Synod must focus on ‘real life’, says Cupich

The forthcoming Synod on the Family should focus on real life pastoral situations rather than start with fixed notions of church teaching, the Archbishop of Chicago has said.

Archbishop Blase Cupich, a rising star in the United States hierarchy, is believed to be attending October’s family synod as a personal appointee of Pope Francis, although an official announcement has yet to be made.

“What is intriguing to me about what the Holy Father is doing with the synod is that he is saying ‘we need to walk together and we need to listen to each other. Nothing should be kept off the table, people should not say you can’t say that’,” the archbishop told The Tablet in an interview via Skype last week.

“If you start only with ideas and fixed notions then you are not going to get too far because you are going to use a very deductive rather than an inductive method.”

The Pope, Archbishop Cupich said, wants to be close to the “pulse” of real life which can help “spark creativity and imagination” in pastoral situations. 

He explained: “The teachings are very important to us. My point would be we can’t so absolutise one teaching against all of it, nor one error over another. That’s always been a very difficult challenge for the Church. And the role of the Holy Father is to keep alive the whole tradition.”

The archbishop said that the disagreements at the last synod – on communion for the divorced and remarried and pastoral care of gay people – were not to be feared. 

“If you look at the earliest councils of the Church beginning with Jerusalem, there has been a healthiness in a free exchange of spirits that the Holy Father would like us to become involved in. I think that’s always healthy,” he said.

However, Archbishop Cupich said disagreement should take place in a way that unifies the whole Church. “The search for unity also has to keep in mind the whole Church and especially those who have maybe found themselves distanced from the Church because their voice has not been heard.”

He added: “I would hope that as a wonderful living symbol of unity, the Holy Father’s visit [to the US later this month] would achieve a greater sense of unity within the Church and also within society.”

Archbishop Cupich said the United States bishops would issue a “faithful citizenship” document ahead of the presidential elections next year which would include themes on poverty and the environment that had not been present in earlier editions.

“I think we will see in a very concrete way the impact of the Holy Father in that particular document,” he said.