Remember a while back when Card. Marx pulled a fast one with the text of Evangelii gaudium? HERE
Over at LifeSite News, Hillary White offers another facet of Marx’s interview with Jesuit-run America Magazine. America is leading the charge in the English language in support of overturning Catholic teaching and practice about Communion for those in adulterous relationships (the divorced and civilly remarried). I suspect their goal reaches beyond mere adultery. Once you detach the marital act from proper disposition for Communion… well… anything goes.
So, what is the other point from the interview that needs some attention?
Cardinal hits young traditionalists who want to ‘be clear in their positions’: calls it ‘the beginning of terrorism’
February 9, 2015 (LifeSiteNews.com) – One of Pope Francis’ closest advisors, and the leader of one of the most “liberal” Catholic hierarchies in the world, has denounced “traditional” young people for wanting “to be clear in their positions,” warning that it is a path to “terrorism.” In a related interview with the Jesuit magazine America, Cardinal Reinhard Marx, the head of the German Bishops’ conference, applauded people in homosexual partnerships who want a “lifelong” relationship.
“I am astonished that most of our young people, and also Catholic homosexuals who are practicing, want a relationship that lasts forever,” Marx told America. “We must begin with the main points of the doctrine, to see the dream: the dream is to have a person say, a man and woman say, ‘You and you, forever. You and you, forever.’ And we as church say, ‘Yes, that’s absolutely OK. Your vision is right!’
“So we find the way. Then perhaps there is failure. They find the person, and it is not a great success. But life-long fidelity is right and good.”
He added, “The church says that a gay relationship is not on the same level as a relationship between a man and a woman. That is clear. But when they are faithful, when they are engaged for the poor, when they are working, it is not possible to say, ‘Everything you do, because you are a homosexual, is negative.’” [That contradicts what the Church says in the pastoral care of homosexual persons. We don’t say that everything homosexuals do is negative. We say that homosexual acts are sins and that homosexual tendencies are disordered.]
In his Stanford lecture, Cardinal Marx said, “I had a discussion with some of the students,” before the lecture, who asked him, “‘Cardinal is it true that the younger people are more traditional?’ And that’s true.”
“But that is not dangerous,” he said. “I have no problem with tradition. But we have also the tendencies that the people want to be clear in their positions. Black and white populism is growing in Europe. And that is the beginning, perhaps, of populism, of terrorism, that’s clear.”
“The atmosphere of reducing the complexity of the world, to give simple answers, to give black and white answers, is growing, and I think that is very dangerous,” the cardinal said.
[…]
Hoping that more people will wake up and smell the coffee.
Click to buy!
Tradition… clear in their positions… growing populism… terrorism.
Reducing complexity to simple answers… black and white answers… dangerous.
On the other hand, to protect ourselves from terrorism and dangerous simplicity, we need complex and nuanced views of questions, especially moral questions. We need to set aside all the simplistic answer of the past, the black and white approach of “No!” and “A is grave matter” and “B is mortal sin” and “C contradicts natural law”.
From example… from later in the America piece (via the same LifeSite piece):
He said he has consulted with “many experts,” including canon lawyers and theologians, on the subject of the indissolubility of marriage. “What can we do when a person marries, divorces and later finds a new partner? There are different positions,” the cardinal said.
“Some bishops at the synod said, ‘They are living in sin.’ But others said, ‘You cannot say that somebody is in sin every day. That is not possible.’ You see, there are questions we must speak about.” He said it is important the Synod does not have “the spirit of ‘all or nothing.’ It is not a good way.”
I turned on the moderation queue. Try to post something I won’t ding, please. Think before hitting the button.
