Synod on the family makes big news
What we’re hearing and reading is coming largely from the synod of the media.
Well before the official 2014 Vatican Synod on the Family began in Rome over the weekend of October 5th, it began in news stories, blog posts, Facebook comments and Twitter posts with rampant speculation based on advance publications and comments by some cardinals about the Church’s teaching on marriage and divorce, re-marriage and communion, and homosexual relationships.
On the eve of the actual event, Rocco Palmo aptly noted the hoopla and reminded everyone to settle down.
Lest anyone got confused amid the spectacles in the gathering’s run-up, most of what’s transpired until now doesn’t mean terribly much – dueling Europeans and North Americans do not a Synod make… nor, for that matter, a universal church, either.
At the Mass opening it all, after reflections on the Gospel about cultivating the vineyard, Francis said this:
We too, in the Synod of Bishops, are called to work for the vineyard of the Lord. The Synodal assemblies don’t serve to discuss beautiful or original ideas, or to see who’s the most intelligent one… They serve to care for and maintain better the Lord’s vineyard, to cooperate in his dream, in his project of love for his people. In this case, the Lord asks us to take on ourselves the care of the family, which from its origins is an integral part of his design of love for humanity. (emphasis added)
We are all sinners, eh?, and for us too there can be the temptation of “seizing upon” the vineyard, born of the greed that’s never lacking in us humans. The dream of God always clashes with the hypocrisy of some among his servants. We can “frustrate” the dream of God if we don’t let ourselves be guided by the Holy Spirit. The Spirit gives us the wisdom that is apart from science, to work generously with true freedom and humble creativity.
Brothers of the Synod, to care for and guard well the vineyard, we need for our hearts and minds to be guarded in Christ Jesus, from whom comes “peace from God which is beyond all understanding”…
However, frustrations have abounded at times in the first week, and factions have claimed the Holy Spirit is either working anew in this Synod or missing from it, which is a reiteration of old arguments from Vatican II.
Even after Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI dedicated their entire pontificates to finally realizing the teachings of that council, after decades of those same old arguments. With Benedict still living on the grounds within the walls of the Vatican, sometimes enjoying the visits of Francis who comes to confer with him, one wonders what he’s thinking of these proceedings.
To come up to speed, here are some of the best updates at the start of the second and final week for now of this extraordinary event.
This post explains things rather clearly, especially the nature of the closed sessions which shut out all media access, leading to the abundance of speculation.
Pope Francis gave a very clear indication of the method the synod should follow: bishops should speak frankly. Without any reverential fear. Even without being afraid of not coinciding with the Pope’s own opinion. The synodal fathers, instead, have opted for confidentiality. Cardinal Lorenzo Baldisseri, General Secretary of the Synod, warned them, «You can speak with whomever you want, but your texts are the synod’s property.» One bishop underlined that «we also had to commit to keep the discussion confidential. We can speak about the topics we have addressed during the assembly, and also give our impressions, but we cannot give out the names of the people who have spoken.»
This is the reason why very little is known about the discussions in the synod. Reading the media, it seems the synod is a sort of referendum on Catholic divorce, or at least on the access to Communion for divorced remarried. The temptation to divide in categories (progressives against conservatives) is quite strong. Left in the about discussions in the synod, the media looks for contrasts that, it seems, bear no correspondence to what is actually taking place in the Synodal Hall.
What is reportedly happening in the synodal hall sometimes even includes boring discussions.
Judging from media reports about eruptions over doctrine and pastoral practice, they’re not reporting on the real Synod.
In the background, one can read the eternal debate about a Church that must spread a message and the way the Church presents this message to the world…
Until now, the media has somewhat led the discussion on the family. The absence of any texts on the interventions of the synodal fathers, the impossibility of knowing who said what, undermines rather than stimulates the discussions. It is then easy for the media to take the lead of the conversation…
The point that the crisis of the family represents the crisis of Catholicism….This same crisis that Pope Francis rightly identified as a central issue…
The risk is that of making of the synod more than what it is, by describing it in political terms which are alien to it; presenting it as a struggle that in fact is lost in nuances; or by expecting changes to the doctrine.
These are false expectations. The synod is a consultative body, not a deliberative one. It does not decide on doctrine.
And that’s a key point missed in the secular media. This two week session is a closed door exchange, a listening session, and nothing will be changed in the process.
That’s a dramatic counter-narrative to the Monday headlines found everywhere that an ‘earthquake’ was happening in Rome at the Synod. Not so, reports my friend Kathryn Jean Lopez, accurately.
Commenting on some of the headlines covering the synod on the family and the working summary document that was released and discussed today, New York’s Cardinal Timothy Dolan emphasized that doctrine isn’t being changed in Rome right now.
On his weekly radio show, Dolan was joined Fr. Jonathan Morris from the Archdiocese of New York and Nigeria’s Archbishop Ignatius Kaigama — who has some choice words for Western insistence that aid be contingent on adopting Western sexual mores. Kaigama stressed the fact that it is but a mere conversation and one that will be ongoing for a year. “We were just looking at it!,” he said. “A draft is a draft. It’s a draft; draft means you are still working on it.” somewhat perplexed by media reaction, and that it was even released “I wonder what that is going to achieve,” he said.
Kaigama has been such a needed, clarifying voice in this world body of church leaders, helping the West to think outside our borders.
The synod is not a referendum. We’re not here to vote on this, on that. It’s a discussion, a conversation about our faith. And it is a year-long conversation because we are having another synod in October next year. What we decide or talk about now is also going to be part of what we shall talk about in a year’s time. So there’s nothing definitive that is going to be issued from this synod in the sense that this is the law, this is the doctrine, we change all the doctrines, change everything. No, no, I don’t think that is the aim of this synod. It is about talking.”
And listening. And exchanging freely the ideas about how best to reach people in the modern world, wherever they are, on the peripheries or in the mainstream, with a message of love and mercy and justice. Kathryn Lopez seized the media language of ‘mercy and justice’ leading to an ‘earthquake’ of rupture in Church teaching on marriage and divorce and related issues, and deftly wove it into this.
The most unfortunate headline of the day so far about news out of Rome on a working document that has been released by the ongoing synod on the family in Rome might have been this one from NBC: “Vatican Synod Told Gays Have Gifts and Qualities.” Our very lives are gifts and did anyone really need to be told that any person has qualities?
More than qualities, they are made in the image and likeness of God: that is our common identity.
“It is deplorable that homosexual persons have been and are the object of violent malice in speech or in action. Such treatment deserves condemnation from the Church’s pastors wherever it occurs. It reveals a kind of disregard for others which endangers the most fundamental principles of a healthy society. The intrinsic dignity of each person must always be respected in word, in action and in law.”
That was from the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith under Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.
But there is an obvious difference in the language being used in the draft from the synod on the family that was released today. The working draft reflects the fact that it is 2014 and we have some real pastoral challenges and obstacles to evangelization. How do you overcome them? With a language, with gestures that are inviting people to Church teaching. With a language that acknowledges that same-sex marriage didn’t break marriage, decades of practical surrender to the sexual revolution did.
As with when Pope Francis said “Who am I to judge?,” for the world to finally begin to hear that Catholic Church teaching is really truly rooted in love, is a tremendous opportunity. The misunderstandings that are legion will be clarified if people have real-life and cultural exposure to Catholics living loving witness to the Gospel, living according to Church teaching and finding joy in it.
This will be a very interesting week, as the synod continues these sessions and wraps up. Plenty more to come.
