It was unusually hot in Rome for the first week of the Synod on the Family. But that didn’t dampen the excitement surrounding Pope Francis of the unusually large crowds for October in the Piazza of St Peter’s. He has really struck a chord with people and, significantly, with the secular media.
But that enthusiasm is certainly not reflected in a sizeable minority of the hierarchy attending the synod. As a result some seasoned Roman observers are pessimistic that anything at all significant will happen. They note that those who oppose any change in issues like communion for divorced remarried Catholics, or the contraception ruling, let alone the recognition of gay unions, are out in force making their views known.
Their major thrust has been to shift the focus of the synod away from questioning previous church teaching and practice to an emphasis on the ‘threats’ and ‘dangers’ facing the family in the contemporary world. In other words the real problems originate in modern culture rather than from church teaching on morality and sexuality. Underlying this opposition is a covert hostility to the whole Pope Francis agenda. There are many clerics in Rome who have no desire to follow Francis anywhere near sheep, let alone smell them, or worse, smell like them!
But Francis is not without his supporters. Many bishops have emphasised that while doctrine will not change, pastoral approaches and applications will. As German theologian and friend of the pope, Cardinal Walter Kasper, has said: ‘Nobody denies the indissolubility of marriage ... But discipline can be changed.’ Cardinal Donald Wuerl of Washington took a similar approach arguing that the pastoral application of doctrines ‘are contingent and can change.’
Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin applied the theological notion of the development of doctrine arguing that ‘the synod has to find a new language to show that there can be development of doctrine’ and he claims that ‘there has been a willingness [in the synod] to listen to what emerged in the questionnaire that went out’ late last year in preparation for the synod.
Needless to say there has been reaction to this. Some have argued that Kasper particularly has been involved a ‘con job’ that confuses doctrine with practice and that ultimately aims at changing what they see as ‘settled’ doctrine like the indissolubility of marriage or the condemnation of contraception. The leading light in this group is Cardinal Raymond Burke, head of the Apostolic Signatura, the church’s appeals court. He says that the Kasper-Wuerl-Martin approach is ‘a very deceptive line of argument’.
This is the same Burke who responded to Australian couple Ron and Mavis Pirola who had argued in a well-received and widely reported speech to the synod that Catholic parents with a gay son ‘should welcome him and his partner to their home knowing that their grandchildren would see them welcome the son and his partner into the family.’
Burke responded: ‘If homosexual relations are intrinsically disordered, which indeed they are, then what would it mean to grandchildren to have present at a family gathering a family member who is living [in] a disordered relationship with another person?’ Burke added, ‘we don't want our children’ to get the impression that sexual relationships outside God’s plan are alright, ‘by seeming to condone gravely sinful acts on the part of a family member.’
Here it is worth noting that lay ‘observers’ like the Pirolas are outnumbered almost six to one by celibates at this session of the synod.
Since publication of the speeches is unreliable it is hard to get a sense of the quality of the debate. But if the Vatican Radio interview with Melbourne Archbishop Denis Hart is anything to go by, then the bishops are taking a blandly pastoral but essentially pedestrian approach. Hart says ‘the bishops want to engage with people and see the needs of families ... The bishops have been emphasising that we are pastors. When our people suffer we feel for them, when our people are bereaved we cry with them, when our people are burdened with sickness we struggle with them.’
This indicates the difficulty Pope Francis faces when he asks the bishops to act collegially with him, but collegiality presupposes a genuine sense of responsibility. The simple fact is that many bishops just don’t have the ability to assume that level of leadership. For the last forty-five years the papacy has essentially chosen ‘yes men’ as bishops. We are now reaping the consequences of this with a cadre of bishops more used to obeying than taking the kind of initiative that collegiality demands.
This must be a real conundrum for Pope Francis.
Paul Collins is a writer, broadcaster and historian of the Catholic Church who also contributes to the website of Catholics for Ministry.
Image featuring Archbishop Hart: Vatican Radio