Cardinal Donald Wuerl of Washington participated in this fall’s synod on the family in Rome. In this Register interview, he discusses the major themes of the gathering and the takeaway lessons, including ministry to the divorced and remarried and accompaniment of families on their faith journeys.

 

Cardinal Wuerl, one of the themes that comes out in the final synod report is the need to accompany families in all their situations on the path to holiness. How can our parishes and people play an active role in this?

The importance of the family is something we have always been able to take for granted, probably because so many of us have experienced its blessings. But, sadly, we have seen a significant cultural change.

On any journey, it’s important to know where you are going and how to get there. All too often, contemporary culture says to go wherever you want, with the result of people getting lost. So one of the primary roles of the Church, including in our parishes and the lay faithful, is to point the right way, to provide the map and the various road signs, so people reach the right destination. We are called to fully proclaim the Catholic understanding of marriage and family, the Catholic vision of love, with clarity, and at the same time to meet each person and family where they are to draw them closer to the Lord.

One important component of accompaniment includes the effort of Christian families to support one another, to provide a good example, a positive witness, and also to be there to offer counsel and consolation. It is the laity — in their homes, neighborhoods, workplaces and recreational fields — who are on the front lines in the spiritual and temporal renewal of marriage and family.

 

What should a parish be doing to minister to the laity effectively and accompany them? Do you think we need to develop a “best pastoral practices” for how a parish and pastor care for the divorced?

Even if divorce has not happened to us personally, I dare say we’ve all be touched by divorce — and the pain of divorce — in one way or another. We all know someone, perhaps a family member or friend, who has been divorced or who is a child of divorce. In some way, we all have experience in helping someone struggling in a wounded or dysfunctional marriage or to pick up the pieces after a broken marriage.

When we speak of pastoral ministry, there is no one-size-fits-all solution. Each situation, each person, each couple is different, even if the Gospel teaching on marriage and family is one and unchanging. The best pastoral practice is to remember God’s saving mercy and his liberating truth. We speak the truth with love, taking into account the limitation of real, actual, concrete situations and of what each person is able to do, capable of doing.

It is important that we help persons who are divorced to understand that they continue to belong to the Church family. They are our sisters and brothers, and we should encourage them to continue to be involved in the life of the Church. Our task is not to scold, but, rather, to sustain them in faith and hope and to lovingly help them to live as fully as possible the Catholic faith. With a consideration of the circumstances, if they have reason to question the sacramental validity of their marriage, assistance can be offered to begin that process. Pope Francis has recently revised the rules governing the annulment procedures, and dioceses across the country have begun to implement those changes.

Added to that, we can expect the Holy Father to take further pastoral steps to support and sustain married couples and families in their lives, bring hope and healing to those who find themselves in difficult situations and encourage a civilization of love that values and fosters marriage and children, including urging Christian families to bear witness to God’s saving love and grace.

Pastoral solutions to difficult and sometimes intractable problems do not come easy. However, with the synod, we witnessed a new openness in how the Church looks at pastoral problems, issues and practices today. Pope Francis asks us to trust in the Spirit, to be open to new pastoral possibilities, always within the context of the Church’s received Tradition, and to avoid the rigidity that can close us to sharing God’s mercy. A civil remarriage after divorce adds another pastoral dimension because of the unchanging truth of the indissolubility of sacramental marriage, but it is no less true that a Catholic in a second civil marriage continues to have a home in the Church. We do not abandon him or her, just as we do not abandon anyone who struggles to fully live the teaching of the Church, but instead go to them in their particular situation, listen to them, talk with them and, appealing to the Spirit of mercy, helping them to experience the love of Christ.

 

On the topic of persons who have entered into a civil remarriage after divorce and do not have a declaration of nullity: In concrete terms, what are we talking about when we talk about the “internal forum,” and how do you see pastors using this as a tool to help Catholics in those situations?

Within the synod, there was discussion about the need for better clarity in our terminology, and so, right away, we must explain what is meant by speaking with a pastor in the “internal forum.” A perhaps oversimplified definition is that it involves personal, private spiritual guidance and counseling toward the goal of individual inner discernment, as opposed to public acts, the “external forum.” Homilies, classroom instruction and similar activities play an important role in helping people to learn, know and grow in the faith, and legal structures such as marriage tribunals are important in determining the sacramental validity of a putative marriage. However, the one-on-one, hands-on personal interaction in the privacy of an office or the confessional is essential if we are to minister to people in their individual situations and help them to understand in the context of their own personal situations how to live the faith more vibrantly and grow in the proper formation of conscience.

 

Of course, there is a lot of speculation that priests may use the internal forum to counsel Catholics in divorced-and-remarried situations without annulment to receive Communion. Is that really possible for a priest to do that in the internal forum?

The message of the synod, like the message of the Church as a whole on all matters, is one of mercy, not moral indifferentism. The teaching on conscience and the role of the Church in the formation of consciences is not changed. Neither was it suggested that the internal forum, or other subjective discernment, be a substitute for the objective tribunal process. The synod was clear that in these conversations with a pastor, the person’s discernment could not properly be contrary to the truth and charity of the Gospel as taught by the Church.

 

As the synod concluded, you commented in a pair of interviews that, moving forward, the Code of Canon Law would no longer serve as the “framework” or “frame of reference” for pastoral responses. Could you elaborate on what you meant by this?

In the governance of the Church, it is important to have a set of rules and norms. Following our archdiocesan synod last year in Washington, we instituted various statutes to guide our efforts. Yet it is also important to understand that these rules exist to serve our Gospel mission, not frustrate it.

In promulgating the current code, Pope John Paul II reiterated that it is not intended to be a substitute for faith, grace and especially charity. Instead, there is a primacy of these things. Canon law is at the service of the Gospel. It’s God’s love that saves, not the Code of Canon Law. Law provides order in the Church’s activities, but we’re not saved by those words in the law — we’re saved by Jesus on the cross. The point here, really, is that we should not have an overly legalistic approach that looks only at the printed words on the page and does not see the person in front of us. That does not mean ignoring canon law, but interpreting and applying canon law in light of the Gospel.

In the Church, we have always said: You speak the teaching of the Church with clarity. And then, as a pastor of souls, you work with the person, where that person is. The two go together. That’s always been the Tradition of the Church: Speak the truth and minister with love. If those struggling with Catholic teaching have a perception of being alienated permanently and essentially from the Church, this raises a barrier in the effort to live it in real, concrete situations.

 

Ultimately, what needs to happen if we Catholics are to make Pope Francis and the synod’s vision for the vocation of the family in the modern world a reality in our Catholic communities, parishes and families?

The synod invites us to recognize that Christian families themselves are called to be active agents of the Church’s mission of evangelization. Families and their members are called to share the Good News of God’s plan for humanity, to help care for and form other families, and especially to accompany families that are wounded or struggling. This is an integral part of their vocation and mission.

This means that people and families need to be formed and equipped to live out this calling and mission. This requires better witness and better catechesis for all Christians in the “gospel of the family” and the family’s role in the divine plan. This begins in infancy, with mother and father displaying their love for one another. It calls for marriage preparation which is deeper and more effective, again with remote formation beginning at an early age, and also more intensive proximate formation for engaged couples. And it requires ongoing formation and support for couples who have married and for parents in their role as educators in the faith. Accompaniment of the family does not apply only to those who are wounded or challenged by hardship. It is essential that we treat the wounded, but even better is that we seek to prevent the wounds and hardship in the first place.