26 February 2015, The Tablet

Adjust expectations of Francis ‘revolution’, says Kasper


Cardinal Walter Kasper has said Pope Francis is engaged in a “radical revolution”, but it is one that might disappoint both progressives and traditionalists.

In his new book, Papst Franziskus: Revolution der Zärtlichkeit und der Liebe (“Pope Francis: revolution of tenderness and mercy”, published this month by the Catholic Bible Society, Stuttgart), the German cardinal, whose thinking is regarded as close to that of the Pope, describes him as a radical who wants to bring about a revolution of mercy.

Francis does not fit into our categories of “progressive” or “conservative”, which have become “somewhat time-worn and hackneyed”, the cardinal said, adding that Francis clearly distanced himself in his final address at the Extraordinary Synod in October 2014 from both these positions. Cardinal Kasper gave a much-discussed keynote address on the family to the College of Cardinals in Rome in February last year. He proposed a “penitential path” for divorced and remarried Catholics that might lead to their receiving Communion. “Francis does not represent a liberal but a radical position in the original sense of the word which goes back to the Latin word radix, meaning root,” Kasper explains. The Pope talks a great deal about the Gospels, he points out, but “remarkably little” about the Church’s teaching – for him the Magisterium must be interpreted in the light of the Gospel message. The keynote of Francis’ pontificate is mercy, Kasper says, to which he devotes an entire chapter of his book.

In the epilogue, Kasper asks whether Francis will trigger a comprehensive reform or disappoint expectations. He concludes that the Pope’s “revolution of tenderness and love” could disappoint both conservatives and progressives, as what he proposes is the “humble way of committed people who can move mountains”.

Meanwhile, three churches in the German Archdiocese of Freiburg have announced that they will be holding special services for estranged couples and others who have remarried in a register office. Priests in the archdiocese were frequently asked by remarried divorcees for a church blessing, permanent Deacon Thilo Knöller told the German daily Badische Zeitung. He said he was glad he could refer to the “Handbook for the Pastoral Care and Accompaniment of People in Separation, Divorce and Those who have Remarried in a Register Office” published by the Freiburg Archdiocese in October 2013. It allows blessing ceremonies.

In his book on Pope Francis, Cardinal Kasper said that even if the question of the remarried divorcees was “not the only and certainly not the most important question concerning the family”, for many Christians it would seem to have become the “acid test for the sustainability of the [Pope’s] new pastoral style”. It was therefore to be hoped that a decision could be reached with a large consensus so that one could then turn to the profound cultural crisis affecting the family worldwide.


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