercy
and forgiveness. Do you think in the Christian understanding there can
be forgiveness without reconciliation? Is forgiveness something that
necessarily involves two parties—one to offer the gift and another to
accept it? Or is it simply a matter of a readiness to forgive that does
not depend on another person’s willingness to accept forgiveness or
acknowledge the need for it?
Kasper: You can start with the Latin term
misericordia,
which means mercy. Misericordia means having a heart for the poor—poor
in a large sense, not only material poverty, but also relational
poverty, spiritual poverty, cultural poverty, and so on. This is not
only heart, not only an emotion, but also an active attitude—I have to
change the situation of the other as much as I can. But mercy is also
not opposed to justice. Justice is a minimum that we are obliged to do
to the other to respect him as a human being—to give him what he must
have. But mercy is the
maximum—it goes beyond justice. Justice
alone can be very cold. Mercy sees a concrete person. In the parable of
the Good Samaritan, the neighbor was the person the Samaritan met in the
street. He’s not obliged to help. It’s not a question of justice. But
he goes beyond. He was moved in his heart. He bent down in the dirt and
helped this man. That’s mercy.
Mercy is the fulfillment of justice because what people need is not
only formal recognition but love. You ask about forgiveness: mercy is
also forgiveness, but it should not be reduced to forgiveness. It goes
beyond forgiveness. Often my willingness to forgive is a condition for
the other to open himself, but it is not in my hands. I can offer
forgiveness, or I can ask, “Please forgive me,” but I cannot do more. If
his heart is closed, I cannot change it. I can pray for him, I can ask,
I can show my good will. More I cannot do. Of course, without
forgiveness, no reconciliation is possible. It’s a condition of
reconciliation. But the other has to accept it. It’s a question of
freedom. To forgive is my freedom, and the other is free to accept it or
not.
CWL: In your book you refer to John Paul II’s second
encyclical, in which he writes that justice alone is not enough, and
that sometimes the highest justice can end up becoming the highest
injustice. Has that been the case inside the church itself, especially
with respect to the way the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith
has dealt with certain theologians?
Kasper: Mercy concerns not only individuals. It also
an imperative for the church itself. The church defined itself at the
Second Vatican Council as a sacrament of God’s grace. How can the church
be sacramental, a sign and instrument of mercy, when she herself
doesn’t live out mercy? So many people do not perceive the church as
merciful. It’s hard. John XXIII said that we must use the medicine of
mercy
within the church. Mercy is also a critical point for the
church. She has to preach it. We have a sacrament of mercy—the
sacrament of penance, but we have to reevaluate it, I think. And it has
to be done in social behavior and in social works. Pope Francis has said
we must become a poor church for the poor—that’s his program. In this
respect, he begins a new phase of the reception of the council.
CWL: You also note that mercy and justice cannot be
finally established here on earth, and that whoever has tried to create
heaven on earth has instead created hell on earth. You say that this is
true of ecclesiastical perfectionists too—those who conceive of the
church as a club for the pure. How dominant is that view among church
leadership today?
Kasper: There are those who believe the church is
for the pure. They forget that the church is also a church of sinners.
We all are sinners. And I am happy that’s true because if it were not
then I would not belong to the church. It’s a matter of humility. John
Paul II offered his mea culpas—for the teaching office of the church,
and also for other behaviors. I have the impression that this is very
important for Pope Francis. He does not like the people in the church
who are only condemning others.
When it comes to the CDF’s criticisms of some theologians, there was
not always due process. That’s evident, and here we must change our
measures. This is also a problem when it comes to the question of
Communion for divorced and remarried people, which is now under
consideration in preparation for the Synod of Bishops this autumn. On
the other hand, we have positive signs of mercy within the church. We
have the saints, Mother Teresa—there are many Mother Teresas. This is
also a reality of the church.
CWL: In your speech to open the consistory in March [published in English as
The Gospel of the Family ],
you noted that, for the sake of their children, many deserted partners
are dependent on a new partnership, a civil marriage, which they cannot
quit without new guilt. Later in your speech, you talk about the
possibility that a divorced and remarried Catholic might, after a period
of penance, receive Communion again. You say this would be a small
number of people, the ones who really want the sacrament and who
understand the reality of their situation and are responsive to the
concerns that their pastor would have. Are you envisioning a situation
in which a divorced and remarried Catholic—a Catholic with a new
partnership and a civil marriage—could not live with his or her new
partner “as brother and sister” without destroying that partnership,
since the other partner might not allow the relationship to continue on
those terms. Is that the kind of scenario you had in mind?
Kasper: The failure of a first marriage is not only
related to bad sexual behavior. It can come from a failure to realize
what was promised before God and before the other partner and the
church. Therefore, it failed; there were shortcomings. This has to be
confessed. But I cannot think of a situation in which a human being has
fallen into a gap and there is no way out. Often he cannot return to
the first marriage. If this
is possible, there should be a reconciliation, but often that’s not possible.
In the Creed we say we believe in the forgiveness of sin. If there
was this shortcoming, and it has been repented for—is absolution not
possible? My question goes through the sacrament of penance, through
which we have access to Holy Communion. But penance is the most
important thing—repentance of what went wrong, and a new orientation.
The new quasi-family or the new partnership must be solid, lived in a
Christian way. A time of new orientation—
metanoia—would be
necessary. Not punishing people but a new orientation because divorce is
always a tragedy. It takes time to work it out and to find a new
perspective. My question—not a solution, but a question—is this: Is
absolution not possible in this case? And if absolution, then also Holy
Communion? There are many themes, many arguments in our Catholic
tradition that could allow this way forward.
To live together as brother and sister? Of course I have high respect
for those who are doing this. But it’s a heroic act, and heroism is not
for the average Christian. That could also create new tensions.
Adultery is not only wrong sexual behavior. It’s to leave a
familiaris consortio,
a communion, and to establish a new one. But normally it’s also the
sexual relations in such a communion, so I can’t say whether it’s
ongoing adultery. Therefore I would say, yes, absolution is possible.
Mercy means God gives to everybody who converts and repents a new
chance.
CWL: A defender of the church’s current teaching and
pastoral practice would say that absolution requires penance, and that
entails a firm purpose of amendment—that is, that you do not intend to
go back to the sinful situation as though nothing has changed. You
intend not only not to sin anymore but to avoid “the near occasion of
sin.” The critics of your proposal would say, yes, we’re all for
absolution for people like that, but it may require what you describe as
a heroic adjustment of their lives for them to be properly disposed to
receive Communion.
Kasper: I have high respect for such people. But
whether I can impose it is another question. But I would say that people
must do what is possible in their situation. We cannot as human beings
always do the ideal, the best. We must do the best possible in a given
situation. A position between rigorism and laxism—laxism is not
possible, of course, because it would be against the call to holiness of
Jesus. But also rigorism is not the tradition of the church.
Alphonsus Liguori was a rigorist at the beginning. Then he worked
with simple people near Naples and found out that it’s not possible. And
he was a confessor. Then he worked out this system of
equiprobabalism—where there are arguments for and against, and in these
cases you can choose. I’m very sympathetic to this. And of course
Alphonsus Liguori is the patron of moral theology. We aren’t in bad
company if we rely on him. And Thomas Aquinas wrote on the virtue of
prudence, which does not deny a common rule, but you have to apply it to
a concrete and often very complex situation. So I think there are
arguments from the tradition.
CWL: So, just to be clear, when you talk a divorced
and remarried Catholic not being able to fulfill the rigorist’s
requirements without incurring a new guilt, what would he or she be
guilty of?
Kasper: The breakup of the second family. If there
are children you cannot do it. If you’re engaged to a new partner,
you’ve given your word, and so it’s not possible.
CWL: In your address to the consistory, you ask
whether we can, “in the present situation, presuppose without further
ado that the engaged couple shares the belief in the mystery that is
signified by the sacrament and that they really understand and affirm
the canonical conditions for the validity of the marriage.” You ask
whether the presumption of validity from which canon law proceeds is
often “a legal fiction.” But can the church afford
not to make
this presumption? How could the church continue to marry couples in good
faith if it assumed that many of them were not really capable of
entering into sacramental marriage because they were, as you put it
somewhere else in your speech, “baptized pagans”?
Kasper: That’s a real problem. I’ve spoken to the
pope himself about this, and he said he believes that 50 percent of
marriages are not valid. Marriage is a sacrament. A sacrament
presupposes faith. And if the couple only want a bourgeois ceremony in a
church because it’s more beautiful, more romantic, than a civil
ceremony, you have to ask whether there was faith, and whether they
really accepted all the conditions of a valid sacramental marriage—that
is, unity, exclusivity, and also indissolubility. The couples, when they
get married, they want it because it’s stable. But many think, “Well,
if we fail, we have the right.” And then already the principle is
denied. Many canon lawyers tell me that today in our pluralistic
situation we cannot presuppose that couples really assent to what the
church requires. Often it is also ignorance. Therefore you have to
emphasize and to strengthen prematrimonial catechesis. It’s often done
in a very bureaucratic way. No, we have to provide catechesis. I know
some parishes in Rome where couples have to attend catechesis, and the
pastor himself does it. We must do much more in prematrimonial
catechesis and use pastoral work and so on because we cannot presuppose
that everybody who is a formal Christian also has the faith. It wouldn’t
be realistic.
CWL: But you can imagine the outcry there would be
if priests regularly told couples, “I can’t marry you because I don’t
really think that you believe in the things people have to believe in
order to get married.”
Kasper: That's why there must be dialogue between
the couple and the priest, who should teach them what it means to marry
in the church. You can’t presume that both partners know what they are
doing.
CWL: You also talk about the difference between the Eastern Orthodox principle of
oikonomia and the Western principle of
epikeia.
Could you explain the difference between those things, and how it’s
important in questions such as how the church treats divorced and
remarried Catholics?
Kasper: The Orthodox have the principle of
oikonomia,
which allows them in concrete cases to dispense, as Catholics would
say, the first marriage and to permit a second in the church. But they
do not consider the second marriage a sacrament. That’s important. They
make that distinction (whether the people do is another question). I’m
not sure whether we can adapt this tradition to our own, but we have
similar elements.
Epikeia says that a general rule must be
applied to a particular situation—very often complex—taking into
consideration all circumstances. We talk about
jurisprudence, not
jurisscience. The jurist must apply the general rule, taking account of all circumstances. For the great canonists of the Middle Ages,
epikaia was justice sweetened with mercy. We can start there. We have our own resources for finding a solution.
CWL: Until recently you were president of the
Pontifical Council on Promoting Christian Unity. How might this issue
fit into ongoing ecumenical relations with the Eastern Orthodox. If
there was a change in the way the Roman Catholic Church deals with
remarried Catholics, would that make things much easier, or even a
little easier, for rapprochement between the East and the West? Or no
easier at all?
Kasper: It would be made easier. They have this old
tradition, and their tradition was never condemned by an ecumenical
council. The Council of Trent condemned the position of Luther, but did
not discuss the Orthodox position. The council formulated the problem of
the indissolubility in a very cautious way because Venice had some
islands that were Orthodox but under the Latin hierarchy. They didn’t
want to lose those islands. So we did not talk about this problem. We
had more fundamental problems with the Orthodox. But if we could find a
new solution on the basis of our own Western tradition, I do think it
would be easier to find a concrete solution to our problem with the
Orthodox.
CWL: When it comes to the issue of Communion for
divorced and remarried Catholics, you have your critics, some of whom
have found outlets in the Italian press. Cardinal Carlo Caffarra,
archbishop of Bologna, was given a great deal of space in
Il Foglio to criticize your proposal. He has one question for you: “What happens to the first marriage?”
Kasper: The first marriage is indissoluble because
marriage is not only a promise between the two partners; it’s God’s
promise too, and what God does is done for all time. Therefore the bond
of marriage remains. Of course, Christians who leave their first
marriage have failed. That’s clear. The problem is when there is no way
out of such a situation. If we look to God’s activity in salvation
history, we see that God gives his people a new chance. That’s mercy.
God’s love does not end because a human being has failed—if he repents.
God provides a new chance—not by cancelling the demands of justice: God
does not justify the sin. But he justifies the sinner. Many of my
critics do not understand that distinction. They think, well, we want to
justify their sin. No, nobody wants that. But God justifies the sinner
who converts. This distinction appears already in Augustine.
I do not deny that the bond of marriage remains. But the fathers of
the church had a wonderful image: If there is a shipwreck, you don’t get
a new ship to save you, but you get a plank so that you can survive.
That’s the mercy of God—to give us a plank so we can survive. That’s my
approach to the problem. I respect those who have a different position,
but on the other hand, they must see what the concrete situation is
today. How can we help the people who struggle in these situations? I
know such people—often women. They are very engaged in parish life; they
do all they can for their children. I know a woman who prepared her
daughter for First Communion. The parish priest said the girl can go to
Holy Communion, but not mama. I told the pope about this, and he said,
“No, that’s impossible.”
The second marriage, of course, is not a marriage in our Christian
sense. And I would be against celebrating it in church. But there are
elements
of a marriage. I would compare this to the way the Catholic Church
views other churches. The Catholic Church is the true church of Christ,
but there are other churches that have elements of the true church, and
we recognize those elements. In a similar way, we can say, the true
marriage is the sacramental marriage. And the second is not a marriage
in the same sense, but there are elements of it—the partners take care
of one another, they are exclusively bound to one another, there is an
intention of permanence, they care of children, they lead a life of
prayer, and so on. It’s not the best situation. It’s the best
possible
situation. Realistically, we should respect such situations, as we do
with Protestants. We recognize them as Christians. We pray with them.
CWL: And we know that they don’t consider their marriages a Catholic sacrament—
Kasper: There are other problems. We consider the
civil marriage of Protestants as valid, indissoluble marriages. They
don’t believe in the sacramentality. There are also internal problems in
the current canon law. How do you explain this to a Protestant—“it’s a
valid marriage for you, but for a Catholic it’s not”? So we should to
some degree reconsider the canonical regulations.
CWL: Is it fair to say that your critics think this
is a disagreement about the indissolubility of marriage, but you’re
saying that the disagreement, such as it is, is about the purpose of the
sacraments of reconciliation and the Eucharist?
Kasper: In no way do I deny the indissolubility of a
sacramental marriage. That would be stupid. We must enforce it, and
help people to understand it and to live it out. That’s a task for the
church. But we must recognize that Christians can fail, and then we have
to help them. To those who say, “Well, they are in a sinful situation,”
I would say: Pope Benedict XVI has already said that such Catholics can
receive spiritual communion. Spiritual communion is to be one with
Christ. But if I am one with Christ, I cannot be in a situation of grave
sin. So if they can receive spiritual communion, why not also
sacramental Communion? I think there are also problems in the
traditional position, and Pope Benedict reflected a lot about this, and
he said that they must have means of salvation and spiritual communion.
But spiritual communion goes very far: it’s being one with Christ. Why
should these people be excluded from the other Communion? Being in
spiritual communion with Christ means God has forgiven this person. So
the church, though the sacrament of forgiveness, should also be able to
forgive if God does it. Otherwise there is an opposition between God and
church—and that would be a great problem.
CWL: The pope has said that the church needs a
better theology of women. You’ve said that we need to find a way to give
women leadership roles inside Vatican offices. Do you see that
happening any time soon, and how might that work?
Kasper: I’m not in favor of women’s ordination. But
there are offices in the Vatican that do not require ordination. In
economic affairs, for example, there are professional women who could
carry out such duties. Ordination is not required to lead the Pontifical
Council for the Laity. Half of the laity are women. There is an office
for laity and there are no women in leadership there. That’s a problem.
What about the Council for the Family? There’s no family without women.
I have experience as a bishop. I appointed one woman to the bishop’s
advisory council. From that day on the whole atmosphere changed in our
dialogue. She was a very courageous woman. Women bring a richness of
vision and experience that men lack. At the Vatican, that could be
helpful.
At the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, for example,
ordination is required to lead. But the CDF has a group of consulting
theologians. They do not decide; they consult. Today we have many women
who are professors of theology. Why not include their voices? Something
must be done about this. It would change a certain clericalistic
atmosphere.
CWL: How would you describe the atmosphere at the
Vatican right now? Is there a lot of nervousness, anticipation that
changes are underway or will be soon, or is there a sense that a lot of
the international media hype about the new papacy is sort of trivial and
not closely related to the life of the church?
Kasper: The Vatican is a plurality of people, and
they are different. At the Vatican there are many of us who are very
much in favor of Pope Francis because we saw at the end of the last
pontificate events like Vatileaks, so something went wrong. It wasn’t
functioning. Many people are in favor of some modifications, some
changes—and the pope wants it. But of course to change is not easy. The
Curia is the oldest continuously existing institution in Europe. Such an
old institution has its ways of doing things, so it’s not easy to
change from one day to another. There is some resistance. And when you
change something there’s always a debate, pro and contra, which is
happening at the Vatican. But I have the impression that Pope Francis is
determined to make some changes. He’s already made very important ones.
I think there’s already a point of no return. He made changes, for
example, in financial and economic areas. He wants the church to have a
more synodical structure. He wants the local churches to be taken more
seriously—not in a way that denies the primacy of the universal church.
Primacy and synodical structures are not opposed to each other. They are
complementary, and Francis wants that. We’re not having just one synod
on marriage and the family—but we’re going through a synodical
process.
Between the two sessions of the synod, this year and next, he goes back
to the local church so this can be discussed at the parish level. He
wants to bring in the voices of the faithful. These are changes that
have met with some resistance, of course, but there are also many who
are in favor of them. So the pope, very determined, goes on. If he's
given a few years, he will do something.
CWL: The pope is seventy-seven years old. Given the
fact that others will be responsible for carrying out his reforms—along
with the institutional inertia that you just described—what are the
prospects for success?
Kasper: Pope John XXIII only had five years, and he
changed a lot. There was also a point of no return with Paul VI. Pope
Francis cannot do everything by himself; he thinks in categories of
process. He wants to initiate a process that continues beyond him. He
will have the opportunity to appoint, I think, 40 percent of the
cardinals, and they're the ones who will elect a new pope. In that way
he’s able to condition a new conclave.
Of course the Holy Spirit is also present. I wouldn’t look at this
only at the institutional level. The election of Pope Francis was a
surprise—for us cardinals in the conclave too. This new pope is a
surprise every day. During the conclave, I felt the Holy Spirit at work.
So I trust more in this reality, in people. But Pope Francis’s
popularity is not only hype. Many pastors in Rome told me that last year
and this year many more people went to confession at Eastertime—people
who for years did not go to confession. If everybody who for years did
not to confession starts going again, then that’s more than hype. That’s
a very deep personal decision. And these people returned, they said,
because of the way the pope speaks about mercy. There is, I think, a
deeper reality going on. And this deeper reality is, for me, very
important.
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