VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Three days after the papal preacher urged Catholics to repent of the ways they are dividing the church, the Vatican’s secretary of state said the divisions were real and harmful.
“Anyone who sees the situation in the Church today needs to worry about these things because they are there,” Cardinal Pietro Parolin, secretary of state, told Spanish radio network COPE on April 5. “It does a lot of damage to the Church.”
Cardinal Raniero Cantalamessa, preacher of the papal household, had spoken about the divisions in the church on April 2, when he preached in the Liturgy of the Passion of the Lord of Pope Francis.
Cardinal Parolin told COPE that he believes that part of the problem “stems from the fact that the pope places too much emphasis on reforming the Church”, but many people do not understand the difference between the teachings and practices that must remain unchanged and those that can and do must be updated and renewed.
Three days after the papal preacher asked Catholics to repent of the ways they are dividing the Church, the Vatican’s secretary of state said the divisions were real and harmful.
“There is a level that cannot be changed, the structure of the church – the deposit of faith, the sacraments, the apostolic ministry – these are the structural elements,” he said. But because the church is made up of people who are prone to sin, “there is a whole life of the church that can be renewed.”
“Sometimes these divisions and oppositions are born out of confusion at these levels,” he said. “You cannot distinguish between what is essential that cannot change and what is not essential that must be reformed, it must change according to the spirit of the Gospel.”
[Related: Cardinal, at pope’s Good Friday service, decries divisions within church]
José Luis Restán, COPE editorial director, told Cardinal Parolin that he would not ask about the Vatican and China provisional agreement on the appointment of bishops, which was extended in October, but said he wanted to hear the cardinal’s impression on the lives of the Catholics Church in China and “what is at stake for the Church in that great and complex country in the future”.
The future “is the perspective from which we must look at this issue”, replied the cardinal. “Certainly, the church in China is a fundamental part of the Catholic Church, and everything that has been tried and is being tried is to guarantee this community, which is still small, but which has great strength and vitality”.
“You cannot distinguish between what is essential that cannot change and what is not essential that must be reformed, it must change according to the spirit of the Gospel.”
“Everything that is being done is being done to guarantee a normal life for the Church in China,” he said, and part of a normal life for any Catholic is communion with the Pope, which the agreement aims to ensure by having the bishops recognized. both by the Vatican and by the communist government of China.
The suffering and persecution that Catholics in China suffered must always be respected and remembered, he said. But your persistence in faith should also give the church hope for the future.
“The steps taken, even if they have not solved all the problems that still exist and that will probably need a long time to be solved, are in the right direction for reconciliation within the church because of this problem of distinctions – it is too much to say of separation – of distinctions ”between those who accept a governmental role in the life of the Church and those who do not, said the cardinal.