Cardinal Scola: Pope Francis will stand with tradition on marriage

Vatican City, Dec 3, 2014 / 12:01 am MT ().- In an interview with an Italian paper published on Tuesday, Cardinal Angelo Scola of Milan stated that Pope Francis will not push the Church away from the understanding of marriage's indissolubility.

“During the synod, I thoroughly discussed with Cardinals Marx, Daneels, and Schoenborn in my ‘minor circle’ about the possible access to communion for the divorced and remarried, but I cannot see how to combine on one side the indissolubility of the marriage, and on the other seeming to deny de facto the same principle,” the cardinal told Corriere della Sera Dec. 2.

This way of thinking would end in “a separation between doctrine and pastoral care and discipline,” he said, and “indissolubility would be almost reduced to a Platonic idea which is not reflected in real life.”

Such reasoning “also poses a grave educative problem: how can we tell young people getting married, who have difficulties with the 'forever', of the indissolubility of marriage if they know there will always be a possible exit?”

Cardinal Scola said “the Pope will not likely take” any stance that he himself would not share – that is, one not in accord with the Church’s tradition.

He emphasized that “the majority” of synod fathers supported the indissolubility of marriage.

Cardinal Scola's own proposal at the synod, he said, was one of “making an anthropological reflection on sexual difference, and a theological reflection on the relation between marriage and the Eucharist,” and to simplify the process of investigating nullity, involving the local bishop more.

Given that Pope Francis will not likely go against tradition, Cardinal Scola underscored on the other hand that “we must acknowledge the style of this Pope, provocation to us Europeans,” since “it leads us to consider our commitment as Christians in a different way.”

“Pope Francis’ style requires humility of all of us, that we listen to him and receive his perspective.”