Open Letter to Pope Francis: A Cri de Coeur from a Convert
Dr. Maike Hickson
December 10, 2014
“Dear director, dear Riccardo, why would I ever write these things to you? Because last night I couldn't sleep. And because I’d like to understand – and ask the readership of Bussola a question: What more has to happen in the Church for Catholics to stand up, once and for all, and shout their indignation from the rooftops? Attention: I am addressing individual Catholics, not associations, secret meetings, movements, sects which for years have been managing the brains of the faithful for the benefit of third parties, dictating the line the followers have to take. .... No, no: here I am making an appeal to individual consciences, to their hearts, their faith and their virility. Before it is too late.” (Mario Palmaro, Letter to Riccardo Cascioli, Director of La Nuova Bussola Quotidana, 8 January 2014)
Dear Holy Father,
It is with agony of heart that I decide to write this open and candid letter. And I shall talk about things that I usually, under normal conditions, never would have made public. I do it – at least I propose to do it – for the good of the Church, for the greater Glory of God and for the salvation of men. You will judge.
This night, I could not sleep. I worry about our Holy Mother the Church. Throughout the year 2014, especially by publicly praising Cardinal Walter Kasper's proposal for allowing “remarried” divorcees to receive Holy Communion, you have opened the door to much confusion about the moral teaching of the Catholic Church and much imprudence on the part of the Church's hierarchy. Several statements coming out of the Synod of Bishops on the Family in October of 2014 have made that confusion even clearer. And then, in December of 2014, you yourself gave an interview to La Nacion, where you yourself suggest a laxer attitude of the Church toward those who remarried outside the Church after a previous divorce, in saying: “Communion alone is no solution. The solution is integration.” You want them, as it now seems, not only to receive Holy Communion, but also to fully partake in the life of the Church, as lecturers at Masses and as godparents of children.
This kind of approach would mean to bypass or offset sin – or even condone it. It would blur the distinction between someone who lives in the state of sanctifying grace, thus pleasing God by following his Commandments and Counsels, and someone who objectively lives in the state of sin, thus displeasing God by his disrespect for God's Law and Wisdom. Such a path thereby would cause anarchy and destroy the moral foundation of the Catholic Church. It would come soon to the ethos of “Anything goes.”
If “remarried” couples can receive Holy Communion, why cannot any other sinner do so who also refuses to repent and to make amends? An habitual drunkard, an habitual wife-beater, an habitual criminal, or a woman who killed the baby in her womb and does not at all repent? Why should any Catholic listen and follow any laws of the Church any more when there will be no moral sanction against him in any way?
And what about the words of Jesus Christ Himself? Do they not matter any more? If one would change the Catholic law regarding adultery, one would defy Christ Himself.
Following Mario Palmaro's invitation, I, too, resist now publicly the direction in which you seem to intend to take the Church.
Read more.
