Catholic Church addresses reality gap
God’s work is caring for families, not clever debates, Pope tells global synod
ROME — Pope Francis has told bishops and cardinals from across the world to climb down from their ivory towers and tackle real-life issues such as divorce, contraception and same-sex unions.
The Pope made the comments as the Roman Catholic Church prepares to address the chasm between its teaching and the problems modern families face.
Opening a two-week global synod of nearly 200 church leaders with a mass in St. Peter’s Basilica Sunday, the Pope told them to avoid obscure theological debate and intellectual sparring in favour of analyzing why so many Catholics defy official teaching on issues such as birth control and premarital sex.
“Synod assemblies are not meant to discuss beautiful and clever ideas, or to see who is more intelligent,” the 77-yearold Pope said, in an apparent rebuke to those bishops, archbishops and cardinals who oppose his reformist agenda.
The Catholic Church was like a vineyard, he said, and the role of its leaders was to nurture it with “freedom, creativity and hard work.”
“In this case the Lord is asking us to care for the family,” the Jesuit Pope told the bishops. For the next two weeks the bishops will hold closed-door debates, in which some of the thorniest contemporary issues facing the church will be discussed, including the divisive issue of whether to allow divorcees who remarry to be allowed to take communion.
The Pope has indicated on several occasions that he favours a more “merciful” approach to the issue and has thrown his moral support behind German Cardinal Walter Kasper, who has argued that the church should modify its rules.
Catholics who divorce in a civil court and remarry are prohibited from taking communion because in the eyes of the church their first marriages are still valid, so they are, in effect, committing adultery with their new partners. Many Catholics regard that as unnecessarily mean-spirited and exclusive.
A group of reform-minded cardinals is pushing for change, including Lorenzo Baldisseri, the head of the synod of bishops, Dionigi Tettamanzi, the emeritus archbishop of Milan and Luis Tagle, a cardinal from the Philippines.
They are opposed by powerful conservative currents within the church, led by cardinals who include Gerhard Mueller, the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, George Pell, an Australian who heads a Vatican economic committee, and Raymond Leo Burke, an arch-conservative from the United States.
The church leaders will discuss the results of a questionnaire, which showed millions of Catholics ignore the church’s teachings on issues such as premarital sex and birth control.
“Francis has made a bold move in pushing for this study of family issues,” said Georg Sporschill, a Catholic priest and author from Austria.
“The church must win back credibility among ordinary people, above all on subjects such as sexuality and the family,” Sporschill told La Repubblica newspaper.