Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses 94/3 (2018) 505-514. doi: 10.2143/ETL.94.3.3285210 © 2018 by Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses. All rights reserved.

Preserving and Perpetuating the Heritage of Pope John Paul II A Review of Book Publications by the Former Pontifical John Paul II Institute for the Study of Marriage and the Family

Thomas Knieps-Port le Roi KU Leuven

On 8 September 2017, with the Motu Proprio Summa familiae cura, Pope Francis suppressed the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for the Study of Marriage and the Family and substituted it with the Pontifical John Paul II Theological Institute for Matrimonial and Family Science. Hardly noticed by the wider public, this replacement was much more significant than the slight change of name seemed to suggest. It fits well with and confirms the shift in the church’s approach to marriage and family which Pope Francis has announced and sketched out in his 2016 post-synodal exhortation Amoris laetitia. Also in the Motu Proprio Francis calls upon the church to respond more adequately to the challenges today’s family life is confronted with and urges that “in reflection on marriage and on the family the pastoral perspective and attention to the wounds of human- ity must never be lacking”. A pastoral sensibility is recommended which leaves behind “practices in pastoral ministry and mission that reflect forms and models of the past”. This, however, presupposes on the level of academic reflection and formation an “analytic and diversified approach”, one that is sensitive to the anthropological-cultural changes that affect the family today. The new Theological Institute for Matrimonial and Family Science should therefore broaden “its field of interest, both in relation to the new dimensions of the pastoral task and of the ecclesial mission, and with reference to developments in the human sciences and in anthropological culture in a field so fundamental for the culture of life”. The pope could not have expressed more clearly his dissatisfaction about the former Institute which had indeed seen its task in defending the beauty and consistency of an unalterable church teaching on marriage and family much more than regarding the complexity of contemporary family life as an invitation to a more profound understanding of its significance in God’s plan. In this regard, the Institute had indubitably been faithful to Pope John Paul II, its spiritus rector to whom it owed not only a rich intellectual heritage but also its existence. When Karol Wojtyła became pope in 1978, he brought to the papal throne his personal interest and firm philosophical and theological convictions 506 T. KNIEPS-PORT LE ROI about marriage and family life which were part of a larger theological program and finally put their mark on the new pontificate. The first bish- ops’ synod which he called upon in 1980 was dedicated to this topic and was followed one year later by the post-synodal exhortation Familiaris consortio which has become a sort of “magna carta” of the church’s teaching on marriage and the family for the coming decades. In the same year John Paul II announced the creation of the Pontifical Council for the Family and erected the Pontifical Institute for the Study of Marriage and Family at the Pontifical Lateran University defining its primary purpose as “enlightening the world on God’s plan with marriage and the family”. The Institute which will later bear its founder’s name (Pontificio Istituto Giovanni Paolo II per studi su matrimonio e famiglia) and have satellite institutions in all parts of the world, has since then carried out research, organized numerous conferences, and provided teaching and education ranging from pastoral formation programs over various academic Master courses to an STD program in “sciences of marriage and the family”. The impressive number of publications which we will look into in this review all reflect the bustling activities of the institute and witness to the prolific writing of its staff. The Institute has used different publication channels of which the inter- national journal Anthropotes, issued twice a year since 1985, is probably the one best known to scholars worldwide since it also publishes articles in languages other than Italian. Apart from singular volumes which indi- vidual researchers connected to the Institute publish in their own name (see e.g. L. Melina – S. Belardinelli [eds.], Amare nella differenza: Le forme della sessualità e il pensiero cattolico. Studio interdisciplinare, Siena, Cantagalli; Città del Vaticano, ELV, 2012), the overall majority of the book publications are taken care of by the Institute which runs a con- siderable number of book series, all published by Edizione Cantagalli in Siena, a publishing house with an explicitly Christian profile committed to spreading the Catholic culture in strict loyalty to the Roman magiste- rium. In this review we limit ourselves to an overview of books, both monographs and edited volumes, which have appeared over a period from 2011 to 2015, thus covering the last years of the papacy of Benedict XVI and the initial phase of Pope Francis’ pontificate. It is important to note that all of these publications have appeared before Amoris laetitia came out in 2016. Although the reception of the post-synodal exhortation fol- lowing upon the two bishops’ synods in 2014 and 2015 is currently a matter of ongoing debate, most scholars in the field agree that Francis calls for a reframing of the agenda which John Paul had set and Benedict had further pursued. It will thus have to be seen how an Institute that has been devoted so deeply to preserving and perpetuating the heritage of John Paul II and for more than three decades has served as the theological mouthpiece of his magisterial teaching, will position itself with regard to the new tone in the Vatican. As a matter of fact, the Institute’s most recent PRESERVING AND PERPETUATING THE HERITAGE OF POPE JOHN PAUL II 507 publications endeavor to come to terms with Amoris laetitia and suggest a reading which, almost at all costs, seeks to establish its continuity with the previous teaching (see e.g. L. Melina [ed.], Quale pastorale familiare dopo l’esortazione apostolica Amoris Laetitia [Studi sulla persona e fami- glia – Atti, 36], 2016; J. Granados – S. Kampowski – J.J. Pérez-Soba, Amoris Laetitia: Accompagnare, discernere, integrare. Vademecum per una nuova pastorale familiare [Famiglia lavoro in corso], 2017; see also the theme number dedicated to “Amoris laetitia: Bilancio e prospettive” in Anthropotes 32/2 [2016]). The publications in this new stage of the Institute, however, will have to be dealt with in a future review. In this present overview we restrict ourselves to reviewing the Institute’s schol- arly output from the last period of untroubled productivity, untouched as it were by the growing number of critics to which Pope Francis has obvi- ously decided to listen. The books under review here are all included in different series of which the profile and distinctiveness, however, is not always clear since there is quite some overlap with regard to format, authors and topics. Relatively well-defined are two more recent series which are taken care of by the Cattedra Karol Wojtyła, a Chair established in 2003 within the Institute to study the “theological, philosophical and poetic work” of the later Pope John Paul II. The aim of the first series, entitled Sentieri dell’amore (“Paths of love”), is to make available to an Italian speaking readership texts by Karol Wojtyła himself which are little known, difficult to access or have not been published at all before. Its first volume (K. Wojtyła, Sposi, amici dello Sposo: Omelie su matrimonio e famiglia, 2014) collects twenty homilies and two pastoral letters, all addressing mar- riage and family issues, which Wojtyła has produced during his time as Archbishop of Krakow from 1966-1978. Most of these texts with a medi- tative and pastoral character appear for the first time in Italian, some are published for the first time even in Polish. The second volume (K. Wojtyła, Educare ad amare: Scritti su matrimonio e famiglia, 2014) reproduces articles which the later pope has published between 1952 and 1962 in Polish reviews and magazines. These longer studies and shorter reflections on marriage, love and sexual education stem from a time when Wojtyła was professor of moral theology in Lublin and thus reflect the work in progress which will finally culminate in the publication of his book Love and Responsibility in 1960. The texts in both volumes are documented in Polish on the left page with the Italian translation at the opposite page and are briefly introduced and situated by P. Kwiatkowski who in 2010 obtained his PhD at the Institute with a dissertation on “Conjugal spiritu- ality in the thought of Karol Wojtyła” (cf. Lo sposo passa per questa strada. La spiritualità coniugale nel pensiero di Karol Wojtyła [Sentieri della verità, 8], 2011). Although the texts made available here do not reveal anything new about the vision of the later pope, they will be a welcome source for researchers who are interested in the genesis and 508 T. KNIEPS-PORT LE ROI development of his thinking and the pastoral and intellectual context in which it took shape. Sentieri della verità (“Paths of truth”) is the title of the second series which includes studies of various types on the thought of Karol Wojtyła/ John Paul II. Volume 9 contains a collection of varied essays and lectures which are grouped together to reflect on various aspects of the former pope’s anthropology (S. Grygiel – P. Kwiatkowski [eds.], Sull’onda dello stupore: Quattro voci sull’uomo in Giovanni Paolo II, 2012). In volume 11, the director of the Wojtyła Chair, Stanislaw Grygiel, continues the conversations he has had as a former student and later friend with the pope, and highlights some of the biographical and intellectual components that have formed the personality of John Paul II (Dialogando con Giovanni Paolo II, 2013). Of a different nature is Aude Suramy’s philosophical dis- sertation on Wojtyła’ understanding of the human person in his work Person­ and Act which appeared in Polish in 1969 and in which he laid the ground for his version of a Christian personalism that combines a Thomist metaphysical approach with a phenomenological perspective (vol. 10: La voie de l’amour: Une interprétation de Personne et acte de Karol Wojtyła, lecteur de Thomas d’Aquin, 2014). In her thorough and extensive study Suramy who currently teaches philosophy at the Institut Catholique in Toulouse in France, retraces how Wojtyła’s reading of Thomas Aquinas, John of the Cross and Max Scheler merges into a thought that is “Thomist in essence but anti-Thomist in its methodology”: while Thomas main- tained that agere sequitur esse and thus theory takes precedence over prac- tice, Wojtyła claims that, inversely and complementarily, human action is revelatory of being (cf. pp. 600f.). Whoever wants to understand Wojtyła’s deep conviction that the human being is called to and able to achieve moral perfection, will uncover its philosophical foundations in this solid and important study. The most extensive series so far is Studi sulla persona e la famiglia which collects monographs from scholars who are involved in teaching at the Institute. Thus, psychiatrist Gianfrancesco Zuanazzi (vol. 15: Nel bene e nel male: Questioni de psicologia e morale, 2012) and psychanalyst Mario Binasco (vol. 16: La differenza umana: L’interesse teologico della psicoanalisi, 2013) provide an idea of how their expertise fits into the Institute’s formation; Stephan Kampowksi, a philosopher who has become known to a broader audience by his severe critique of Cardinal Walter Kasper’s recent proposal to admit divorced and remarried Catholics in individual cases to communion (cf. e.g. The Gospel of the Family: Going beyond Cardinal Kasper’s Proposal in the Debate on Marriage, Civil ­Re-Marriage, and Communion in the Church, San Francisco, CA, 2015), provides reflections on the contingency of the human person (vol. 21: Ricordati della nascita: L’uomo in ricerca di un fundamento, 2013); and Jaroslaw Merecki, since 2000 attached to the Institute, explores the under- lying philosophical anthropology of John Paul II’s “theology of the body” PRESERVING AND PERPETUATING THE HERITAGE OF POPE JOHN PAUL II 509

(vol. 28: Corpo e trascendenza: L’antropologia filosofica nella teologia del corpo di Giovanni Paolo II, 2015). A sub-category of that same series, Studi su persona e la famiglia – Tesi is reserved for PhD theses that have been completed within the Institute’s doctoral program and are closely connected with its research profile, mainly in the field of moral theology. Here we find a number of historical and systematic studies (many of them in Spanish which indicates the provenience of a high proportion of the students registered at the Institute) that converse with classic Christian authors or contemporary philosophers. The topics in the first category range from the role of the Holy Spirit in Christ’s human action according to Maximus the Confessor (vol. 10: L. Granados, La Synergia en San Máximo el Confesor: El protagonismo del Espíritu Santo en la acción humana de Cristo y del cristiano, 2012) over the christological roots of morality in Bonaventure (vol. 22: A. Holgado Ramírez, Sponsus et Exemplar: El seguimento de Cristo Esposo como participación en sus virtudes, según S. Buenaventura, 2014) to chastity in Thomas Aquinas (vol. 6: O. Goţia, L’amore e il suo fascino: Bellezza e castità nella pros- pettiva di San Tommaso d’Aquino, 2011) and Aquinas’ understanding of the role of charity in Christ’s action (vol. 20: J.M. Wallace, Charity, the Source of Christ’s Action according to Thomas Aquinas, 2013). Among the contemporary interlocutors whose conceptions of the human body, sexual desire and sexual difference are studied, are Maurice Merleau- Ponty (vol. 7: D. Donegà, L’intenzionalità erotica e l’azione del corpo in Maurice Merleau-Ponty, 2011), Paul Ricoeur (vol. 9: I. Serrada Sotil, Acción y sexualidad: Hermenéutica simbólica a partir de Paul Ricoeur, 2011) and Emmanuel Lévinas (vol. 26: J.M. Hernández Castellón, Diferencia sexual y trascendencia en la filosofia de Emmanuel Lévinas, 2014). One volume offers a historical, theological and canonical reading of the affectio maritalis in the definition of marriage (vol. 19: S. Yong Kim, L’affectio maritalis nella definizione de matrimonio, 2014) and another one is dedicated to a bio-ethical topic dealing with children who suffer from spinal muscular atrophy (vol. 24: F.J. González-Melado, El major interés del niño con SMA I: Reflexión sobre las tratamientos de soporte vital en niños con atrofia muscular espinal tipo I, 2014). The series’ second sub-category entitled Studi sulla persona e famiglia – Atti contains conference proceedings. Two volumes deal with bioethi- cal questions, demonstrating how trends in the neurosciences along with the concept of “human enhancement” are an expression of humanity’s unbridled endeavour to set itself up in the place of the creator: vol. 8: S. Kampowski – D. Moltisanti (eds.), Migliorare l’uomo? La sfida etica dell’enhancement, 2011 and vol. 13: S. Kampowski (ed.), Neuro- scienze, amore e libertà, 2012. One volume gathers the contributions to a conference on “Family and sustainable development” which was spon- sored by the Fondazione Benedetto XVI pro matrimonio et familia, a foundation that helps find funds for the Institute (vol. 18: S. Kampowski 510 T. KNIEPS-PORT LE ROI

– G. Gallazzi [eds.], Affari, siete di famiglia? Famiglia e sviluppo ­sostenibile, 2013). Pope John Paul’s appeal for a “new evangelization” and the role he attached in this context to the “domestic church” of the family, is reflected in a volume that contains the contributions to a confer- ence in 2013 on “Family – God’s light in a society without God: New evangelization and family” (vol. 25: J.J. Pérez-Soba [ed.], La famiglia, luce di Dio in una società senza Dio: Nuova evangelizzazione e famiglia, 2014). Several volumes present the proceedings of conferences organized by the Area Internazionale di Ricerca in Teologia Morale, an international group of moral theologians affiliated with the John Paul II Institute who since 1997 have committed themselves to “renewing moral theology” in the light of John Paul II’s 1993 encyclical Veritatis splendor which was meant to correct what the pope regarded as the grave errors of post-con- ciliar moral theology. The 2010 meeting of the group discussed Pope Benedict’s encyclical Caritas in veritate (2009) and identified therein a concept of charity that serves as the foundation for both individual action and social interaction and is offered as a remedy against modern reduc- tionist conceptions of love as privatized, sentimentalized and voluntarist (cf. vol. 12: J.J. Pérez-Soba – M. Magdič [eds.], L’amore principio di vita sociale:‘Caritas aedificat’ (1Cor 8,1), 2011). A subsequent confer- ence meditated on a passage from Veritatis splendor claiming that the human person “discovers in the body the anticipatory signs, the expression and the promise of the gift of self, in conformity with the wise plan of the Creator” (no. 48) and explored what this means for moral agency (cf. vol. 17: L. Melina – J.J. Pérez-Soba [eds.], La soggettività morale del corpo (VS 48), 2012). That moral agency has to be grounded in “objective criteria derived from the nature of the person and its acts” is a central and pervading claim which is at the basis of John Paul II’s “theology of the body” and which the group refers to in order to dismiss what they regard as subjectivist and relativist morality in the mainstream personalist approach of post-conciliar theology. The latter quote is of course taken from Gaudium et spes (no. 51) and so in the eyes of our authors the envis- aged renewal of moral theology has to go along with an adequate inter- pretation of the documents of Vatican II reclaiming its true meaning from one-sided readings that have creeped into theological scholarships. This pertains not only to the understanding of the human person in the Pastoral Constitution (cf. vol. 23: J.J. Pérez-Soba – P. Gałuszka [eds.], Persona e natura nell’agire morale: Memoriale di Cracovia – Studi – Contributi, 2013; the volume contains the first Italian translation of the so-called ‘Krakow Memorandum’ which contains the conclusions of a working group which Cardinal Wojtyla had gathered in his archdiocese to discuss the issue of birth control and which he submitted in 1968 to Pope Paul VI, five months before the publication of Humanae vitae) but also to a correct interpretation of revelation which, according to the Council’s Dogmatic Constitution Dei verbum, calls for the “obedience of faith” in terms of a PRESERVING AND PERPETUATING THE HERITAGE OF POPE JOHN PAUL II 511

“full submission of intellect and will to God” and thus has immediate implications also for moral action (cf. vol. 27: J.J. Pérez-Soba – P. Gałuszka [eds.], La rivelazione dell’amore e la risposta della libertà: Il profile di un’etica della fede (DV 5), 2014). In that same vein, the latest publication of the group suggests that in light of the Council’s teaching of the “hierarchy of truths” (Unitatis redintegratio, 11) and their varying relation to the foundations of faith, the church’s moral teaching has to be revalorized as a consistent “faith ethics” (cf. vol. 30: J.J. Pérez-Soba – J.J. de la Torre [eds.], Il primato del Vangelo e luogo della morale: Gerarchia e unità nella proposta Cristiana, 2015). Two further book series related to each other by their titles are Amore umano and Amore umano – Strumenti. The latter contains little booklets in a handy size which are intended to provide basic information on the Christian vision on the human person, marriage and family “for a broader audience which is not familiar with academic writings”. The last two volumes that have appeared in the period under review here are a short and accessible version of S. Kampowski’s reflections on human contin- gency and how life has to be received as a gift (vol. 10: Contingenza creaturale e gratitudine, 2012), and a more extensive treatise on pastoral ministry in relation to marriage and family (vol. 11: J.J. Pérez-Soba, La pastorale familiare: Tra programmazioni pastorali e generazione di una vita, 2013). One may wonder, however, why this book has been included in this series since it contains, as the title already indicates, a rather elaborate analysis of what the author regards as misconceptions of post-conciliar pastoral theology and ministry, and which readers unfamil- iar with academic discussions will not really benefit from. In fact, this book provides a good insight into not only the author’s understanding of pastoral theology which lies at the basis of several other publications on marriage and family ministry in this and other series (see supra et infra), but also reveals the overall mind-set of the academic staff attached to the Institute. According to Pérez-Soba modernity has lost the sense of God and along with it the “truth and mystery of love” which is (at) the origin of all being. Having installed himself instead as omnipotent creator, mod- ern man has deprived himself of the structuring horizon which ought to give direction and value to his actions. Instead of being animated by the love which he owes to God for the gift of life and which he has to respond to by loving his neighbor, his actions are driven by voluntarist impulses, inspired by instantaneous sentiments and incapable of opening a real future, neither for himself nor for humanity as a whole. This pessimistic cultural analysis echoes a phrase by Pope John Paul which he articulated in a private circle and which is reported as follows: “the tragedy of ­contemporary man is that he has forgotten who he is: he does not know anymore who he is” (cf. L. Melina, Non è bene che la coppia sia sola, in, Id. [ed.], I primi anni di matrimonio: La sfida pastorale di un periodo bello e difficile, 2014, p. 9). Here we probably come close to a core idea 512 T. KNIEPS-PORT LE ROI in John Paul II’s entire theological oeuvre which runs like a sort of mantra through all the activities and publications of the John Paul II Institute and is at the origin of its (almost) missionary eagerness to make God’s original plan shine forth ever brighter over a godless world. What that means in terms of theology, morality and pastoral care can be seen in the volumes of another series, entitled Amore umano, which is more consistently focused on marriage and family issues. Here we find next to Pérez-Soba’s voluminous study on a “theology of love” (vol. 13: Amore: Introduzione a un mistero, 2012) a profound theological reflection on marriage by dogmatic theologian José Granados (vol. 20: Una sola carne in un solo Spirito: Teologia del matrimonio, 2014). Both authors agree that the human capacity of loving has gone astray in modernity since humanity has forgotten about God’s love which is at the origin of all cre- ation and finds its culmination in Christ’s salvific work. Here marriage comes in as a witness to the original unity of man and woman in creation as much as to the redemptive union between Christ and his Church. ­Marriage is therefore the normative and exclusive model for human loving which shows the way of and to salvation, carrying with it the recognition of the foundational difference between male and female, of an uncondi- tional mutual self-giving of the partners which is inscribed into the bodily constitution of both sexes and of a bond that God himself has created and vested with an ontological quality. In another monograph the former President of the Pontifical Academy for Life, Cardinal Elio Sgreccia is concerned with the pastoral application of a consistent pro-life ethics which according to him has to respect the inseparability of the unitive and procreative sense of the marital act as much as the dignity of human life from conception onward (vol. 17: Per una pastorale della vita: Proposte applicative – dal concepimento alla maturità, 2014). He suggests a pedagogical-catechetical trajectory in which young people from infanthood to late adolescence should be made familiar with a vision of life that stands up to what John Paul had called the modern “culture of death”. Sgreccia’s book provides a good example of how most authors of the former John Paul II Institute conceive of pas- toral theology and pastoral care – simply as the field of application, not to say indoctrination, of dogmatic and moral truths without any attention to hermeneutical standards. The theological rationale for this understanding of pastoral theology in which the boundaries between pastoral and moral theology get blurred is provided in two other volumes in the series. In his introduction to a small edited book about pastoral care for the “first years of marriage” (vol. 19: I primi anni di matrimonio: La sfida pastorale di un periodo bello e dif- ficile, 2014) Livio Melina, the then President of the Institute, makes clear that the primary task of pastoral theology and ministry is not to better understand the difficulties contemporary couples are confronted with in order to respond to them more adequately but instead to lay bare the real PRESERVING AND PERPETUATING THE HERITAGE OF POPE JOHN PAUL II 513 shortcomings and weaknesses they succumb to – which is mainly their incapacity to value and live the truth and beauty of marriage. Pérez-Soba, in another volume edited by him, illustrates this with a biblical image. The situation of the modern family, he argues, can be compared to that of the wedding guests at Cana: “They have no wine left”. What pastors have to provide then is not some watered-down concoction but simply the “best wine” (vol. 24: “Saper portare il vino migliore”: Strade di pastorale familiare, 2014). And all of a sudden, the cultural pessimism vis-à-vis the modern world reveals at its flip side an almost naïve theological-ethical optimism claiming that Christ’s redemption has given to the human person the possibility to realize the entire truth of their being. The background here is John Paul II’s normative approach to morality which addresses the human person as the one who has been enabled by Christ to perfectly live up to the moral norm. What that means, for instance in relation to pastoral care towards divorced people, can be read in the remainder of the book where divorced persons are exhorted to stay faithful to their first marriage. Closely connected to this vision is the call for a “new evangelization” which follows from the described theological and pastoral program and which was so dear to Pope John Paul II. Two volumes in the series are dedicated to it emphasizing the particular position of the family therein. The first one underlines “the deep truth that connects the Gospel to the family” drawing on the former pope’s devise according to which the fam- ily is not only the object but rather much more the subject of the church’s proclamation and pastoral care (vol. 15: L. Melina – J. Granados [eds.], Famiglia e nuova evangelizzazione: La chiave dell’annuncio, 2012). The authors of the second volume take this theological insight as a starting point for their reflection on the family as a privileged place for reading the Bible (vol. 16: J. Granados [ed.], Bibbia e famiglia: une dimora per la Parola. Alla luce dell’essortazione post-sinodale Verbum Domini, 2013). Three other volumes deal with marriage more specifically. Ludmiła and Stanislaw Grygiel edit a volume on holiness in marriage, gathering the life stories of ten couples who all bear witness to moral perfection made possible by the marital sacrament (vol. 14: Sposi e santi: Dieci profile di santità coniugale, 2012). Of particular theological interest is an edited volume that reflects on the role of faith in the sacrament of marriage – a question that has been vividly discussed since the 1970’s but has become topical again since Pope Benedict XVI, in a speech to priests in Val d’Aosta in 2005, wondered whether a considerable number of contem- porary marriages are to be regarded as invalid because of a lack of explicit faith of the spouses. The book (vol. 21: A. Diriat – S. Salucci [eds.], Fides foedus: La fede e il sacramento del matrimonio, 2014) contains solid and nuanced contributions from various historical, dogmatic, pastoral and canonical perspectives and also offers a useful selective bibliography on the topic (pp. 243-259). Emanating from an international theological colloquium, another volume elaborates on the “one flesh” metaphor of 514 T. KNIEPS-PORT LE ROI the creation account and argues that it renders marriage distinct from any other type of sexual relationship (vol. 18: J. Granados [ed.], Una caro: Il linguaggio del corpo e l’unione coniugale, 2014). As may be expected, many of the contributors draw or further elaborate on John Paul II’s “­theology of the body” which inspires an understanding of the conjugal act as an interpersonal encounter on the deepest human level realizing the synchronization of spirit and flesh and the mutual self-giving of the part- ners and thus leading to fecundity and true communion of persons. Need- less to say, in the line of this thought contraception goes against all these characteristics of marriage. The last volume to be mentioned here contains the proceedings of a seminar held in May 2014 on the relationship between “mercy and truth” (vol. 23: J.J. Pérez-Soba [ed.], Misericordia, verità pastorale, 2014). The topic has obviously been set on the Institute’s agenda following Pope Francis’ announcement of the two bishops’ synod and Cardinal Kasper’s famous allocution to the Cardinals in which he urged for a different stance in the church’s approach to divorced and remarried persons. In his intro- duction to the volume the editor clearly expresses his disagreement with Kasper’s proposal but he also points out that not all the contributions to this volume reflect the Institute’s opinion. As a matter of fact, among the contributors are scholars who are not affiliated to the Institute and thus do not necessarily echo its position. Thus, for the first time the reader learns something about gradualness in moral life, about conscience and pastoral accompaniment – all topics that have not featured prominently on the Institute’s list of priorities so far but will dominate the future discussions at the bishops’ synods and in the aftermaths of Amoris laetitia. Pérez-Soba and the other notorious authors of the John Paul II Institute do not leave any doubt what their stance will be in these debates but they seem to sense that the time is over when, in the slipstream of the church’s teaching authority, a theological position could be endlessly repeated and varied which presented the church as a fortress of truth rather than a field hospi- tal called to “accompany with attention and care the weakest of her ­children, who show signs of a wounded and troubled love, by restoring in them hope and confidence, like the beacon of a lighthouse in a port or a torch carried among the people to enlighten those who have lost their way or who are in the midst of a storm” (AL 291).

Faculty of Theology Thomas Knieps-Port le Roi and Religious Studies St.-Michielsstraat 4/3101 BE-3000 Leuven Belgium [email protected]