Listen to whomsoever you like, Kasper, but don't try to impose their idiocy or your hogwash on me.

“(T)he Church will not and cannot change the teachings, the doctrine, but it’s a question of the adaption of the doctrine,” he said.

Asked specifically about the Church’s teaching on the immorality of contraception, as stated in Pope Paul VI’s encyclical Humanae Vitae, Cardinal Kasper said that “we have to interpret what he said about contraception.”

“I think what he said is true,” the cardinal said of Pope Paul VI’s teaching. However, he rejected the idea that any specific application of the teaching can be deducted.

Rather, he said, “it’s an ideal and we have to tell people, but then we have also to respect the conscience of the couples.”

Comparing the upcoming synod to the Second Vatican Council, he said the event will be “a listening gathering, listening to what the Spirit says to the Church.”

“We have to be realistic, we have to stick to the Gospel, to the doctrine,…but then apply it to the concrete situation of people who are on the way,” he said, also stating that “family life is today lived in a very different way, it’s not just the ideal we have, but we have to take people as they are and listen to them.”

Listen to whomsoever you like, but don't try to impose their idiocy or your hogwash on me.