A senior cardinal has praised Pope Francis’ new way of running the recent bishops’ Synod on the Family despite claims from two US bishops that the more open discussions led to ‘confusion’ and a Protestant-style debate.
Yesterday the Vatican published the official English translation of the synod document, which, like the Italian original, included at Francis’ request the three paragraphs that failed to get the backing of two-thirds of the bishops in order to pass. The document also contained the breakdown of how many votes each paragraph had garnered. The three contested paragraphs concerned the Church taking a more liberal stance towards civilly remarried Catholics and gays and garnered more than 50 per cent of votes. A note at the end of the document stressed it was a work in progress that looked forward to next October’s larger synod.
The president of the German bishops’ conference, Cardinal Reinhard Marx, pointed out that a majority of participants had voted in favour of the three paragraphs on the “previously non-negotiable” issues – Communion for remarried divorcees and a more open approach to homosexuality. He told the German weekly Die Zeit: “I especially asked the Pope about this and he said he wanted all the points published together with the voting results. He wanted everyone in the Church to see where we stood,” Marx said.
Marx, who is a member of the Pope’s group of nine cardinal-advisers, said: “The doors are open – wider than they have ever been since the Second Vatican Council.” He added: “Francis wants to get things moving”.
He said it was the Pope’s explicit wish that ordinary Catholics take part in the reform process, adding: “We are all Church together and we want to move ahead together on this way forward, so ‘Avanti’, as Pope Francis always says.”
Meanwhile Cardinal André Vingt-Trois of Paris urged parishes in his diocese to form “synodal teams” to continue the discussion launched by Pope Francis at the synod and report back to him the results of their deliberations.
He explained that the teams should have six to 12 members, chosen by priests with their parish council. He wrote: "married couples, single parents, widows or widowers ... the main thing is that they can work together." They are to send him a report by Pentecost that focuses not on church teaching about families but on concrete problems that families face and what the diocese can do for them.
His enthusiasm to involve laity in taking the synodal discussions forward contrasts with scepticism from two US bishops about the synod process. Speaking after a lecture sponsored by the conservative magazine First Things, the Archbishop of Philadelphia, Charles Chaput, who did not attend the synod, said: “I was very disturbed by what happened. I think confusion is of the devil, and I think the public image that came across was of confusion.
He added: “Now, I don’t think that was the real thing there,” and said he was anxious to hear from a fellow American archbishop who had attended the sessions.
Chaput, with whom Pope Francis may stay if he attends part of the World Meeting of Families in Philadelphia next year, later challenged news reports of his comments for failing to note how he qualified his remark about confusion and the devil. He did not retract them however. A spokesman said the comments referred to the midterm relatio document.
Bishop Thomas Tobin of Providence voiced similar concerns about the synod in an article in his diocesan newspaper, in which he wrote: “In trying to accommodate the needs of the age, as Pope Francis suggests, the Church risks the danger of losing its courageous, counter-cultural, prophetic voice, a voice that the world needs to hear. The concept of having a representative body of the Church voting on doctrinal applications and pastoral solutions strikes me as being rather Protestant.”
The three parargraphs that failed to get a two-thirds majority but which were nonetheless included in the summary document are:
52. The synod father also considered the possibility of giving the divorced and remarried access to the Sacraments of Penance and the Eucharist. Some synod fathers insisted on maintaining the present regulations, because of the constitutive relationship between participation in the Eucharist and communion with the Church as well as the teaching on the indissoluble character of marriage. Others expressed a more individualized approach, permitting access in certain situations and with certain well-defined conditions, primarily in irreversible situations and those involving moral obligations towards children who would have to endure unjust suffering. Access to the sacraments might take place if preceded by a penitential practice, determined by the diocesan bishop. The subject needs to be thoroughly examined, bearing in mind the distinction between an objective sinful situation and extenuating circumstances, given that “imputability and responsibility for an action can be diminished or even nullified by ignorance, inadvertence, duress, fear, habit, inordinate attachments, and other psychological or social factors” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1735).
53. Some synod fathers maintained that divorced and remarried persons or those living together can have fruitful recourse to a spiritual communion. Others raised the question as to why, then, they cannot have access “sacramentally”. As a result, the synod fathers requested that further theological study in the matter might point out the specifics of the two forms and their association with the theology of marriage.
55. Some families have members who have a homosexual tendency. In this regard, the synod fathers asked themselves what pastoral attention might be appropriate for them in accordance with the Church’s teaching: “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.”Nevertheless, men and women with a homosexual tendency ought to be received with respect and sensitivity. “Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided” (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Considerations Regarding Proposals to Give Legal Recognition to Unions Between Homosexual Persons, 4).
Above: Cardinal Reinhard Marx of Munich and Freising, Germany, arrives for the morning session of the extraordinary Synod of Bishops on the family at the Vatican 16 October. Photo: CNS photo/Paul Haring
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