The Married Couple Knocking at the Doors of the Synod

Ludmila and Stanislaw Grygiel teach at the pontifical institute for studies on the family created by pope Karol Wojtyla, their lifelong friend. They have not been invited. But they had much to say to the synod fathers. And they have said it. With clarity and courage



by Sandro Magister







9.10.2014

ROME, October 9, 2014 – A synod that is “open” like all sides are urging it to be, starting with Pope Francis, is a synod also ready to listen to voices that come from outside of it, all the more so if they are those of competent persons.Right on the eve of the synod, as an authoritative bridge between the outside and the inside of its walls, was the plenary assembly held in Rome from October 2 to 4 by the “Consilium Conferentiarum Episcoporum Europæ.”The assembly was directly oriented to the synod, right from its title: “The family and the future of Europe.”The speakers included synod fathers of the first rank like Hungarian cardinal Péter Erdõ, president of the CCEE and relator general for the synod, Canadian cardinal Marc Ouellet, prefect of the congregation for bishops, Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, president of the Italian episcopal conference, and His Beatitude Fouad Twal, Latin patriarch of Jerusalem.But above all there was a married couple who are both philosophers, Ludmila and Stanislaw Grygiel of Poland, childhood friends of Karol Wojtyla as priest, bishop, and pope, both of whom also teach at the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family.The institute was created by pope Wojtyla in 1982, two years after a synod also dedicated to the family and one year after the apostolic exhortation “Familiaris Consortio” that implemented it.With its headquarters in Rome at the Pontifical Lateran University, the institute has branches all over the world, from the United States to Spain, from Brazil to Germany, from Mexico to India, from Benin to the Philippines, with a growing number of students.Its presidents and professors have included cardinals Carlo Caffarra, Angelo Scola, Marc Ouellet.At the approach of the synod this October, the institute has produced a notable spectrum of contributions. The latest, entitled “The Gospel of the Family: Going Beyond Cardinal Kasper's Proposal in the Debate on Marriage, Civil Re-Marriage and Communion in the Church,” has been published simultaneously in Italy by Cantagalli, in the United States by Ignatius Press, in Spain by Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, and in Germany by Media Maria Verlag.Its authors are the Spanish theologian Juan José Pérez-Soba and the German anthropologist Stephan Kampowski, both professors at the institute’s Rome location.The preface was written by Australian cardinal George Pell, one of the eight cardinals who are assisting Pope Francis in the reform of the curia and the governance of the Church. On October 3 Pell also presented the book to the public, at the headquarters of the institute.In short, it is difficult to find in the Church today an institute of philosophical, theological, and pastoral studies more authoritative and competent than this one on issues of marriage and family.And yet the incredible has happened. None of the professors of this pontifical institute has been called to speak at the synod on the family that opened on October 5 and will close on the 19th.One more reason to listen again to what Ludmila and Stanislaw Grygiel said at the pre-synodal assembly organized by the Council of Episcopal Conferences of Europe.The following is an extract of their talks, substantiated and presented with “parrhesia,” that frankness, clarity, courage, and humility which Pope Francis has recommended for all at this synod.____________[…] Chesterton said that we do not want a Church that will move with the world, but a Church that will move the world. Paraphrasing his words, we could say that families today, those in crisis and those that are happy, do not need pastoral care suited for the world, but pastoral care suited for He who knows what the heart of man desires.I see the evangelical paradigm of this pastoral care in the dialogue of Jesus with the Samaritan woman, from which emerge all the elements that characterize the current situation of difficulties both of spouses and of priests involved in pastoral care.Christ agrees to speak with a woman who is living in sin. Christ is not capable of hating, he is capable only of loving, and therefore he does not condemn the Samaritan woman but reawakens the original desire of her heart, which is obfuscated by the experiences of a disordered life. He forgives her only after the woman has confessed that she does not have a husband.In this way the Gospel passage recalls that God does not make a gift of his mercy to one who does not ask for it, and that recognition of sin and the desire for conversion are the rule of mercy. Mercy is never a gift offered to someone who does not want it, it is not a product on sale because it is not in demand. Pastoral care requires a profound and convinced adherence of pastors to the truth of the sacrament.In the private diary of John Paul II, we find this note written in 1981, the third year of his pontificate: “Lack of confidence in the family is the first cause of the crisis of the family.”One could add that lack of confidence in the family on the part of pastors is among the main causes of the crisis of pastoral care for the family. This cannot ignore the difficulties, but must not dwell upon them and admit discouragement and defeat. It must not conform to the casuistry of the modern Pharisees. It must welcome Samaritan women not to hide the truth about their behavior, but to lead them to conversion.Christians today are in a situation like the one in which Jesus found himself, when in spite of the hardness of heart of his contemporaries he re-proposed a model of marriage as God had wanted it from the beginning.I get the impression that we Christians talk too much about failed marriages, and too little about faithful marriages, we talk too much about the crisis of the family and too little about the fact that the community of marriage and the family assures man not only earthly happiness but also that of eternity, and is the place in which the laity’s vocation to holiness is realized.This also leaves aside the fact that, thanks to the presence of God, the community of marriage and the family is not limited to the temporal, but is open to the supertemporal, because each of the spouses is destined to eternal life and is called to live in eternity in the presence of God, who has created both of them and has wanted them to be united, sealing this union himself with the sacrament._________[…] Ignoring the love “forever” of which Jesus speaks to the Samaritan woman as the “gift of God” (Jn 4:7-10) makes spouses and families, and with them societies, lose “the right way” and go astray “in a dark forest,” as in the Inferno of Dante, according to the indications of a hardened heart, “sklerocardia” (Mt 19:8).A “merciful” indulgence, requested by some theologians, is not capable of stopping the advancement of the hardness of hearts that do not remember how things are “from the beginning.” The Marxist assumption according to which philosophy must change the world rather than contemplating it has made inroads into the thinking of certain theologians such that these, more or less deliberately, instead of looking at man and the world in the light of the eternal Word of the living God, look at this Word from the perspective of ephemeral sociological tendencies. As a result they justify the actions of “hard hearts” according to the circumstances, and speak of the mercy of God as if this were a matter of tolerance tinged with commiseration.A theology constituted in this way demonstrates a disregard for man. For these theologians man is no longer mature enough to look with courage, in the light of divine mercy, at the truth of his own becoming love, just as this truth itself is “from the beginning” (Mt 19:8). Not knowing “the gift of God,” they conform the divine Word to the desires of sclerotic hearts. It is possible that they do not realize that they are unconsciously proposing to God the pastoral practice that they have elaborated, as a way that could bring him to the people. [...]John Paul II approached every marriage, even broken ones, as Moses approached the burning bush on Mount Horeb. He did not enter into their homes without first taking the sandals from his feet, because he saw present in them the “center of history and of the universe.” [...] This is why he did not bend himself to their circumstances and adapt his pastoral practice to them. [...] At the risk of being criticized, he insisted on the fact that it is not circumstances that give form to marriage and the family, but it is instead these that give form to circumstances. First he accepted the truth, and only afterward the circumstances. He never allowed the truth to be left out waiting in the wings. He cultivated the soil of humanity not for ephemeral successes, but for an imperishable victory. He was seeking the culture of the “gift of God,” meaning the culture of love forever.The beauty in which is revealed the love that calls man and woman to be born again in “one flesh” is difficult. The gift demands a sacrifice, without this it is not a gift. [...] The apostles, unable to understand the inner discipline of marriage, say openly: “If this is the condition of man with respect to woman, it is better not to marry.” Then Jesus says something that forces man to look above himself, if he wants to know who he himself is: “Not everyone can understand this, but only those to whom it has been granted... He who can understand this, let him understand” (Mt 19:10-12).One evening at his home, during the 1960’s, Cardinal Karol Wojtyla had been listening in silence for a long time to the talk of some Catholic intellectuals who were predicting the inevitable secularization of society. [...] When they had finished speaking, he said only this: “Not even once did you use the word ‘grace.’” What he said then I remember now every time I read the statements of theologians who speak of marriage with no awareness of the love that comes about in the beauty of grace. Love is grace, it is a “gift of God.” [...]If this is the way things are with love, inserting into theological arguments the adage, full of pity but opposed to mercy, “nemo ad heroismum obligatur,” no one is obliged to be a hero, is demeaning to man. It demeans him by contradicting Christ, who on the mountain of the beatitudes says to all men: “So be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Mt 5:48).With broken marriages and families, we must com-patire [suffer with] and not have pity. In that case, pity has within itself something disparaging for man. It does not help him open himself to the infinite love to which God has oriented him “before the creation of the world” (Eph 1:4). Pitying sentimentalism is a forgetting of what the things of man are like “from the beginning,” while com-passion, suffering along with those who have gotten lost “in the dark forest,” reawakens their memory of the Beginning and indicates the way back to it. This way is the Decalogue observed in thought and action: “Do not kill! Do not fornicate! do not steal yourself from the person to whom you have given yourself forever! Do not desire your neighbor’s wife!” [...] The Decalogue inscribed in the heart of man defends the truth of his identity, which is fulfilled in his loving forever. [...]In one of our conversations about these painful problems, John Paul II said to me: “There are things that must be said without regard for the reactions of the world.” [...] Christians who out of fear of being reproved as enemies of humanity bend to diplomatic compromises with the world distort the sacramental character of the Church. The world, knowing well the weakness of man, has struck above all at the “one flesh” of Adam and Eve. It seeks to distort in the first place the sacrament of conjugal love and on the basis of this distortion it will seek to distort all of the other sacraments. These constitute in fact the unity of the places in which man encounters God. [...] If Christians allow the world to convince them that the gift of freedom given to them by Jesus makes their lives difficult and even unbearable, they will follow the example of the Grand Inquisitor in the “Brothers Karamazov” and make Jesus an outlaw. Then what will happen to man? What will happen to God who became man?Before being killed, Jesus says to the disciples, “The hour is coming in which anyone who kills you will think he is rendering worship to God... In the world you will have tribulation, but take courage, I have overcome the world” (Jn 16:2-33).Let us take courage, and not confuse the worldly intelligence of calculating reason with the wisdom of the intellect that expands to the boundaries that unite man with God. Herod and Herodias may have been intelligent, but they were certainly not wise. Saint John the Baptist was wise. He, not they, knew how to recognize the way, the truth, and the life.___________The complete text of their presentations at the plenary assembly of the “Consilium Conferentiarum Episcoporum Europæ":And the program of the assembly:__________Like the Grygiels, Cardinal Fernando Filoni - in an interview with Vatican Radio during the days of the synod - took as a model Jesus with the Samaritan woman and John the Baptist:__________English translation by Matthew Sherry , Ballwin, Missouri, U.S.A.__________For more news and commentary, see the blog that Sandro Magister maintains, available only in Italian:__________