Cardinal-designate Kevin Farrell believes the US bishops as a whole
should have discussed pastoral guidelines for implementing Pope
Francis’s exhortation on the family before individual bishops began
issuing guidelines for their own dioceses.
Implementing the Pope’s exhortation, Amoris Laetitia, he said, “has
to be done in communion with our bishops. I think that it would have
been wiser to wait for the gathering of the conference of bishops where
all the bishops of the United States or all the bishops of a country
would sit down and discuss these things.”
A conference-wide discussion, he told Catholic News Service, would
ensure “an approach that would not cause as much division among bishops
and dioceses, and misunderstandings.”
The cardinal-designate was asked specifically about pastoral
guidelines issued for the Archdiocese of Philadelphia by Archbishop
Charles Chaput, who also is head of a US bishops’ ad hoc committee for
implementing Amoris Laetitia. Among other things, the Philadelphia
guidelines state that while divorced and civilly remarried couples
should be welcome in parishes and accompanied by priests, they may not
receive Communion unless they live as brother and sister.
Cardinal-designate Farrell was bishop of Dallas and a member of the
US Conference of Catholic Bishops until September when he became prefect
of the new Vatican Dicastery for Laity, the Family and Life.
“I don’t share the view of what Archbishop Chaput did, no,” the
cardinal-designate said. “I think there are all kinds of different
circumstances and situations that we have to look at — each case as it
is presented to us.”
“I think that is what our Holy Father is speaking about, is when we
talk about accompanying, it is not a decision that is made irrespective
of the couple,” he said. “Obviously, there is an objective moral law,”
he said, but you will never find two couples who have the same reason
for being divorced and remarried.
Catholic News Service attempted to contact Archbishop Chaput, who was unavailable for comment.
Pope Francis’s apostolic exhortation on the family was published in
early April. The Pope continually has insisted that the document is
about the importance and beauty of marriage and family life and the
church’s obligation to support and strengthen it.
But much of the debate has focused on the document’s eighth chapter
that speaks of ministry to and access to the sacraments for couples in
what the Catholic Church traditionally defined as “irregular
situations,” particularly people who were divorced and civilly remarried
without an annulment.
Cardinal-designate Farrell insisted Amoris Laetitia is “so important”
because of the way it explains and affirms the Church’s vision of the
joy and beauty of family life and the way it encourages better ways to
share that teaching, especially in marriage preparation programs.
“The most important part of Amoris Laetitia is not Chapter 8” on
accompanying those in irregular situations, he said. “We need to explain
marriage, we need to explain human love in a much better and more
dynamic way. And we need laypeople to do that.”
“We don’t deny the difficulties” some couples experience or the fact
that there are many divorced and remarried Catholics, who “go to our
churches in the United States every weekend,” he said. “We have to try
to find ways to bring them into full communion.”
Obviously, there are limits to what the church can do because of its
firm faith that marriage is indissoluble, he said. “But it is better to
say to the couple, ‘Let’s work together and let’s walk together’ — as
Pope Francis would say — ‘through this process and see how far we
arrive.'”
The Catholic Church cannot react by “closing the doors before we even
listen to the circumstances and the people,” the cardinal-designate
said. “That’s not the way to go.”
While a few cardinals and bishops have disagreed with the general
interpretation of Pope Francis’s exhortation, “I think the bishops are
unified,” Cardinal-designate Farrell said.
“Each bishop in his diocese has to set certain rules and parameters,
but at the same time, I think that they need to be open to listening to
the Holy Spirit and open to what the bishops of the world” discussed at
the synods on the family in 2014 and 2015.