A troubling statement by Cardinal Kasper

Cardinal Kasper is a Cardinal.  I am, as one Bishop on Catholic Answers put it derisively, "A guy with a computer and a catechism."  Cardinal Kasper is college educated, a noted scholar with a long academic career who's published numerous books and has engaged in theological debate with all manner of similarly smart people.  I have done none of those things.  So I'm hardly qualified to comment on his theological ideas, but I think I am qualified to make a few qualified criticisms about something he said.

Recently First Things published a review of Cardinal Kasper's book Mercy.  The original review can be read here.  The good Cardinal responded to that review and it was published (along with a response to the response) here.

The troubling passage that I would like to comment on is in Cardinal Kasper's reply.

As Christians, we should keep to the rule of St. Ignatius of Loyola, and instead of ridiculing each other we should interpret each other in the best possible orthodox way.

On the face of it, this seems unremarkable. In fact, it seems like a bit of good advice.  However, at the risk of (ironically) ignoring the advice, there's a darker possibility here.  One of the known tricks of modernists is to say something that can be understood in more than one way.  They are deliberately vague.  They can spout their modernist nonsense in such a way that their fellow travelers will know what they are talking about, but if they are criticized they can truthfully deny ever saying anything wrong.

This is illustrated, to some extent, in an old post by Father Longenecker. But what I'm talking about is a bit more insidious.  There was an example a few years ago about a book by Sister Elizabeth Johnson that was condemned by the USCCB because it taught the heresy of modalism.  Her supporters in the liberal press were not amused.  (It's not clear to me why liberals would be attracted to this particular heresy. I suspect it is simply a matter of resentment over magesterial oversight.)  Sister Johnson objected saying that she never taught the things that the USCCB said she taught.  But it was all slippery language.  She clearly taught heresy, but if she were to go line by line through her book (and her previous books, of which I've read a few snippets only) I'm confident she could argue the precise meaning of each word in such a way that it's actually the most orthodox thing in the world.

Is this was Cardinal Kasper is doing?  Writing about God's mercy in such a way that will lead people to think that there is no such thing as mortal sin while giving himself enough wiggle room to avoid charges of modernism?  In the sentence I quoted above, given Cardinal Kasper's reputation, it seems that he's inviting people to interpret him as they will, rather than seeking to say something in an unambiguous manner that would avoid confusion.

Now, as I said at the start, I am no theologian.  For all I know, this is normal theological debate: make some statement than can be taken multiple ways and then argue about the premises of the statement.  It's possible that this is not as troubling to a trained theologian as it is to me.  Having said that, I'm not sure who the audience was for Cardinal Kasper's book. Perhaps it wasn't meant for laypeople and so I'm simply getting worked up for nothing and First Things may be doing a disservice by having this discussion in a casual forum.

But it looks shady to me.