Synod report: Is there a seismic shift in Catholic approach to marriage?

No. There’s no change whatsoever in the Catholic Church’s teaching and doctrine on marriage and sexuality, contrary to what you may be hearing.

The Synod on the Family is wrapping up its second and final week for now, making news by the day and even by the hour it seems. Some of it is generated by ravenous media bereft of information and even opportunities for the feeding frenzy of press briefings other than what individual bishops will give them after the sessions.

Just when I was cheering on Nigerian Archbishop Ignatius Kaigama speaking boldly to the West about trying to export ideas about marriage, family, human life that are foreign to African’s ideas, for trying to make Africans accept the West’s ideas and adopt them in Africa in spite of their direct conflict with what Africans’ believe and stand for in defense of human life and dignity, Germany’s outspoken Cardinal Kasper speaks out again, on the record with Zenit.org, about how “impossible” it is to reason with people of such beliefs.

The problem, as well, is that there are different problems of different continents and different cultures. Africa is totally different from the West. Also Asian and Muslim countries, they’re very different, especially about gays. You can’t speak about this with Africans and people of Muslim countries. It’s not possible. It’s a taboo. For us, we say we ought not to discriminate, we don’t want to discriminate in certain respects.

(However, it sounds like he just did.)

ZENIT: But are African participants listened to in this regard?

Cardinal Kasper: No, the majority of them [who hold these views won’t speak about them].

ZENIT: They’re not listened to?

Cardinal Kasper: In Africa of course [their views are listened to], where it’s a taboo.

See? An admission that the African contingent is simply rendered irrelevant, not listened to, except among themselves, on their own continent. How dismissive.

ZENIT: What has changed for you, regarding the methodology of this synod?

Cardinal Kasper: I think in the end there must be a general line in the Church, general crite

ria, but then the questions of Africa we cannot solve. There must be space also for the local bishops’ conferences to solve their problems but I’d say with Africa it’s impossible [for us to solve]. But they should not tell us too much what we have to do.

That’s interesting, given that Archbishop Kaigama said he same thing days earlier.

We get international organizations, countries, and groups which like to entice us to deviate from our cultural practices, traditions, and even our religious beliefs. And this is because of their belief that their views should be our views. Their opinions and their concept of life should be ours…

We have been offered the wrong things, and we are expected to accept simply because they think we are poor. And we are saying poverty is not about money. One can be poor in spirituality, poor in ideas, poor in education, and in many other ways.

So we are not poor in that sense. We may be poor materially but we are not poor in every sense. So we say no to what we think is wrong. And time has gone when we would just follow without question. Now, we question. We evaluate. We decide. We ask questions. This is what we do in Africa now.

Catholic scholar and Vatican expert George Weigel was my guest on radio Wednesday, and said “These northern European bishops seem not to have understood that conceding to the zeitgeist, conceding to the sexual revolution, which they have been trying to do since Humanae Vitae, is one of the reasons why their churches are empty. There is no future for dumbed-down Catholicism in this culturally challenging moment. The notion that the way you deal with this cultural tsunami that is sweeping across the western world is to bend before it, is foolishness of the first order. And that is what the African bishops are saying to the Europeans: ‘Don’t you impose your Western decadence on us,’ and good for them for saying it.

Weigel referred to Kasper’s interview as trying to silence the Africans by telling them ‘shut up, we’re not listening to you.’ Which he called “astonishingly arrogant,” and “which I hope he gets called to task for severely, publicly.” He called the expressions scandalous, and added that he’s “frankly glad it’s out in the open.” But he strongly asserted that Cardinal Kasper’s brother bishops and cardinals need to respond to those remarks. “This was an act of cultural snobbery.”

Weigel had just published a good piece in National Review trying to calm nerves over what is and isn’t happening in Rome at this Synod.

For the better part of a half century, the New York Times, and similarly situated purveyors of news and opinion, have eagerly awaited the Great Catholic Cave-In: that blessed moment when, at long last, the Catholic Church, like many other Christian communities, would concede that the sexual revolution had gotten it right all along and would adjust its teaching and practice to suit. A Times “breaking story” on October 13, under the headline “Vatican Signals More Tolerance Toward Gays and Remarriage,” might have struck the unwary or uninformed (or those equally committed to the Times agenda in these matters) as a signal that Der Tag, the Day, had finally arrived.

Thus Elisabetta Povoledo wrote that “an important meeting at the Vatican used remarkably conciliatory language on Monday toward gay and divorced Catholics, signaling a possible easing of the church’s rigid attitudes on homosexuality and the sanctity of marriage.” It would be hard to cram more misinformation into one sentence.

Weigel proceeds to dismantle the false reporting in the piece, and all other false ideas of Catholic teaching not up for amendment in this synod.

The 2014 synod is an agenda-setting exercise that was intended by Pope Francis to help prepare the work of the 2015 Synod on the Family. The pope knows full well that marriage and the family are in crisis throughout the world. In his own remarks before the synod, he said that he hoped the synod would lift up the beauty of Christian marriage and Christian family life in a world too dominated by what he’s often called a “throwaway culture,” the throwaways all too frequently including spouses and children…

The synod fathers are wrestling with difficult questions. How does the Catholic Church best approach, in a pastoral and charitable way, those who are living in what the Church has no option but to consider, objectively speaking, irregular situations? How does a Church of sinners — which is what all of us Catholics are — call people in those situations to the conversion to which all Christians are constantly called? How can it bring people to see the truth of their situation, and how can it best help them deal with that? These are not simple matters; matters of the heart rarely are.

Similarly, Princeton Professor Robert George published this commentary in The Public Discourse with the challenging question ‘Has the Catholic Church Changed its Teaching on Sex and Marriage?’

When you went to bed this past Sunday evening, the Catholic Church taught the following:

Marriage is indissoluble.

Catholics who attempt marriage following a divorce—without a declaration that their first bond wasn’t after all a valid marriage—enter a (presumptively) adulterous relationship. So long as they maintain a sexual relationship with their new partner, they cannot judge themselves to be in a state of grace and therefore cannot worthily receive Holy Communion.

To return to the sacrament, the partners must repent—which requires ending the new sexual relationship—and be absolved.

Marriage is the conjugal union of sexually complementary spouses—husband and wife.

Non-marital sexual acts, including all same-sex sexual acts, are seriously sinful.

Same-sex sexual desires are intrinsically disordered: that is, not ordered to the good of conjugal union. Experiencing such desires or inclinations is not sinful, but acting on them is.

The next day, Prof. George wrote, you would find that the Catholic Church teaches exactly the same.

“Hang on there, professor. Haven’t you heard? On Monday the Catholic Church changed its teachings on marriage and sexuality. There has been an ‘earthquake,’ a ‘seismic shift.’ Things will never be the same. The Church now welcomes remarried people to communion, has dropped its objections to homosexual conduct, and denies that homosexual desires are ‘intrinsically disordered.’ Or it’s about to do all of that. Francis is a new kind of Pope, and it’s a new day. He has brought Catholicism into line with the teachings of the Episcopal Church USA, the Unitarian Universalists, and the New York Times editorial board.”

If you are indeed thinking something like that, it’s because you’ve heard about something called a relatio post disceptationem, a document released on Monday as an interim report on discussions occurring at a Vatican synod of bishops (called an “extraordinary” synod because it is preparatory to a larger synod—an “ordinary” synod—that will occur next year) on contemporary challenges to the family.

The relatio, then, is raw material for this week’s discussion, which will prepare for next year’s discussion, which may provide fodder for a document by the Pope.

So it’s conducive to something preparatory to something (possibly) advisory.

It has no teaching authority whatsoever.

What’s more, it proposed no changes—none—in the doctrine or moral teaching of the Church.

Why did some people think it did? More on that next time. (Short answer for now: translation.)