The Folly of the Maltese Bishops

The only Maltese whom I have ever known is Dominican Fr. Joseph Agius, my professor for Old Testament and, later, for second-semester Hebrew at the Angelicum. He was friendly, outgoing, and genial. And extremely busy, especially during that semester of Hebrew, when he was named the Angelicum's rettore magnifico. Yes, the Italians really know how to do titles. I still remember waiting in utter nervousness in Fr. Agius' messy, book-lined office as he paged through Second Samuel for a passage for sight translation. That oral exam could easily have gone south if he were less encouraging, but with his help I carried the day.

I have always liked Fr. Agius, and by extension I have always liked Malta, even if I've never visited the remote Mediterranean outpost. Although I will always have my fond memories of Fr. Agius, I'm afraid that as of a few days ago I think a lot less of Malta.

Rosemary and I praying after our wedding rehearsal not so many years ago.

By way of explanation: The Maltese bishops published a pastoral document a few days ago permitting Catholics living in second marriages without the benefit an annulment to receive Holy Communion if they "are at peace with God." The bishops go so far as to claim that living as "brother and sister"--the challenge of St. John Paul II's Familiaris Consortio and the teaching of the Church through the centuries--may sometimes "become humanly impossible." 

People with a great deal of canonical and theological expertise have already eviscerated the Maltese document, including Edward Peters, who calls it "disastrous." Peters has many objections, but his first, as I understand it, is that the bishops are wholly abdicating from their roles both as administrators of the sacrament and as pastors of souls. Without their role in safeguarding the Eucharist from profanation, pastors become mere dispensaries of the sacrament on demand with no regard for Canon 915.

Cardinal Carlo Caffarra, one of the other signatories to the dubia besides Cardinal Burke, gave an interview to Il Foglio earlier this week. He told of a priest who wrote to him about a man living in a common-law marriage with a divorced woman. The priest challenged this man to continence before approaching the sacrament, only to have the man tell him that Pope Francis says it's no longer necessary. 

Those who understand marriage as Christ Himself understood it are praying that Pope Francis didn't really say this. But we don't know because the Holy Father has refused to clarify the now-infamous Footnote 351 of Amoris Laetitia. Instead, what we get is the Vatican's newspaper,  L'Osservatore Romano, republishing the Maltese bishops' document this week, implying that their interpretation is the right one.

I feel, therefore, for my priest-friends who still bravely challenge Catholics in adulterous second marriages to repentance with Christ's own words: 

"Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery" (Mark 10:11-12). 

I feel for my priest-friends, but why does this ongoing disaster concern me, a lay Catholic, so much? In one way the question may be above my paygrade, but in another, as someone called to the marital vocation, I feel that I have something worth saying.

My first thought is a prick to the conscience: Shouldn't I be rejoicing that the grace of the Eucharist is available to more people? Isn't the Eucharist, as Pope Francis stated in that infamous footnote, "powerful medicine" for sinners? Perhaps I am like the elder brother of the prodigal son, who refuses to celebrate when his younger brother returns, and their father kills the fatted calf. 

"He said to his father in reply, 'Look, all these years I have served you and not once did I disobey your orders; yet you never gave me even a young goat to feast on with my friends. But when your son returns who swallowed up your property with prostitutes, for him you slaughter the fatted calf.'" (Luke 15:29-30).

Perhaps I am a Pharisee irritated that I've worked hard to keep my marriage together in order to be worthy of the Eucharistic table, only to have a sinner kneel next to me and receives the Lord with truer devotion. 

"Two people went up to the temple area to pray; one was a Pharisee and the other was a tax collector. The Pharisee took up his position and spoke this prayer to himself, 'O God, I thank you that I am not like the rest of humanity--greedy, dishonest, adulterous--or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week, and I pay tithes on my whole income.' But the tax collector stood off at a distance and would not even raise his eyes to heaven but beat his breast and prayed. 'O God, be merciful to me a sinner.'" (Luke 18:10-13)

I am certainly not above having pharisaical tendencies, but the man whom Cardinal Caffarra describes in his Il Foglio interview proudly living more uxorio differs vastly from the prodigal son and the tax collector. 

The difference is in terms of repentance. St. John Chrysosotom puts the issue this way:

"I too raise my voice, I beseech, beg and implore that no one draw near to this sacred table with a sullied and corrupt conscience. Such an act, in fact, can never be called 'communion,' not even were we to touch the Lord's body a thousand times over, but 'condemnation,' 'torment,' and 'increase of punishment.'" 

Without repentance, what would be medicine instead becomes poison, and my fear is that the poison of validated adultery is fast-spreading through the institution of Christian marriage as a whole. What will become of the Church's witness to Christ's teachings in regard to marriage? What will become of a Church that conforms to sin rather than demanding that sinners conform to her? 

The case of the Maltese bishops is not so much heresy as it is an abdication from pastoral responsibility.  It is pusillanimity in the face of the strong cultural forces that have reshaped marriage into something other than a partnership of a man and woman for the whole of life ordered toward their good and the procreation and education of children. 

The Maltese bishops' document is a wrong-headed attempt to keep as many people within the "big tent" of Catholicism as possible. The problem is that the more Catholicism's tent is stretched, the more the fabric rips and tears. How can anybody who knows that Catholic marriages have declined by two thirds  in the last four decades say that we need to rip apart the fabric of the faith just a little more if we want the tent to hold together? Whatever happened to "be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect" (Matthew 5:48)? Whatever happened to Tertullian's statement that "the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church"?

Accommodation is not the answer if we want to revitalize the Church. Faithfulness to Christ's teachings is.

My responsibility as a married man is to bear witness to the fact that Christian marriage is still possible, and I certainly have my hands full with that. Pray God that I can live up to my responsibilities. Pray God that priests and bishops, and especially the bishops of Malta, can live up to theirs.

Anything less than that is pure folly.