It is an awakening and a joy that Cardinal Kasper and Pope Francis are of one mind in stressing the mercy of God. The Church is full of the older generation. Their children, now in their forties, no longer go to Church, their grandchildren are nurtured with no faith at all. But if authority is changing, less judgmental and ritualistic – we grew up more in fear of God than in love with him – if love and forgiveness are stressed and judgement left to God's mercy, if mercy is shown to couples in second marriages … will that be enough to win back our children? For some, I know it is not the only obstacle. They may have lost their fear of hell or even belief in hell, but they are extremely critical of the pyramidal structure of the Church, mitred bishops, fine clothes, palaces, corruption, avarice. Pride does not spare any of us. We all have to hear “Learn of me for I am meek and humble of heart” but a way of life more like Christ's would bring people closer to Christ and renew the Church.
Christopher David, Lanzarote
When the Code of Canon Law was revised in 1983, I attended a public briefing for clergy led by a famous Canadian canon lawyer who has since been made a bishop. At the time I was working with a team of catechists hired by the CCCB to revise the Canadian Catechism. We had just completed the second year elementary program which included introducing seven year old children to the Eucharist. When the law about not admitting divorced and remarried people came up for discussion during question period, I asked the canon lawyer this question: For years, I have told seven year olds that the Eucharist is how Jesus chooses to be with us forever - loving us as a friend- on good days and bad. If, a child believes me then, and still does when her marriage fails thirty years later, am I to tell her that Jesus is no longer available to her in the Eucharist? Is this truly the teaching of the Church?
On that morning, the canon lawyer answered: Pastorally, I agree with you, but canonically it is the law. As I pray that the bishops meeting in Rome will lean into the movement of the Spirit, I'd love to ask them the same question.
Moira T. Carley, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Cardinal Nichols is worryingly glib about “mercy for sinners” in the context of marriages disapproved by his Church. Surely God dispenses mercy, not clerics? Surely “irregular” marriages are not primarily about “sin” ? (We grew up in a church which confected sin and trivialised it.) The issue is surely one of greater church “respect” for marriage and of “regret” for the church’s sinful, sometimes illegal treatment of the divorced, those who marry in a Registry Office, “mixed” marriages, and the formal silencing of priests who marry. The UN proclaims an “inalienable human right to marry”. Let the Synod proclaimed that and disclaim the Church’s claims to rule over marriage. It could end church regulations putting good people in bad faith. It could shift the emphasis from control of to support for marriage. It might also make the church more credible.
John Fox, Wheatley, Oxford
Chris Larkman (Letters 27 September) is right to query the use of the word “mercy” in connection with broken marriages. It is also used in the Mass, where eleison and miserere are translated “have mercy”, though they actually mean “take pity”. “Mercy” signifies clemency or lenience, which presuppose guilt, whereas “pity” does not: the blind man in the Gospel asks Christ to take pity, not to show clemency. Our lot is often pitiful through no fault of our own. The replacement of pity by mercy in Catholic thinking probably comes from dwelling on the conviction that we all deserve death and damnation for Adam’s sin.
William Charlton, West Woodburn, Hexham
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