The Owl of Minerva Flies at Dusk: There Are No Clear Yes's or No's - Cardinal Schonborn

 The Sunday NYT (A 16) wrote that (the final document) “says nothing whether divorced and remarried Catholics may or may not receive Communion.” Cardinal Christoph Schonborn, archbishop of Vienna, said in a midday news conference on Saturday previewing the document,’ ‘There is no black or white, simply yes or no’ when it comes to divorced and remarried Catholics.’” All the news stories have offered the following line: Both conservatives and liberals win.

            I hasten to add that this so because of what I have mentioned in previous postings here.  That one is not necessarily validly and sacramentally married because one has said “I do.” If there is not a consciousness and intentional giving of oneself at that moment, the self has not been given, the act of faith has not been made, and the covenant has not been established. The marriage has not taken place. The "quid divinum" has not occurred here. The knowledge of this is not conceptual but conscious awareness. There is a deeper criterion at work than concepts: consciousness. Consciousness of self as gift. No one can know this but self: Intellegere  = legere ab intus: to read, and  therefore to know from within.

            Hegel wrote: "The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk." The meaning for Hegel was that wisdom occurs only when there is the experience of having lived, or not lived. In a Christian key, one can only know God when one has imaged him in faith as self-gift. As God in Christ is revealed only when the believer lives Christ as risk, to oneself for others, so one knows that he/she is not married - and can therefore receive the Eucharist in a second marriage (access to a tribunal and confession of sin duly made) – or that they are married, and cannot receive the Eucharist. “There is no black or white, simply yes or no.” One knows only when the owl has flown.