During last fall’s synod on the family, Cardinal Wilfrid Napier served as one of the five co-presidents of the gathering, which was convened to consider how the Church can better assist Catholic families. And he has a simple yet powerful message for married Catholics wondering how they can follow the Church’s message on marriage in today’s challenging context: Live it!

In Part 2 of this wide-ranging interview on Feb. 19 with Register correspondent Sophia Feingold in Washington, the South-African cardinal discusses, among other things, the synod and Pope Francis’ apostolic exhortation from the synod, due in April. (Read Part 1 here.)

 

You spoke a bit on synodality and collegiality yesterday afternoon. Are there limits to them? Is there a point at which the conversations simply don’t work out or a point at which you stop talking and you listen to the Pope?

I think both. I think we’ve got both. We’ve got the point where, on certain issues, the Pope is going to have to say, “This is where it goes, and that’s it; and I need you to come support me on it.” And I think that’s got to happen. How the Pope goes about that is another question altogether. He can do it by decree or he can do it — as Pope Francis certainly favors — by frequent meetings where issues are tossed around, and then he will go off and make a decision about it. He knows more or less the feeling of his College of Bishops; but I think it would be a mistake if the college were coming out on a particular position, and he went in another direction. I think that would undermine the whole concept of collegiality.

What I like about Pope Francis — and I think this is one of the things that certainly has come up very strongly — is his emphasis on listening. He calls it listening, but, actually, I would say “consult”; and consult seriously, so that people know that their views are being weighed up. They may not always accept them or follow them, but they’re being weighed up all the time; and I think that’s one of the key things for both collegiality and synodality.

 

How are we to understand Pope Francis’ recent comments about using contraception to avoid the Zika virus? Is this similar to Pope Benedict speaking about using condoms in the context of AIDS in Africa?

Well, I think, first of all, one would need to make a very clear distinction. I just read an article this morning that was not so much what Pope Francis said; it was what a doctor said explaining what Pope Francis said.

[Furthermore], the first point that she [the doctor] made was, when you talk about contraception generally, you’re talking about a relationship between people who agree to enter it, and if they don’t want to have a child, they use contraceptives. In the case of rape, for example, it’s a different situation. And that seems to be one possible way in which the question was given [to Pope Francis: comparing the Zika virus to when] nuns in the Congo were given oral contraceptives so they wouldn’t have babies if they were raped — and the expectation was that they were going to be raped. That’s the second consideration.

The third one is this: I would need to sit down and listen very carefully to people who are saying the Zika virus needs to be dealt with by contraceptives, because I don’t see the direct connection between the Zika virus and contraception and the result: a baby with microcephaly — I don’t see the connection as clearly as perhaps those who are advocating contraception would see it. And one of the reasons I have that problem is that I think all the birth-control methods have an abortifacient agent; and, therefore, that would be a block [to the use of contraception]. This doctor was saying that Pope Francis, when he talked about family planning, meant natural family planning; but he didn’t say it in those words, as far as I know — I haven’t seen his full text. But the understanding of the media was oral contraceptives were to be distributed far and wide and everywhere.

By pure coincidence, last night, I switched on my radio, and I was listening to a BBC discussion about the effects of some of the contraceptives. I think it’s something like 500-5 million women have died suddenly in the last 25 years from contraceptives — just dropped down dead. So when you talk about contraceptives as a cure-all, you have to suppress a whole lot of other information that I think is pertinent.

So I think probably we’re going to have to have a lot more clarifications as to what Pope Francis actually intended when he was saying this.

 

Do you think there is a connection between the message that Pope Francis will be trying to send in his post-synodal apostolic exhortation, due to be published in April, and the Year of Mercy?

Quite clearly, there is going to be. Almost everything that Pope Francis has done right from day one has been, No. 1, reaching out to those on the margins. He has used expressions like “The Church is a field hospital.” And where are field hospitals? Field hospitals are where the war’s going to come; where people are victims, very often innocent victims, and so on. He has also said the sacraments are there for those who are sick and need them — they’re not there as a reward for living a good life. So I can see that the debate is certainly going to be moving in the direction of asking how we can, during this Year of Mercy, extend God’s mercy in a way that people can feel, so that they know that God is actually looking after them through the Church and that we as the Church are trying to find them, trying to bring them back so that we can put them into regular situations.

I think there’s probably a misunderstanding or an over-simplification that Pope Francis is going to bend the rules to suit those kinds of situations. I don’t think so. The fact that he recently simplified the annulment process is a way of saying, “While I’m not bending the rules, I’m simplifying the rules, to make the process more effective and more efficient, so that it can be accomplished more quickly as well.” And I think that’s the way the mercy’s going to be: Let’s use the rules; let’s use canon law to bring in people who are cut off. Very often, people cut themselves off — they’re not cut off by the Church; they cut themselves off. Let’s bring them back in and overcome those obstacles that have kept them outside.

 

Since you spoke about accompanying people after their marriage, on a practical level, what would that look like? What needs to happen that isn’t happening?

I know some parishes in the diocese are doing it. And what they’ve done is they’ve designated senior couples with good marriages to accompany a young couple that’s preparing for marriage. It’s part of the marriage preparation. But they would continue walking with that couple for the next couple of years thereafter. I think the priest has to also be involved somehow — he can’t leave it to the couples and say, “They’re going to accompany them.” I think people need the priest there as well. Or a deacon — we’ve got lots of permanent deacons now, and because they’re married, they would be in a better position to actually do it. And [the first] five to seven years after marriage are the crucial years, when accompaniment needs to take place. But there could be other times — change in status, in the sense of getting or losing a job — I think that kind of thing also would need the clergy and the parish to be alert that this couple needs to be accompanied.

 

Many laypeople, certainly in the United States, look at the situation of marriage, and they see rampant divorce for generations, contraception, pornography, same-sex “marriage”; and they say, “What can we do? Do I even want to raise a family in this environment? Is it even possible to raise a family in this environment?” So is it possible? And what can laypeople do to protect marriage and the family?

My simple answer would be: Live it!

 

That’s too easy!

No, but if you’re going to live it, you’re going to meet up with a series of things. First of all, if you’re living it, you’re against the current. And I think you’ve really got to be strong on that one. I also think that movements like Marriage Encounter — they were a fashion in the 1970s, and they were really good; but they became a bit too clannish; the groups got too exclusive — but I think something like that is really needed. We’ve got quite a number of those: Équipes du Notre Dame, Marriage Encounter; there’s another one that’s come over from the Philippines recently, Couples for Christ. I’m encouraging all of those, because I think anything that brings people together where they can look at each other and see their difficulties, work them out together, know that they’ve got a support group that’s praying for them, even if they’re not coming and talking, that’s a very good thing.

But I think it was Pope Francis himself who said the other day that young people want to get married; they value marriage. So we’ve got to make it clear that we’re there to support them in making a successful marriage. I think that’s where the biggest challenge lies in the Church. So I would hope that the post-synodal exhortation is going to come out in a very clear affirmation of marriage, saying, “In spite of this, in spite of that, this is what we stand for.”

And remember, the sacramentality of marriage is really about how this husband relates to his wife in a way that makes it evident how Christ relates to the Church. I think that we’ve got to develop the idea of sacramentality — because people think a sacrament is something the priest does to minister to you, rather than something you live out yourself. But by the very fact of your living it out, you’re showing Christ’s presence in the world.

Sophia Feingold

writes from Washington.