We need the “reality principle”

On the family the Catholics of Luxembourg call for “evangelical attitudes” ahead of next fall’s Synod. Also the Church of the Grand Duchy put online the keynote report -26 pages in French – that archbishop Jean-Claude Hollerich sent to the Bishops’ Synod past April 14, prepared by a “pilot group”. This second questionnaire “only triggered a minimal amount of interest”, states the introduction, perhaps because “the number, density, style and complexity of the questions discouraged several persons of good will”. Criticism on the linguistic complexity of the questionnaire was made from Luxembourg also ahead of the synod assembly of past October. The text offers a great amount of reference to the Council documents and to Pope Francis’ “Evangelii gaudium”. The “principle of reality”. The document raises a methodological question: it’s necessary to comply with the “reality principle”, namely, to start with the description of the experience of the family as seen in the Church and in contemporary reality. Only in this way “Catholic morals can be understood as a package of criteria adapted to the various human situations” instead “of starting from inflexible or unchangeable norms”. In this way there will be “a spirit of welcome that enables the progress of faith” along with “evangelical principles, rather than universal and homogeneous formulas”. Coherently with this principles, the answers from Luxembourg start from analyzing historical, sociological and anthropological transformations that have marked, according to the document, the family in the past century, concluding that today people “don’t try to have a family but to find happiness in a loving relationship”. “We do not judge”. It is therefore necessary to carry out a transition from the pastoral care of the family to a pastoral of love”, whereby the Church “accompanies people in their project of love” also when it is breaking up. The task of the Church is “to go beyond easy pastoral answers, fixed within the proclamation of an ideal proposed by Catholic social doctrine and the denunciation of ideas that do not comply with this ideal”. This is imposed by the “principle of mercy” of Pope Francis, along with transformations “within Luxembourgian culture that make the Church’s current discourse impossible to understand”. An evidence of this is the fact that “Only few Catholics accept the exclusion of divorcees from the Eucharist” and that “ministers of religion no longer judge a person starting from the fact that his marriage has broken up”. Thus the direction to follow should be that of “a more evangelical pastoral care of the family, that encourages Christian couples” and that “recurs to the Word of God following the style of Jesus”: namely, “to remind man and women of their vocation for the infinite”. “The recurrent legalistic, restricted readings of the Scriptures”, with the purpose of “justifying a given doctrine” must also be avoided. Thus catechesis for families and couples will no longer be a path “to transmit Church teaching” but rather “an authentic space for the discovery of Christ and of the Gospel”. Magisterium and people of God. “God’s mercy doesn’t exclude anyone”, while the risk is that “Church excludes in fact, and despite anything that could be said”. This example refers to a difference placed by the Church between married and consecrated persons, and an “unjust attitude” towards divorcees. In fact, the priests that abandon the priesthood “are permitted to engage in another project of life and access to sacraments”, which is forbidden to divorcees. The invitation is “to renounce this attitude” and “reconsider the theology of marriage from the perspective of evangelical mercy”. It is also necessary to reconsider the teaching on human sexuality and birth control, areas where “Church Magisterium is not incorporated by the people of God”, which causes “more harm that goodness to Church pastoral action for couples”. “Humanae Vitae”, states the Luxembourgian document, must overcome through the lenses of the Council. The Church as a “fraternal environment”. From this perspective the Christian community will become, according to the Catholics of the North-European country, the place for the testimony and the discovery of the Gospel and it will no longer be the “supplier of services”, a fraternal place where those who discovered themselves as disciples of Christ will grow accompanied, “couples will discover the specific vocation to conjugal life”, while young people preparing for the priesthood will have the opportunity of having a “balanced formation” in which it is hoped will be involved “also married couples”.