The Bishop of Shrewsbury has praised the almost 500 priests who lobbied their bishops in the press to defend church teaching on marriage ahead of October’s Synod on the Family.
In a strongly worded homily at a Mass for the Annual General Meeting of the Catholic Women’s League in Chester on Saturday, Bishop Mark Davies said that the "renewed witness" of those priests and others took place in the face of an international crisis of family life.
He was referring to a letter signed by 461 priests that was published in the Catholic Herald in March and that urged the Synod Fathers not to change church teaching on communion for remarried divorcees.
“In a happy and unprecedented way many hundreds of priests have written to their bishops in different parts of the western world encouraging them in their public stand for all the Church believes and teaches about marriage. The priests, as pastors of souls appreciate it will always take supernatural courage to stand in Christ’s truth in times of crisis and confusion,” he said.
In backing the priests he appears to contradict Cardinal Vincent Nichols, who at the time publicly criticised the signatories, saying: “This dialogue, between a priest and his bishop, is not best conducted through the press.”
In his speech Bishop Davies said that on a global scale the crisis facing families took the form of poverty and war, but in the West manifested itself as an “insidious” attack on Christian marriage.
“It can seem that the Christian vision of marriage marked by life-long commitment, chaste love, and openness to the gift of children is rapidly becoming a counter-cultural life-style in societies such as our own,” he argued.
But he went on: “If some had hoped to see the witness of the Catholic Church crumble under the pressure of these destructive trends then I would suggest we are seeing a great renewal of our witness.”
Loading ...
