The Risk of Degrading the Religious Message
Cardinal Bergoglio came up with a definition almost in passing that is certainly relevant: “Currently the Church chooses not to reduce or discard its tenets or to make this easier or make that easier, but to go out and look for people.” He must surely have been referring to an opinion that is voiced more and more often in the broader society and even among many of the faithful: that Catholicism ought to modify some of its ideas and rules to “be more in sync with the times,” and, supposedly, in so doing avoid a mass depletion of the faithful. Perhaps these requests center on certain questions of sexual morality: premarital sexual relations, birth control, AIDS prevention, and whether or not Catholics who have divorced and remarried should receive Communion. We think his definition is worth discussing further.
Isn’t the gap between some of the Church’s rules and the way Catholics live today just too big at the moment?
I need to take a few steps back to answer that. The ethical path, which forms part of the human being, is pre-religious. No person, be they a believer, an agnostic, or an atheist, can avoid the demands of what is ethical, which range from the most general principles—the most basic of all: “Do good and avoid evil”—to the most specific. As a man gradually discovers these principles and puts them into practice, he bridges the gap. I would say it’s a gap in belief. There is also a gap between the Church and a counterculture, the sort of “Do as you please, it all ends up the same, we’ll see each other in hell” attitude to which the tango “Cambalache” refers. And this attitude is equally common among agnostics, atheists, and believers. It’s a question of living a double life, if you like. Or employing a double morality.
For example?
Let’s see . . . I consider myself a Catholic, but I don’t pay taxes. Or I’m unfaithful to my spouse. Or I don’t pay enough attention to my children. Or I’ve got my father or mother tucked away in an old-folks home like a raincoat in a closet during the summer, complete with mothballs, and I never visit them. Or I swindle: I “fix” my scales or the meter in my taxi so they read in my favor. Basically, I live with fraud, defrauding not only the state and my family, but myself, too. Generally, when people talk about a double life they think of a person who has two families or a priest with a girlfriend. But everything that makes our way of living and the ethics that form part of our being fraudulent constitutes a double life. Ultimately, the challenge of living an ethical life, like the challenge of living a religious life, consists of behaving in accordance with these principles.
We agree that, with regard to certain issues, there is widespread social acceptance . . .
I would say that there is a devaluation of the exercise of ethical principles in order to justify a lack of compliance with them. For example, and I’m drawing on a typical example here, when I’m chatting with people I often ask them whether they pay their taxes, because it’s a question that should be asked, and many people reply in the negative. One of the arguments they put forward is that the state steals this money from them. “I put that money aside and give it to the poor instead of it ending up in some bank account in Switzerland,” they tell me. In this way, they soothe their consciences easily. Few people think of conducting a deal entirely honestly nowadays. There’s almost always an element of deceit involved in selling someone the Brooklyn Bridge, and this is accepted because “everybody does it.” We often say, “That’s no longer the case” or “Times have changed.” All these expressions are a kind of excuse for our failure to comply with ethical principles based on other people’s poor behavior.
But certain perceptions and behaviors do change with the passage of time, and not always for the worse . . .
The fact is that, in general, cultures are progressing in terms of the appeal of a moral conscience. It’s not what’s moral that’s changing. What’s moral doesn’t change. We carry it inside us. Ethical behavior is part of our being. What happens is that we are continuously defining it more clearly. For example, there is now an increasing awareness of the immorality of the death penalty. It used to be maintained that the Catholic Church supported it, or at least didn’t condemn it. The latest version of the catechism asks that it be abolished. In other words, the Church has become more aware of the fact that life is sacred and that not even a terrible crime can justify the death penalty. The same could be said with regard to slavery, which is not to say that it’s not still occurring in different forms.
In what way is that the case?
We currently have hidden forms of slavery that are just as cruel as the earlier ones. Today nobody would even think about loading a cargo of slaves onto a plane, never mind the fact that they’d be sent to prison. But we know that there are Bolivians who go to Argentina and work in exploitative, inhuman conditions or in illegal workshops and who end up in the slums around the capital and greater Buenos Aires. We know that there are Dominican women brought into the country to work as prostitutes. These are all forms of modern slavery. In any case, I am sure that just as the moral conscience of different cultures progresses, people also refine conscience to the extent to which they want to live a better life, and this desire is not just religious but human.
But doesn’t the Church ask too much with regard to certain aspects of human behavior, like those relating to sexual morality?
The Church preaches what it believes is best for people, what will make them most complete, happiest. But a degrading reductionism often occurs. Let me explain: the most important thing about a sermon is the message of Jesus Christ, which in theology is known as the kerygma. It summarizes the core Christian tenets: that God is in Jesus, He made Himself man in order to save us, He lived in the world like one of us, He suffered, He died, He was buried, and He came back to life. This is the kerygma, the message of Christ, which causes astonishment and leads to contemplation and belief. Some people believe straightaway, such as Mary Magdalene. Others believe after a period of doubt. And others need to put their finger in the wound, like Thomas. Each individual has his own way of coming to believe. Faith is the encounter with Jesus Christ.
Are you saying, then, that some people are more preoccupied with sexual issues than with the core elements of the religious message?
That’s my point exactly. After communing with Jesus Christ comes reflection, which is the role of the catechism. Reflection on God, Christ, and the Church, from which the Church’s principles, the moral and religious rules, which do not contradict the human ones, but rather endow them with a greater degree of completeness, are deduced. Generally, I observe a degradation of the religious message in certain enlightened Christian elites due to a lack of living the faith.
Can you give an example of where you see this?
I see it in the fact that these people don’t pay attention to the kerygma but instead move straight to the catechism, preferably the section on morality. It’s enough to listen to some sermons, which ought to be kerygmatic, with an element of the catechism, but which turn out to be moral, or catechistic. And within that morality, although less so in sermons than on other occasions, people prefer to talk about sexual morality, about anything that has some link to sex. The fact that you’re allowed to do this but you’re not allowed to do that. The idea that someone is to blame and that someone else isn’t to blame. In doing this, we relegate the treasure of the living Christ, the treasure of the Holy Spirit in our hearts, the treasure of living a Christian life, which has so many other implications beyond the questions of a sexual nature, to being of secondary importance. We overlook an extremely rich catechism, with the mysteries of faith and the creed, and end up focusing on whether or not to march against the passing of a law that would allow the use of condoms.
It seems that those topics motivate some of the faithful more than the prospect of going out to spread the word of the Gospel . . .
With regard to the so-called law on reproductive health, some groups of a certain leaning within the enlightened elite wanted to go to schools to recruit students to protest against the law because they believed that it was primarily a law against love. Of course, culturally love has become sexualized, to the point that in many cases it comes down to buying and selling, of mere consumerism. But the archbishopric of Buenos Aires was against the children taking part, arguing that that’s not what children are for. To me, a child is more sacred than a legislative development. I forbade them from recruiting anyone under the age of eighteen. I allowed them to seek out those who could vote. This obviously reduced the pool of young people in school, because the majority of children graduate at seventeen. In any case, some groups turned up with students from two schools in greater Buenos Aires. Why was there this obsession with bringing children to the protest? Those children saw things they had never seen before: aggressive transvestites and feminists singing violent protest songs. So the grown-ups took the children to see some very unpleasant things.
Surely they needed to boost their numbers.
But you shouldn’t resort to minors for that. Children should not be used. Let me tell you an anecdote. A seminarian with extreme ideological beliefs is ordained as a priest. In a few days he has to give First Communion to the girls attending a school run by nuns. What a lovely thing it will be to talk to them about the beauty of Jesus! But no: before the Communion he remembers the conditions for receiving it: fasting for an hour, being in a state of grace, and . . . not using birth control! They were all just little girls in white dresses, and he berates them on the subject of contraception. That’s the kind of distortion this can lead to. That’s what I mean when I talk about the descent from the beauty of the kerygma to sexual morality.
One very controversial issue is the Church’s refusal to allow those who have been divorced and who have remarried to receive Communion. What would you say to people in that situation who are suffering as a result of being unable to receive the Eucharist?
That they get involved in the parish community; that there are things in the parish they can do. They should try to be part of the spiritual community, which is what the pontifical documents and the Church’s magisterium advise. The pope indicated that the Church would stand by them. Being unable to receive Communion is obviously painful for some. In those cases, it’s important to explain the issues carefully. There are some cases where this turns out to be difficult. It’s a theological explanation that some priests explain well and people understand.
Let’s talk about the battle against abortion.
I consider that to be part of the battle in favor of life from the moment of conception until a dignified, natural death. This includes care of the mother during pregnancy, the existence of laws to protect the mother postpartum, and the need to ensure that children receive enough food, as well as providing health care throughout the whole length of a life, taking good care of our grandparents, and not resorting to euthanasia. Nor should we perpetrate a kind of killing through insufficient food or a nonexistent or deficient education, which are ways of depriving a person of a full life. If there is a conception for us to respect, there is a life for us to care for.
Many say that opposition to abortion is a religious issue.
Well . . . a pregnant woman isn’t carrying a toothbrush in her stomach, or a tumor. Science has taught us that from the moment of conception, the new being has its entire genetic code. It’s impressive. Therefore, it’s not a religious issue but, rather, a clear moral issue with a scientific basis, because we are in the presence of a human being.
Is the moral status of the woman who has an abortion the same as that of the person who performs it?
I wouldn’t speak in terms of moral status. But I do feel much greater . . . not sadness but, rather, compassion, in the biblical sense of the word—by which I mean pity and empathy—for a woman who has an abortion under who knows what pressure, than I feel for the professionals—or the nonprofessionals—who do this for money and with a singular coldness.
Furthermore, the clinics that perform illegal abortions “get rid” of the women immediately, out of fear of possible arrest and the police turning up. They send them packing, and if they hemorrhage, “that’s their problem.” This coldness contrasts with the crises of conscience, the remorse that many women who have abortions experience a few years later. You have to sit in a confessional and listen to these outpourings, because they know they killed a child.
Doesn’t the Church block a lot of the paths that would avoid a great many abortions by opposing the distribution of contraception and, in some places, limiting sex education?
The Church is not opposed to sex education. Personally, I believe that it ought to be available throughout children’s upbringing, adapted to different age groups. In truth, the Church always provided sex education, although I acknowledge that it hasn’t always been adequate. What happens is that nowadays a lot of the people who wave banners in support of sex education see it as separate from a human person. Therefore, instead of getting a law in favor of sex education for a complete person, for love, they end up with a law in favor of sexual activity. That is our objection. We don’t want the human being to be degraded. That’s all.