Cardinal Kasper’s Revealing Response

A respondent to Cardinal Kasper meets an untamed journalist sends a good question from Matthew Archbold of Creative Minority Report. Archbold notes that Edward Pentin had taped the interview in which the cardinal said what he later denied saying and asks:

But here’s my question. If he hadn’t, Pentin’s career would’ve been harmed. Possibly irreparably. Would Cardinal Kasper have admitted to the interview or simply watched another man’s life be possibly destroyed?

There’s no answer. But perhaps we have our answer in that Cdl. Kasper is now publicly faulting Pentin for not maintaining “journalistic methods” because he didn’t know he was being taped.

Elizabeth Scalia suggests that Cardinal Kasper had a chance to “to demonstrate his priesthood.”

Before him is a pastoral, teachable moment: this is an opportunity for him to demonstrate the very Christian virtue of extending a charitable response to Pentin — who identified himself, stood among a group of journalists and reported what he heard — while also making his remarks clear for the rest of the interested church.

Something along these lines would work:

“Edward Pentin has a fine reputation as a journalist, but I am disturbed that my words — and their intent and meaning, which rested upon ideas of subsidiarity — were not best chosen, coming as they did at the end of a long day. Our brother bishops from Africa have been a source of profound inspiration for all of us and their contribution to the synod has been sorely needed and prayefully heeded. That said, the issues with which they wrangle cannot be solved at this synod, and will certainly continue to be prayerfully and faithfully pondered, as we enter into a year of contemplative reasoning.”

Not  a chance he took.