The First Rule Of Cardinal Fight Club Is…

The Synod on the Family is starting, and within that there is the drama of the question of communion for divorced-remarried Catholics, and within that there is the drama of the fight between cardinals Burke and Kasper. Balthasar was right: we are always in the theodrama!

I join my Patheos co-bloggers in expressing astonishment at the utterly biased presentation of the issue by the Catholic(!) News Service. And I’ve already written about my views on the substance of the issue.

I want to write briefly here about a tangential aspect of this, which is the following: the idea that it’s not seemly for this debate to be had in public. Cardinals fighting: bad image! Scandalizing the faithful!

I actually think that the first rule of Cardinal Fight Club shouldn’t be that you don’t talk about Cardinal Fight Club. (First rule: charity?) There is still a serious problem about transparency and accountability within the Church, and the cultural reflex (and it is also, among other things, a cultural reflex) that wants to keep every dispute, every problem, behind closed doors, is fundamentally unhealthy. The Church is one big family, and a part of being a big healthy family is that we sometimes argue at a high pitch, and that’s fine. The Church is also a very large, hierarchical institution, and large, hierarchical institutions that don’t have a culture of transparency and accountability usually end up mired in, at best, bureaucracy and, at worst, corruption.

Orthodoxy is orthodoxy! If, as we are told, the teaching on communion for divorced-remarried is a fundamental matter of faith and morals and if, as Sacred Scripture assures us, the Spirit guides the Church into all truth and protects her from error, then there is–literally–nothing for supporters of orthodoxy to fear from debate. In fact, Truth ought not to fear debate generally.

Card. Burke complains that because of the public nature of this debate some couples have gotten it into their heads that the Church has already changed its teaching and are now demanding the sacraments. Well, these people are poorly catechized, and that’s why the Church has pastors, to teach them in love when they stray. The powers and principalities will always find a way to give people excuses to stray from orthodoxy one way or another. We can all certainly agree that the Church has suffered from ineffective catechesis over many recent decades (centuries?); I think the case that the Church has suffered in recent decades from an excess of transparency is a harder one to make.

Open the doors and windows! Step confidently in the arena! Don’t be afraid to debate. This is good for the Church.