By Sandro Magister, L’Espresso, August 10, 2023

The Church “does not have doors”, and therefore everyone can come in, but truly “everyone, everyone, everyone, without any exclusion.” This is the message on which Pope Francis insisted most during his travel to Lisbon, in the run-up to a synod that – in its “Instrumentum laboris” – puts at the top of the list of those invited to enter “the divorced and remarried, people in polygamous marriages, or LGBTQ+ Catholics.”

But meanwhile in Italy, where Francis is bishop of Rome and primate, the churches are emptying out. An in-depth survey conducted for the magazine “Il Timone” by Euromedia Research has determined that today only 58.4 percent of Italian citizens over the age of 18 identify themselves as “Catholics,” as opposed to the 37 percent who are “non-believers.” And those who go to Mass on Sundays are just 13.8 percent of the population, mostly over 45, with even lower numbers in Lombardy and Veneto, the regions that have been the historic stronghold of the Italian “Catholic world.”

Not only that. Even among “practicing” Catholics, those who go to Mass once or more a month, just one out of three recognizes in the Eucharist “the real body of Christ,” while the others reduce it to a vague “symbol” or a “commemoration of the bread of the last supper.” And also just one in three are those who go to confession at least once a year, still convinced that it is a sacrament for the “remission of sins.” It comes as no surprise that the Benedictine theologian Elmar Salmann should have said in a June 14 interview with “L’Osservatore Romano” that even more concerning for him than the number of the faithful is the decline of sacramental practice, which “is about to go under.”

A decline that is accompanied by a conspicuous yielding to the “spirit of the time” in the fields of doctrine and morality. 43.8 percent of practicing Catholics consider abortion a right, 41.6 percent believe it is right to allow homosexual marriages, 61.8 percent deny that divorce is a sin, 71.6 percent approve contraception. A certain resistance is seen only with regard to the surrogate womb, with two thirds of the practicing opposed.

A decline that is accompanied by a conspicuous yielding to the “spirit of the time” in the fields of doctrine and morality. 43.8 percent of practicing Catholics consider abortion a right, 41.6 percent believe it is right to allow homosexual marriages, 61.8 percent deny that divorce is a sin, 71.6 percent approve contraception.

But if this is the reality of the facts, what could be the effect of the persistent invitation to welcome into the Church “everyone, everyone, everyone,” that is, even none other than “the divorced and remarried, people in polygamous marriages, or LGBTQ+ Catholics,” who according to what the Church has always taught “cannot receive all the sacraments?”

This is the question that Anita Hirschbeck, of the “Katholische Nachrichten-Agentur,” posed to the pope at the press conference on the flight back from Lisbon on August 6.

Francis replied that yes, everyone must be welcomed into the Church, “ugly and beautiful, good and bad,” including homosexuals. But “ministeriality in the Church is another thing, which is the way of moving the flock forward, and one of the important things is, in ministeriality, accompanying people step by step on their way of maturation… The Church is mother, she receives everyone, and each one makes his way within the Church.”

Thus stated, this response from the pope hits the brakes on the course of the “synodal way” of Germany, but not of it alone, toward a revolution in the Church’s doctrine on sexuality.

And it is an answer entirely in line, instead, with what is written in the much more solid “Pastoral letter on human sexuality” published by the bishops of Scandinavia last Lent: “It may happen that circumstances make a Catholic unable, for a time, to receive the sacraments. He or she does not therefore cease to be a member of the Church. Experience of internal exile embraced in faith can lead to a deeper sense of belonging.”

But it should be noted that Francis does not always speak and act consistently on these issues.

The blessing of same-sex couples, for example, although prohibited – with the pope’s written agreement – by the dicastery for the doctrine of the faith headed by Cardinal Luis Francisco Ladaria Ferrer, has in fact been approved by Francis himself on several occasions.

And now that Ladaria will be succeeded by Victor Manuel Fernández, the controversial Argentine theologian favored by Jorge Mario Bergoglio, it can be taken as assured that the time of the guardians of doctrine “who point and condemn” is over, replaced with a new, irenic program of “harmonious growth” between “differing currents of thought in philosophy, theology, and pastoral practice,” which “will preserve Christian doctrine more effectively than any control mechanism,” as stated in the unusual letter from the pope that accompanied the appointment of the new prefect.

A decisive twist of the helm in this direction is the interview that “L’Osservatore Romano” published on July 27 with Piero Coda, 68, secretary general of the international theological commission, member of the theological commission of the synod and professor at the Sophia University Institute of Loppiano, of the Focolare movement of which he is a top-level member.

The interview is entitled: “There is no reform of the Church without a reform of theology.” And in it, in addition to the answers, also revealing are the questions from the director of the Vatican newspaper, Andrea Monda, and Roberto Cetera, both former high school religion teachers.

The starting assumption is that the theology still taught in the faculties and seminaries “is antiquated.” And this is because “man changes,” even in the “relations between genders,” and we “risk speaking to a man and a woman who no longer exist,” when instead “a renewal of theology should begin precisely with a revisitation of anthropological thought.”

Therefore the man Jesus is also to be rethought in a new form, no longer with the “fixity” adopted until now. Coda says: “Theological anthropology as we often represent it is largely to be shelved: certainly not in substance, but in the interpretation that is given to it. Because it is abstract and idealistic. It presents an exculturated vision of the world and of man. We need to relive it and rethink it and repropose it.”

Hence a series of reform proposals that the interviewers list at the end of the interview: “Rewinding the tape of this conversation, we began from original sin: to be rethought; then grace: to be rethought; then freedom: to be rethought; then the sacraments: to be rethought. If we were in your place, Monsignor Coda, thinking of the work to be done – on the assumption that there is no reform of the Church without a reform of theology – our hands would tremble….”

If this is the open construction site, in which everything can be changed, it is difficult to imagine a pontificate on the wane more revolutionary than the current one. Or rather, more confusional.

This article first appeared HERE.