Kathryn Lopez
Cardinal George Pell tells Francis X. Rocca from the Catholic News Service:
“The secret for all Catholic vitality is fidelity to the teachings of Christ and to the tradition of the church,” said the cardinal, who sits on the nine-member Council of Cardinals advising Pope Francis on church governance.
Cardinal Pell said only three of the synod’s 10 small groups had supported a controversial proposal by German Cardinal Walter Kasper to make it easier for divorced and civilly remarried Catholics to receive Communion, even without an annulment of their first, sacramental marriages.
“Communion for the divorced and remarried is for some — very few, certainly not the majority of synod fathers — it’s only the tip of the iceberg, it’s a stalking horse. They want wider changes, recognition of civil unions, recognition of homosexual unions,” Cardinal Pell said. “The church cannot go in that direction. It would be a capitulation from the beauties and strengths of the Catholic tradition, where people sacrificed themselves for hundreds, for thousands of years to do this.”
“If people are heading in the wrong direction, there’s no virtue in the church saying ‘that’s good.’ A lot of people outside won’t accept our views, won’t welcome them, but certainly not the people in the pews, the good people,” he said.
Cardinal Pell said he expected the synod’s final report, currently being drafted by a team of 11 members, would reflect the assembly’s views. But he said that if it did not, the synod would not vote its approval before ending its work Oct. 18.
He also noted that the synod would not issue any document with doctrinal weight, its task being to set the agenda for the world synod on the family scheduled for October 2015.
“Our task now is to ask people to pause, to pray, to catch their breath, to realize there’s going to be no abandonment of Catholic doctrine, and to work to diminish the divisions and to prevent any radicalization of different factions or points of view,” he said.
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