The new head of a major Vatican department has defended a controversial book he wrote about kissing when he was a young priest.
Argentine Archbishop Víctor Manuel Fernández of La Plata was appointed prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith by Pope Francis only to meet with criticism over the contents of Heal Me With Your Mouth: The Art of Kissing.
Contents of the book have led critics to question why the 60-year-old archbishop was selected for an office established to maintain orthodoxy in Church teaching and doctrine.
Archbishop Fernández dismissed such criticism by suggesting it was levelled by the enemies of the papacy of Francis whom he said were so “outraged” by his appointment that they were using “unethical means” to attack him.
“They refer to a book of mine that no longer exists, that talked about kissing,” he wrote in a post on his Facebook page.
“I was inspired by a phrase from the time of the Church Fathers that said incarnation was like a kiss from God to humanity.
“At the time I was very young, I was a pastor and I was trying to reach the young. So it occurred to me to write a catechesis for teens based on what kissing means. I wrote this catechesis with the participation of a group of young people who gave me ideas, phrases, poems etc.”
He angrily rejected the notion that the book represented the standard of his theological output.
He said he also wrote theological works at a “very high level”, yet complained that his detractors have been “humiliating me for years with quotes from that book”.
Archbishop Fernández added: “In the end they will continue to say a lot of things and they will ally with whoever to attack Francis for nominating me. But those who know me closely know who I am.”
The archbishop, a long-time personal theologian and ghost-writer to Pope Francis, succeeds Cardinal Luis Ladaria Ferrer, SJ, 79, who has been prefect of the dicastery since 2017, and will inevitably be made a cardinal.
In his book he tells couples that the kiss is “the thermometer of love”, and warns them that “love is in danger” when they have sexual intercourse without kissing and only “to relieve the instinct and satisfy a need”.
In his efforts to help couples retain the fervour of their early passion, Archbishop Fernández also offers advice on how to kiss well, and he warns them of the “true enemies of the kiss” that must be avoided, such as bad breath.
He also expresses the view that too much kissing can result in couples feeling “almost nothing” and suggest that they instead attempt to grow in intimacy by shared activities and meals.
The book mentions “Jesus” on just one occasion, “Christ” on six occasions, “God” 28 times and “sex” a total of 13 times.
In his statement of defence, Archbishop Fernández was silent about questions raised over his alleged handling of Fr Eduardo Lorenzo, a La Plata priest who in 2019 took his own life when five people came forward to make accusations of sexual abuse against him.
From 2008 to 2009, Archbishop Fernández served as the dean of the faculty of theology of the Pontifical Catholic University of Argentina and as the president of the Argentine Theological Society.
As Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio of Buenos Aires, the future Pope Francis attempted to promote him in 2009 as rector of the Pontifical Catholic University of Argentina.
Fernández was unable to take the oath of office for two years, however, following objections to his appointment from Vatican officials who expressed concerns about the orthodoxy of some of his scholarship.
Five years later, the archbishop also caused a stir following the publication of Amoris Laetitia, the Pope’s 2016 apostolic exhortation on love in the family which he had helped to draft, when he suggested in Medellín, the theological journal of the Latin-American bishops’ conference, that Catholic teaching on sexual morality could be changed.
He wrote that reversals and reappraisals of other areas of Church teaching served as precedents for Pope Francis to establish an “irreversible novelty” through Amoris Laetitia.
“This novelty invites us to recall that the Church can really evolve, as has happened in history, both in our understanding of the doctrine and in the application of its disciplinary consequences,” he wrote.
“But some have an enormous difficulty in admitting that something similar can occur in questions related to sexuality,” he continued.
“Can Francis accept what was taught by St. John Paul II and yet open a door that was closed? Yes, because an evolution in the Church’s understanding of Her own doctrine and its disciplinary consequences is possible.”
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