A review of Cardinal Kasper’s book on mercy
A review of Kasper’s book has just appeared at First Things. The book’s English title is: Mercy: The Essence of the Gospel and the Key to Christian Life. The reviewer is Daniel Patrick Moloney, a priest of the Archdiocese of Boston.
Fr. Moloney finds some defects in the book. Here is an excerpt from his review:
Kasperthinks that the Catholic theological tradition doesn’t talk about mercy enoughand that the classical concept of God, which sees God as perfect andunchanging, is “pastorally … a catastrophe.” To most people, “such a Godappears to them to have little or nothing to do with the situation of theworld, in which almost daily horrible news reports come, one after the other,and many people are deeply troubled by anxieties of the future.” To counterthis, we need a new dogmatic theology of divine mercy: “What is now requiredis to think through anew the entire teaching about God’s attributes and, in theprocess, to allow mercy to assume its proper place.”
And its proper place is as the fundamental attribute of God, while all other divine attributes are in some way secondary. Even God’s justice is to be made subordinate to his mercy, because mercy “surpasses” and “goes beyond” justice.
This sounds profound, but does not withstand examination. Mercy is a virtue that requires someone who needs mercy, someone with some sort of sin or other imperfection. The Father is not merciful to the Holy Spirit. He loves the Holy Spirit, but there’s nothing imperfect about the Holy Spirit so that he needs the Father’s mercy. For mercy to be essential to God, as Kasper holds, it would mean that God could not exist without expressing mercy. But since God does not show mercy to himself, it would not be possible for him to exist without there also being sinners in need of his mercy—and that notion is absurd.
Mercy might be regarded as an important (and even a fundamental) attribute of God, but any such claim needs a great deal of qualification. Moloney obviously does not think that Kasper has managed to present this divine attribute properly.
Here is another excerpt:
Kasper doesn’t actually make arguments for his views…
Hmmm… That’s a problem.
Maybe at some point I should read the book for myself. However theologically impoverished it may be, let’s not forget its influence. As Moloney observes, Pope Francis mentioned it and Kasper in his very first Angelus remarks. “[M]i ha fatto tanto bene, quel libro,” he said. Surely it can’t be all bad if the Holy Father derived benefit from it?
(I wrote a post on Kasper last September, responding to his response to critics of his proposal for reception of communion by certain divorced and remarried Catholics.)