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The polemic of those defending the Faith from the co-ordinated frontal attack on marriage have so far focused a great deal of energy on refuting Cardinal Walter Kasper's thesis and on exposing his arrogance towards journalists and cultures.Â
And it is only just and right that these key aspects should be targeted in the defence of the Faith. Nevertheless, there is a sense that to focus exclusively on these dimensions is to clip off shoots rather than to tear out the problem by its roots.
We are in a Total War for Jesus Christ, for the Church, for billions of souls, for marriage, family, confession, priesthood, indeed for the very notion of immutable truth and as a result for the future of our civilization. In such a situation we may not aim only for front-line deadlock. The supply lines of the enemy must be hit.
More concretely, we must recognize, expose and engage the fact that, not only does Kasper's 'thesis' have the support of Pope Francis' notion of 'serene theology', but that Cardinal Walter Kasper's views on marriage are merely the flowering of more fundamental beliefs which he expressed in his 1976 book Jesus The Christ.
In this study of Christology, Kasper begins a section on Christ's miracles under the title The Problematics of Jesus' Miracles. From the very outset of the discussion then, Kasper reveals his hermeneutic with this depiction of the miraces as 'problematic'. We are alerted to the fact that the miracles will not merely be presented as supernatural events to be received, but as devices to be dissected. He affirms this reading by suggesting that the miracles are an aspect of Jesus' activity which 'for modern man at least' is remarkable and hard to understand.Â
Also revealing is his choice of words when describing the depth of the miracle accounts in the strata of Gospel witness. He observes: 'The miracle tradition of the gospels cannot be wished away.' But who in their right mind would wish to? Ah, it is for the sake of 'modern man'.
Here Kasper reveals his preference for an approach where the posited 'modern man' - rather than Christ and His revelation - will be pivotal.Â
But who is this modern man? It is, of course, important for us, as evangelists and catechists, to realize that the people in the West of our time think and act differently than they did at other times. Our contemporaries have been shaped by the thought-forms and fashions of modernity and indeed post-modernity. To reach the people of our time with the Gospel, we must understand their lives and appeal to their hopes and aspirations. However, the decades beginning just prior to the Second Vatican Council, and leading through to the present, have witnessed a serious over-emphasis on this conceptualization of a 'modern-man'. The over-emphasis has long since entered the realms of idolatry. 'Modern-man' has become the idol who, looking down on belief in miracles and a sacramental Church, must be placated. For the likes of Kasper, this figure must be approached in a manner which both apologizies for our miracle tradition and waters it down through a one-sided use of the historical-critical method of biblical exegesis.Â
This type of approach was more typical of 19th Century liberal-Protestant exegetes who, literally, came at the Sacred Scriptures with a set of Modernist pre-suppositions. Having themselves declared that it was not possible for 'modern man' to believe in miracles, they refused to believe the witness of Sacred Scripture wherever miracles were mentioned. These were read as either a 'literary-device' or a 'later redaction'.
And so the liberal exegetes found only themselves and their limited paradigm in the Bible; which became, for them and their followers, merely a work of literature expressing the highest aspirations of man. Â
Need we join them or Walter Kasper in looking down at our ancestors whilst hermetically sealing off 'modern man' from his forebears? Are the aspirations and needs of fallen and limited humanity today really so different from those of other times? Do we not all still long for love, goodness, beauty, truth, happiness - in short, for God?Â
It is remarkable that during the era of liberal-Protestant biblical dissection, tens of thousands were flocking to Lourdes, where many miraculous healings were occuring in the waters of Massabielle. Indeed, near this time, France had also witnessed the global draw of the miracle-working confessor St. John Vianney in Ars. While the manufacturers of 'modern man' grafted in the half-light, the humble folk, like those of every time and place, were receptive to the mystery of transcendence and sought the God of love.Â
Paraphrasing Goethe, Walter Kasper revealingly describes the Gospel miracles as 'faith's problem children'. For the Apostles, the miracles were signs which aided their faith in Jesus Christ. And yet Kasper, writing just one generation after 70,000 people witnessed the Miracle of the Sun at Fatima, pursues a reductionist approach. It is all the more remarkable when one considers that he was writing within a decade of the death of St. Padre Pio; that stigmatized crucifix of a man through whom Jesus Christ drew countless souls by miracles of healing, bilocation and the reading of souls; miracles and love which continue to convert many today.Â
Still, for Kasper the 'scientific approach calls for a fundamental reconsideration of the whole concept of miracle.' At this point, he gets into a lengthy discussion of the conception of 'nature miracles'. Without entering on this theme here, let us consider whether this first principle is really necessary or even appropriate for a Catholic. Without in any way rejecting the contributions of ethical science, must we accept that the 'scientific approach' calls for such a reconsideration of the miracles of the God-man Jesus Christ? May we not - indeed, ought we not - as the then Cardinal Ratzinger used to say, rather critique the critique?
Kasper contends that 'a number of miracle stories turn out in the light of form-criticism to be projections of the experiences of Easter back into the earthly Jesus, or anticipatory representations of the exalted Christ'. Kasper skates out towards the thin ice of Modernist exegesis here. The writings of Popes Pius IX and Pope St. Pius X protect the unwary from taking such risks.
Still, Kasper will have this: ' We must describe many of the gospel miracle stories as legendary. Legends of this sort should be examined less for their historical than their theological content.' And CRACK, the unwary would have fallen through had they followed him uncritically.Â
And further on: 'To show that certain miracles cannot be ascribed to the earthly Jesus does not mean that they have no theological or kerygmatic significance. These non-historical miracle reports are statements of faith about the significance for salvation of the person and message of Jesus.' This looks like the classical hallmark of the Modernist; he says one thing and then appears to undo it with another. We can easily destroy the strawman here by observing that, if Christ is truly God and man, then He can do anything and if He is not then the telling of 'legends' would have no significance for us today. Why should we accept Kasper's presentation and not that of the Catholic Church from the time of the Apostles Who witnessed Jesus Christ first-hand and who were commissioned by Him to hand on the Church to all generations? Why should we follow Kasper, whose book dismissively suggests that diseases and symptoms were thought of at the time of Christ to be signs of demon possession, when present day exorcists like Fr. Gabriel Amorth and Fr. Jose Antonio Fortea bear honest witness to the grim reality of such spiritual warfare, its prevalence in our times, and to Christ's continued power over Satan through the ministry of His Church? Â
Even more startling are Kasper's views on the Resurrection. He suggests: 'The empty tomb represents an ambiguous phenomenon, open to different possibilities of interpretation.' He goes on to suggest that, after His Resurrection, an assertion that Jesus ate with His disciples and was touched by their hands: 'runs the risk of justifying too coarse a Paschal faith.' And yet, these texts are the Scriptural basis, which in harmony with the Tradition transmitted from the Apostles, form the basis for the Church's perennial belief in the bodily resurrection.
It is fascinating that one of Kasper's students was Archbishop Bruno Forte, the Special Secretary at the Synod; a man considered by many to have authored the problematic parts of the mid-term Synodal Relatio document regarding homosexuality which were not representative of the contributions of the Synodal Fathers.Â
Archbishop Forte is a man who can speak in perfectly orthodox and clear ways about the Resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ. And yet, and yet... The journalist Alessandro Zangrando suggests that, in his 1994 essay Gesu di Nazaret, storia di Dio, Dio della storia, Bruno Forte spoke of the empty tomb in terms of a legend inherited by the early Christian community from the disciples.Â
The present battles against the Church's perennial teaching on the indissolubility of marriage - teachings received by the Church from Jesus Christ, fully God and fully man, and handed down often at the price of great suffering and martyrdom - find their roots in these earlier writings and beliefs of Kasper and his disciples.Â
In fact, it is deeper than all of that. Pope St. Pius X warned that, although by God's grace, he had scotched the serpent of Modernism in his day, it had inserted its poison into the veins of the Church and that it would rally into a more virulent form in the future.Â
This is the way to understand our present situation. Modernism - and behind that Satan himself - is the real enemy which is seeking to take over the Church in our times to the extent that God will allow such a travesty to occur.
The job of the orthodox cardinals, bishops, priests, theologians, polemicists and informed laity is to expose this fact and to fight the Modernism at the root of the problem with all the arms of the Church. They must ask: Do the men pushing for revolutionary changes in the Church's pastoral practice - and therefore in practical terms in Her doctrine - accept and believe the fundamentals of the Deposit of Faith and understand their meaning in the same way that the Church has believed these at all times and in all places? Do they even believe that Jesus Christ is God and man? In short: Are they Catholics? For all of us, we must pray the Rosary and remain close to Christ in the sacraments. With such men remaining unexposed at the top, only divine intervention can remedy the situation now.Â
