Michael KellyThere won’t be any change to core Church teaching, but the Pope wants a radical reform of approach, writes Michael Kelly
Liberals took an early lead in the Synod of Bishops before being overtaken by more conservative elements. Only that’s not exactly how it played out: the synod has mostly been seen in the secular press through a political lens as a simple left-right divide between liberals and conservatives.
This simplistic narrative fails to understand the radical reform that Pope Francis is pushing and that will transform the Church. The Pontiff wants to move beyond arid dogmatism and help Catholics see faith as friendship with God.
BBC News led the charge in spectacularly misunderstanding the synod after the publication of the final document with the headline “Pope Francis suffers setback”.
In fact, the synod was a stunning victory for Pope Francis and his vision of a more collegial Church. A reporter from The Irish Times, evidently confused by anything other than a black and white approach, wasn’t far behind asking at a press conference “but are gays sinners or welcome?” I was not the only journalist in the room who cringed and looked at the floor, conscious that we are simultaneously all sinners and all welcome. It’s not just conservatives who have a problem with a lack of rigidity.
Remarks
I’ve covered quite a few synods in Rome. Usually the process involves the Pope making opening remarks, followed by the tedious spectacle of bishops taking turns to agree with the Pope. Documents are often prepared in advance by the Vatican.
Much in the same way that the Fathers of Vatican II (1962-65) reacted against attempts by the Roman Curia to define the limits of the debate, Fathers at this month’s synod spoke freely. In fact, the Pope had insisted they do so. Pope Francis also set the tone for an open debate when he decided to keep his powder dry and address the synod at the end, and not at the beginning. And what an address it was: the Pontiff’s remarks, where he sought to appeal to bishops to occupy the middle ground, drew a sustained standing ovation for almost five minutes.
While much attention has obviously focused on the specific issues facing the family that the bishops discussed, my sense is that when the dust settles, the open and transparent process promoted by Pope Francis will be the lasting legacy of this 2014 meeting.
The Synod of Bishops in the modern Church emerged after Vatican II when Blessed Pope Paul VI sought to breathe new life in to the concept of collegiality: the idea that the bishops throughout the world share in the Pope’s governance of the universal Church.
Many synod participants I talked with in Rome this week spoke of what one father described as “an authentic atmosphere of discernment”. And Pope Francis, schooled as he is in the spiritual exercises of St Ignatius of Loyola, is all about discerning where God wants to lead the Church.
Confounds
Pope Francis constantly confounds those extremists of left and right within the Church who want to pigeon- hole him. During his closing address to the synod, he pulled no punches when warning against the dangers of ideological stances.
Pope Francis said he welcomed the assembly’s expressions of disagreement.
“Personally, I would have been very worried and saddened if there hadn’t been these temptations and these animated discussions,” the Pope said, “if everybody had agreed or remained silent in a false and quietistic peace.
“So many commentators, or people who talk, imagined they saw the Church quarrelling, one part against the other, even doubting the Holy Spirit, the true promoter and guarantor of unity and harmony in the Church,” he said.
While reassuring the assembly that the Church’s unity was not in danger, Pope Francis warned against several temptations that he said had been present during the two-week synod.
One of the temptations he cited was that of “hostile rigidity” that seeks refuge in the letter of the law, “in the certainty of what we know and not of what we must still learn and achieve”. This temptation, he said, is characteristic of the “zealous, the scrupulous, the attentive and – today – of the so-called traditionalists and also of intellectuals”.
Another temptation for the synod fathers, the Pope said, was that of “destructive do-goodism, which in the name of a misguided mercy binds up wounds without first treating and medicating them; that treats symptoms and not causes and roots. It is the temptation of do-gooders, of the timorous and also of the so-called progressives and liberals”.
It was a skilful and passionate appeal for the Church not to retreat into corners.
Animated debate
The synod process was marked by days of animated debate, particularly after the publication of a controversial draft mid-term report. The meeting finally agreed on a final document more clearly grounded in traditional Catholic teaching. Yet Vatican spokesman Fr Federico Lombardi SJ made it clear the assembly failed to reach consensus on especially controversial questions of Communion for the divorced and civilly remarried and the pastoral care of homosexuals.
In the end what emerged was a compromise document.
Discussions both inside and outside the synod hall had grown heated after the October 13 delivery of a mid-term report that used strikingly conciliatory language toward people with ways of life contrary to Church teaching, including divorced and civilly remarried Catholics, cohabitating couples and those in same-sex unions.
The summaries of working-group discussions, published three days later, showed a majority of synod fathers wanted the final document to be clearer about relevant Church doctrine and give more attention to families whose lives exemplify that teaching.
The final report, which the Pope ordered published almost at once after the synod’s conclusion, featured many more citations of scripture, as well as new references to the Catechism of the Catholic Church and the teachings of Blessed Pope Paul VI, Pope St John Paul II and Pope emeritus Benedict XVI.
Synod fathers voted on each of the document’s 62 paragraphs. All received a simple majority, but three failed to gain the two-thirds supermajority ordinarily required for approval of synodal documents.
Two of those paragraphs dealt with a controversial proposal by German Cardinal Walter Kasper that would make it easier for divorced and civilly remarried Catholics to receive Holy Communion. The document noted disagreements on the subject and recommended further study.
The document’s section on homosexuality, which also fell short of supermajority approval, was significantly changed from its counterpart in the mid-term report.
The original section heading -”welcoming homosexuals” – was changed to “pastoral attention to persons with homosexual orientation.”
A statement that same-sex unions can be a “precious support in the life of the partners” was removed.
The final report quoted a 2003 document from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith: “There are absolutely no grounds for considering homosexual unions to be in any way similar or even remotely analogous to God’s plan for marriage and family.”
Fr Lombardi told reporters that the absence of a supermajority indicated a lack of consensus and a need for more discussion, but stressed that none of the document carried doctrinal weight. The synod’s final report will serve as an agenda for the October 2015 world synod on the family, which will make recommendations to the Pope.
The Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, welcomed the final text, but warned that it must be read in the context of Pope Francis’ final remarks to the synod.
Archbishop Martin said: “The Pope from the very beginning wanted openness. He trusted those present at the synod to take the discussions as far as they could and in all honesty.
“The biggest challenge remains as to how in today’s complex cultural situation the Church can open a dialogue with men and women and young people where they are and lead them to a better idea of the Christian understanding of marriage. This will involve a radical rethinking of the Church’s pastoral care for marriage and catechesis among young people.”
Dr Martin said that Pope Francis helped everyone to understand the direction in which he wished the synod process to progress, when he mandated publication of details of the votes in the synod hall, paragraph by paragraph in a gesture of transparency.
The archbishop said this synod has been radically different as, thanks to the Pope, it had led to open dialogue and genuine debate.
Some commentators have expressed disappointment with the final outcome. Others have bizarrely expressed the hope that Pope Francis will ‘stack’ the next synod with liberal bishops in the hope of changing Church teaching. This fundamentally misunderstands both what Pope Francis is about and the nature of Church teaching.
As Austen Ivereigh, author of a forthcoming biography of Pope Francis, points out: “For the bishops who attended, assent to doctrinal orthodoxy was the starting point. What Pope Francis called ‘the fundamental truths of the sacrament of marriage’ were never in question: before, during and after the synod, sex was for marriage, marriage was for a man and a woman, open to life, for life, and sexually faithful.
Merciful part
“There was no debate on these points. Pope Francis did not call this synod to change teaching, but to expand it to include the missing part: the ‘missionary’ and ‘pastoral’ dimension – the merciful, healing, loving, welcoming part of Catholicism, which those outside the faith don’t get to see. Understand why they don’t and you get the point of the synod,” Mr Ivereigh insists.
In the past, meetings of the Synod of Bishops have tended to be called to rubber stamp what Rome has in mind.
This occasion was very different. Several participants pointed out that the Pope has turned the recent synodal model on its head: this is no longer about headquarters letting bishops know what Rome’s concerns are. This is the various local Churches coming to the centre with the lived reality of the faith in various parts of the world.
Gay Catholics are involved in parish life, cohabiting couples desire an authentic relationship with Christ through the Church and divorced and civilly remarried couples long for the sustenance of the sacraments.
Most priests respond pastorally to the felt need of parishioners, even when one does not live up to the Church’s high ideal.
Pope Francis wants the Church to learn to live with tension: to learn to live with a certain ambiguity while avoiding the temptation of ‘do-goodery’ that he criticised in his final remarks. He is conscious that, too often, people experience the Church as a negative voice, objecting to things and critical of those who don’t meet the ideal.
The synod heard criticism of terms like ‘living in sin’, ‘intrinsically disordered’ and ‘contraceptive mentality’.
The Pope is conscious, as his predecessor Benedict XVI pointed out, that if people simply experience Catholicism as a list of prohibitions rather than a radical yes, they will walk away unnourished.
As Austen Ivereigh points out, most Catholics “live in the gap between who we are and who we are called to be; being a Catholic isn’t an all-or-nothing proposition.
“The doorway is wide and inside, on the whole, it’s warm and welcoming – a clinic for the feeble, not a club of the smug. It’s nuanced and compassionate, even if it keeps the goals clearly in the spotlight.”
Pope Francis clearly believes that reform of the Church comes, not from the centre, but from the margins.
This is why the starting point is how the faith is lived: this is why this synodal process began with a questionnaire circulated to parishes and faith communities around the globe. In Ireland, as elsewhere, that consultation found that Church teachings were generally poorly understood and/or poorly followed.
There undoubtedly needs to be better catechesis around these issues. Following the publication of Humanae Vitae in 1968, the reaffirmation of the traditional ban on artificial birth control polarised the Church.
Paul VI
For some, Paul VI was a prophet, standing up for a traditional understanding of human sexuality. For others, he had failed to understand the nature of modern families.
The consequence of this polarisation? There was little or no discussion within the Church about human sexuality. The ‘theology of the body’ of Pope St John Paul II, for example, remains largely untapped.
But, as well as catechesis, there will have to be more welcome.
This is a vast challenge for the Church: how do we bring healing to the divorced, while holding firm to the indissolubility of marriage? How can the Church welcome gay Catholics while underlining the fact that sexual expression is for marriage alone? Pope St John XXIII referred to the Church as ‘mother and teacher’. Francis is calling Church leaders to exercise this dual role, which sometimes means living with tension.
Of course, not everyone agrees with Pope Francis: some have accused him of promoting a culture of doubt in the Church. About 35 Synod Fathers emerged as being strongly hostile to the overall thrust. It would be a mistake to dismiss them – the Pope should reach out to them and reassure them that he has no desire to change Church teaching. Nonetheless, there will always be those who long for clarity – but they should give Francis’ approach a change.
Other are disappointed too. Much hype in the secular media though the synod would mark the long-anticipated ‘Catholic cave in’ when the Catholic Church, the only universal institution to hold firm to traditional Christian sexual ethics, would finally become ‘modern’ and repudiate what large sections of the media interpret as ‘hardline’ approaches. That was never going to happen.
The final document from the synod will now be circulated to bishops’ conferences around the world. Hopefully the Irish bishops’ conference, initially so unwilling to publish the findings of the consultation on the family, will emulate the openness and transparency from Rome and really engage with families and parishes.
Next year’s synod, which will bring together even more participants, will advise Pope Francis on what he should say in a post-synodal apostolic exhortation.
There will be a lot of debate and discussion in the next 12 months: at times it’s sure to be a bumpy ride. Beatifying Paul VI at the weekend Pope Francis urged Catholics to embrace the “God of surprises”. Fasten your seatbelt.
