Modernists making Church a morality-free zone
Moral theologian: Less prohibitive morality, more accompaniment
South Tyrolean theologian Lintner in an interview with "Der Sonntag": "The Catholic Church has lost a lot of credibility in the area of sexual morality and relationship ethics" - Church must allow people to take responsibility for their own lives
The task of the Church is not so much to moralise, but to support people in their ability to love and relate: This is what the South Tyrolean moral theologian Fr. Martin Lintner OSM (Servites) emphasised this in an interview for the Viennese church newspaper "Der Sonntag" (current issue). In the past, the Church's handling of the topics of sexuality and love had not always been the easiest; too often, various prohibitions and exclusively "regular relationships" - i.e. heterosexual relationships - had been in the foreground. The Church and its leaders must allow people to take responsibility for their own lives, the theologian demanded.
"The Catholic Church has gambled away a lot of credit and lost credibility in the area of sexual morality and relationship ethics," said Lintner, who teaches at the Philosophical-Theological University of Bressanone. He also called the accusation of prohibitive morality "homemade": the Church had simply failed to proclaim the positive and life-affirming contents of its teachings in an inviting and accessible way.
The hotly debated topics of sex, gender and relationships, both in society and within the Church, are also the focus of a current series of events at the Vienna "Akademie am Dom". In four lectures in May, the Brixen moral theologian Lintner, who will speak on "irregular relationships" on 25 May, will be joined by the Viennese religious education teacher Andrea Lehner-Hartmann, the Bonn Old Catholic theologian Andreas Krebs and the Hamburg historian and literary scholar Kai Michel.
Late relaxation
According to Lintner, it was not until the pastoral turn of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) that relationships, marriage and sexuality became less tense, as the focus shifted to the individual with his or her identity, self-image and moral self-determination. In an interview with "Der Sonntag", the moral theologian named love as the ultimately morally decisive criterion for shaping a relationship. It is a basic attitude and includes "erotic, affective affection as well as the resolute decision of will to commit oneself to a person and to go with him through thick and thin".
However, the Church first had to learn that marriage was a community of love, the moral theologian explained. In the Church's tradition, for example, we often read about sexuality, but little about love: "For centuries, marriage was (...) in the tradition a community of purpose with the aim of producing and bringing up offspring. In addition, since the 4th/5th century, sexuality was seen as something sinful and tolerated within marriage "as a necessary evil". The step of the Second Vatican Council to define marriage "as an intimate communion of life and love" had consequently been a big step, preceded by developments in modern society with the ideal of love marriage.
Lintner was critical of church ideals of relationships: "Human life is too complex to do justice to it with an 'all or nothing', 'black and white' mentality." Thus, the Church should support people in moving towards a relational ideal, but not judge lived reality morally negatively if it does not fully correspond to the ideal.
The terms "regular" and "irregular" relationships should also be urgently reconsidered, Lintner called for. The terms would make a linguistic judgement without saying anything about the quality of the relationships, but only about the external form or conformity of a relationship. "We have to find a form of language that expresses what constitutes the moral and human quality of a relationship, and that is in any case not only the external form," Lintner concluded.
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