Family values the Church can learn

At least in the West, expectations are high that the extraordinary synod of bishops which Pope Francis will open in Rome tomorrow will move the Catholic Church in a more liberal direction on a range of issues, not least regarding divorce and remarriage. It is by no means a foregone conclusion, however: the more closely the bishops in synod study the issue, the more difficult they are likely to find it. Pope Francis clearly favours an outcome which will display God’s mercy rather than a harsh and unforgiving judgement. This could modify, or even remove altogether, the prohibition the Catholic Church has traditionally applied to divorced and remarried Catholics receiving Holy Communion. He will find that the principal obstacle to such movement is the formidable figure of his predecessor, Pope St John Paul II, who plainly intended, in his apostolic exhortation Familiaris Consortio of 1981, to seal this door once and for all.

He said of such couples: “They are unable to be admitted thereto from the fact that their state and condition of life objectively contradict that union of love between Christ and the Church which is signified and effected by the Eucharist.” He emphasised the close theological parallel between Jesus Christ’s indissoluble union with the Church, symbolised in the Eucharist, and the indissoluble union of two baptised people who are bound together by the Sacrament of Matrimony - to such an extent that to deny the second would be to deny the first. This is a very tight knot, which will be hard to unpick.

But the connection between Christ’s love for the Church and the love of two people in marriage is still only a metaphor, albeit one raised by St John Paul II almost to the status of fundamental dogma. There are other powerful metaphors available which suggest a different outcome. One is of the Church as a mother; another, related, is of the Church as a family. Mother Church is a merciful Church, for the metaphor refers to the unconditional love of a parent for her children. Parents know that children disobey and disappoint, but they also understand how important it is for the child to know it is loved regardless. Unconditional love, the love of a mother for her child, is merciful love.

The bond within loving families is of this unconditional kind. A family member who has strayed from the straight and narrow will not be excluded from that family's dining table because of it, and will certainly not be told to sit in a corner and imagine what the food would be like if only they were allowed to taste it – which, under the name of “spiritual communion”, is the best the Church currently offers to those who are divorced and married if they want to join the rest of the Catholic “family” round the Lord's table at Mass. If families can embrace their own members who break the rules, especially those whose situation is no fault of their own, how can the Church, which also talks of itself as a family, do any less? The Church likes to lecture people on how to conduct their family lives; but there is a lesson here about how to love unconditionally that the Church can learn from real families – who do it all the time.