The Tablet reports “Cardinal rebukes 500 priests for going to the press with call to resist change to church teaching” (24 March 2015). Cardinal Nichols observes “that dialogue between a priest and his bishop, is not best conducted through the press.”
The laity, on the other hand, have been asked to dialogue with the bishops by means of the invitation “The Call, the Mission and the Journey”, which is to be found on the Bishops' Conference website. The document does not cover in any way the substance of the priests' concern: the possible change to Church teaching.
While individuals can write in separately their views of that possibility, the Bishops' Conference consultative document takes no soundings whatever from the laity about such matters as divorced people being able to receive Communion, and there are a number of other pastoral matters which arose at the last synod on which no soundings are taken. An issue of concern to the priests who signed the letter of resistance - 'a “distorted sense” that the Church’s moral teaching could be changed' – is also a subject on which the laity have views and which is not raised in the consultation. The laity are mature enough not to be “unsettled” by the debates on fundamental matters and are capable, even desirous of “doing nuance”.
Anand C Chitnis, London SE1
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