– Aldo Maria Valli
Years ago, in Oslo, during a dinner I met a Norwegian Lutheran pastor. We started chatting and I discovered he was married. Not only. He was married, divorced and remarried. With a female pastor. In turn divorced and remarried, if I remember correctly.
I fear that the expression on my face betrayed a certain surprise, because the pastor said: “Lo, I know, for you Roman Catholics it is difficult to understand.” He said it with that tone of condescension that the Nordics sometimes take towards us southerners, and my impression was that he was thinking, “But sooner or later you will get there too.”
At that time the Pope was John Paul II and the undersigned thought: “These Lutherans think they are so advanced but did not understand that they simply succumbed to the logic of the world and betrayed the divine commandments.” As a poor naive as I am, I thanked the good Lord in my heart for having given birth to me a Catholic and felt safe from certain drifts. But today, so many years later, and after so much ecumenism à la page, I would no longer be so sure.
The episode came to my mind when I read that the Norwegian Lutheran bishops have signed a declaration on abortion in which they say that “the Church, as an institution, has shown throughout history a lack of involvement in the liberation and rights of women.”
Lack of involvement in liberation and women’s rights? I read on: “A society with legal access to abortion is a better society than a society without such access. It prevents illegal abortion and promotes women’s health and safety.”
It looks like the declaration of a pro-abortion political party. Especially since the “pastors,” for the avoidance of doubt, are careful to stress: “We do not want to question the law on abortion.”
And could they have no apologies? Of course not. “We’re sorry. As a Church we must change the way we talk about abortion and take care of those affected.”
And could it lack ambiguity? Of course not. The objective of the Church, the bishops write, is not so much to question legislation (in Norway abortion is legal up until the twelfth week of gestation), nor to question the fact that the fetus is a life “that has value and asks for protection,” as “promoting an inclusive communion.”
Inclusive communion? And what does it mean?
And could ambivalence be missing? Of course not. And in fact the bishops, while suggesting that the fetus, after all, is a person, in the end defend the law that makes abortion a right, in spite of the right of that person who has no voice to claim his right to life.
And could the call for dialogue be missed? Of course not. In fact, the Lutheran bishops say, and again apologize, that opposing the liberalization of abortion has worsened the dialogue with society and with women.
Mea culpa, ambiguity, ambivalence, transformation of dialogue into new dogma: where have I heard this repertoire before?
And the beauty (of course, so to speak) is that these positions taken by the Lutheran bishops arrive just as politics rethinks certain issues in a new light, as demonstrated by the fact, to keep our topic on Norway, that Prime Minister Erna Solberg, of the conservative party, spoke of a possible restrictive modification of the abortion law with regard to selective abortions, and the supreme court recognized the right of doctors to not proceed with medical treatment when they are warned against their conscience.
So while politics and society, even in an ultra-secularized country like Norway, for the first time go in a less relativistic direction, that’s a nice assist in the relativist mentality coming from the Lutheran Church. That some Catholics woo because Luther “did medicine for the Church” and we would be back a few centuries.
Congratulations for the vision.
(From Duc in altum, 2019©AP. Used with permission)
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