Hannah Roberts reported from Rome (The Tablet, 6 September) that Cardinal Parolin “has indicated that the main focus of the synod [of bishops on the family] may not be the reforms that some in the Church hope for, but the legal and cultural threats to the family itself.”
More likely, one hopes, he is setting this up as a target for a later chapter in the process. Chapter one is the learning and dialogue to follow from the revolutionary, if awkward, consultation earlier this year. The sparse feedback from the preparatory questionnaire depicts a Church weak in self-understanding. Renewal of faith in each other is the reform most needed. The questionnaire has triggered a learning process. As Church let us listen to each other, not insist on authority and tradition at every turn, and recognise the central function of imagination as a necessary modifier of traditions, in particular of gender traditions.
Our bishops, their authority weakened, are an all male group without female membership. Bishops will feel the odds are stacked against them, and they are. The last 40-50 years has included popes over-reliant on their own intellectual strengths and personal convictions, and shaming public recognition, grudgingly conceded, that the personal behaviours of many clergy are unacceptable in the context of family living and in any social grouping. There is a considerable mismatch between what Church leaders think is taught and accepted, and the differing understandings and principles by which the laity resolve major issues in family living. Service to their dioceses requires bishops to address these concerns together in Synod, preparing themselves for dialogue in their dioceses on their return. None of us can afford differences and misunderstandings swept aside as outcomes of inadequate catechesis. Jesus’ advice that his disciples should call no man father is increasingly forceful. Christians do not have moral authority as a birth-right, nor from organisational appointment.
John Callaghan, Heswall
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