The Pope of surprises
Will the current meeting of Catholic bishops from around the world build up the unity of the church, strengthening her for mission, or will it divide Cath- olics? That is at stake during these weeks of the synod — the ecclesiastical term for such meetings — convened by Pope Francis to discuss the family.
In the Catholic vision of things, the Bishop of Rome is a figure of unity. In a church truly Catholic, facing the challenge of preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ from Belgium to Burkina Faso, the fissiparous tendency of all human organizations is always a present danger. Thus Catholic theology holds that the pope — successor of the apostle Peter, martyred on the Vatican hill under Nero — has the mission of preserving the unity of the church. Clearly re- maining in the truth of Christ, despite all the varied circumstances of history and geography, is the path the popes are to follow as a sure point of reference around which all may remained united.
Over centuries, divisions inevitably arise, sometimes seriously so on the most solemn of subjects. Is God singular, trinity, or both? What is necessary for salvation? Is Jesus Christ really present in the eucharist? Such matters are both important theologically, for they touch on the truth of the deepest foundations of reality, and are eminently practical, for they affect how we pray daily and determine what ends we order the entire project of our life.
So when such divisions become sufficiently grave to provoke confusion, the truth has to be resolved. The usual method for this in church history is to convene a gathering of bishops — a representative sample or the whole lot — to meet for a few weeks or even over several years.
These synods or councils, presided over and taking their authority from the pope, work out how to faithfully apply the teaching of Jesus to the challenges of the contemporary moment. Such matters are often messy affairs. The subjects under discussion could not be any more important and are thusly argued with corresponding intensity. Despite the all-too-human back and forth, Catholics believe that God is present in the process, even if it is hard to see that at times.
Hence the debates at the synod on the family during these weeks in Rome are not historically novel. Indeed, looked at with a wide historical lens and given the state of family life in many places in the world, the synod’s deliberations are not on the order of dividing the church.
Yet what is relatively novel is that this particular synod, like its companion held in October 2014, has not been called to resolve divisions, but rather to amplify them. Upon Pope Francis’ election in March 2013, there was no great debate in the Catholic Church about, for example, whether those Catholics living in marriages not recognized as valid by the church, such as the divorced-and-civilly-remarried, could receive holy communion. That’s one of the divisive issues at this synod, and it is so because Pope Francis asked the synod to revisit a question previously settled by both his predecessors, St. John Paul II and Benedict XVI.
Rome is then suffering an inversion of the usual process, whereby synods are called to bring unity out of division. This time around, the Holy Father, enthusiastic about frank discussions, is inviting disparate voices to press their case. He has not revealed how he intends to unify everyone at the end of the process. For the Pope of surprises, that remains his greatest challenge, and whether he can do just that is the question on Roman minds this month.