Cardinal Fernández’s First Year: Undermining His Own Magisterium?
The Catholic Thing, 06 July 2024
Víctor Manuel Fernández has been busy during his first year in office. But has he been effective?
Víctor Manuel Fernández has been busy during his first year in office. But has he been effective?
Appointed one year ago this week as prefect of the Vatican’s doctrinal office – in the past known colloquially in Rome as “La Suprema” and now officially as the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF) – Cardinal Fernández has had an intense year, giving official responses to questions about Holy Communion for couples living together outside valid marriages, transgender godparents, freemasonry, and cremation; declarations on blessing same-sex couples and human dignity; a note on the valid administration of the sacraments, and norms on judging supernatural phenomena.
Yet amidst this flurry of magisterial activity, Cardinal Fernández may have undermined the very magisterium he has so vigorously exercised. He has taught energetically, but in a manner that makes unclear what is being taught. Such an approach can erode magisterial authority, not because Catholics might dissent from magisterial teaching, but because it is no longer clear what magisterial teaching is.
Three instances from the past year illustrate the problem.
I. Returning to Amoris laetitia
Just weeks after taking up his duties in Rome, Cardinal Fernández returned to Amoris laetitia, a document where it was shown that he was a key influence, likely the principal drafter. The 2016 apostolic exhortation struck many as contradicting what St. John Paul II taught in Veritatis splendor. Fernández defended Amoris laetitia, but while the thoughts of a ghostwriter are of interest, they are not magisterial.
Thus, early on as prefect, Fernández sought to shore up a salvage operation on Amoris laetitia, of which he was a participant. Answering questions submitted to the DDF, Fernández repeated in September 2023 that the definitive interpretation of Amoris laetitia was given by Pope Francis in a letter he wrote to the bishops of the Buenos Aires pastoral region in September 2016. In that letter, the Holy Father said that there were “no other interpretations.”
The Buenos Aires guidelines were more restrictive than was widely reported. For example, they were more strict than the Malta guidelines proposed by Cardinal Mario Grech – now head of the Vatican’s synod secretariat – when he was a bishop in Malta. He was joined by Archbishop Charles Scicluna, adjunct secretary of the DDF. If there are truly “no other interpretations,” it means that Grech and Scicluna were wrong.
Leaving that aside, the manner of the Buenos Aires maneuver was most remarkable. I described it then as “magisterium by stealth.” The ambiguous parts of Amoris laetitia were clarified by guidelines from the Buenos Aires bishops, among whom was Fernández, at that time a bishop in Buenos Aires as rector of the Catholic University of Argentina. The guidelines were then approved in a letter from Pope Francis to the Buenos Aires bishops, leaked to the press when the guidelines were released. Fernández subsequently argued that a leaked letter could be a magisterial act.
Could a leaked letter clarify magisterial teaching, especially when it appeared at variance with the teaching of an encyclical (Veritatis splendor)? That was not persuasive to many, so in 2017 Pope Francis declared, ex post facto, that his letter to Buenos Aires was now an apostolic letter, and thus part of the magisterium. For over a year there was an “apostolic letter” that no one knew was such, a hidden deployment of magisterial authority.
Upholding this unusual maneuver was the subject that Cardinal Fernández chose to address first as prefect, namely that the magisterium could be exercised by manner of press leaks. Once hidden, it could then become retroactively a magisterial teaching, which no one suspected had been offered.
Why would the prefect make that his first priority? Perhaps because it was important to emphasize that the magisterium is whatever the relevant pastors decide that it is.
II. Flip Flops on Fiducia supplicans
The Buenos Aires maneuver betrayed an approach that would dominate Cardinal Fernández’s signature initiative of the past year, Fiducia supplicans, the third section of which is entitled “Blessings of Couples in Irregular Situations and of Couples of the Same Sex.” That was rejected outright by many, for example, the largest eastern Church, the Ukrainian Greek Catholics.
While the controversy is well known, consider how Fernández decided to respond.
First was a “press release” that drew distinctions that appeared to empty the original declaration of its plain meaning. The press statement gave specific instructions on how priests might offer a blessing. Can a press release modify a “declaration” – the highest level of DDF teaching – approved by the Holy Father? Is the declaration then to be read in light of the latest comments of the prefect to the media? Does it have to be a formal press release? Would a tweet do?
Second, the bishops of Africa summarily rejected Fiducia. The prefect then met with Cardinal Fridolin Ambongo Besengu, president of the Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar (SECAM) and signed a joint statement remarkably agreeing that the DDF’s own declaration did not apply in Africa.
“This is to express our position today in Africa and we do it in a spirit of communion, of synodality with Pope Francis, and with the prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith,” Ambongo said. “In Africa there is no place to bless homosexual couples. Not at all.”
Thus magisterial teaching can be suspended geographically if the prefect agrees. Fernández did not make clear how an African priest should act if, for example, working in a California parish.
Third, the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria, headed by Pope Tawadros II, suspended ecumenical relations with Rome, “rejecting all forms of homosexual relationships, because they violate the holy Bible and the law by which God created man as male and female, and the [Coptic] Church considers any blessing of such relations, whatever its type, to be a blessing for sin, and this is unacceptable.”
Cardinal Fernández went on a fence-mending visit to Egypt and attempted to solve that problem by flatly stating that the Holy See “agrees” with the Coptic statement that rejected the teaching of Fiducia and broke off relations. The prefect is in agreement with a rejection of his own declaration.
Is it possible then to speak of Fiducia as magisterial teaching?
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