Church must rediscover mercy, says Cardinal Nichols

The Church has forgotten the importance of mercy in recent decades, Cardinal Vincent Nichols said this morning.

“I grew up very firmly in a Church that understood itself as a Church of sinners. [But] I don’t think it’s been our strong suit in the last 30 years,” he told a press conference ahead of next month’s synod on the family at the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales’ headquarters in Eccleston Square, London. “I think what Pope Francis is calling for is a return to that lived sense of the mercy and compassion of God who always accompanies us. I think one of the challenges we face is finding ways of creating a culture of mercy in the Church.”

Cardinal Nichols. Photo: © Mazur/catholicnews.org.uk

But he said that any move allowing Communion for divorced and remarried couples would require a “radical rethink" on either the indissolubility of marriage or teaching on the Eucharist.

“I don’t see for myself where this area of manoeuvre opens up without quite a radical rethink of one or another, so I go to this synod intent on listening to what people have to say,” he said in answer to a question from The Tablet.

The cardinal did, however, quote Cardinal Walter Kasper, who has made proposals for allowing communion for divorced and remarried couples, in stressing the importance of discerning the different circumstances of remarried divorcees.

The issue has been hotly debated in recent weeks with a number of cardinals expressing fierce opposition to Cardinal Kasper’s proposals.

Cardinal Nichols also stressed that mercy needs to be seen alongside recognising the need for forgiveness.

“Mercy is the air we are to breath: forgiveness and conversion are the pathway we are to walk. It would be a mistake to confuse those two. To say that somehow the gift of God’s mercy removes the need for acts of forgiveness and conversion. But it would also be a mistake to think that forgiveness and conversion are not enriched, enabled and made possible within a culture of mercy.”

The cardinal will attend the extraordinary synod in October as President of the Bishops Conference of England and Wales. The gathering from 5-19 October primarily consists of presidents of bishops conferences. A second ordinary synod will take place next year with a larger number of participants. The cardinal likened the process to a piece of music, describing next month’s gathering as “the first movement”. Pope Francis, he added, would deliver the “finale” after the 2015 synod.