Pope Francis, the Synod, and Catholic teaching

Tuesday, October 21st, 2014

If Francis doesn’t soon make it clear that the synod can’t abandon Catholic teaching, his pontificate could spin out of control.

Cardinal Burke is right: the group responsible for reporting the synod is manipulating the presentation of what’s actually happening.

The presentation earlier this week of the so-called “mid-term report” of the extraordinary synod of bishops on the family (the Latin headline of which, relatio post disceptationem, may seem to the unenlightened to give it an authority it doesn’t in fact possess) aroused a predictable level of interest in both the Catholic and the non-Catholic media.

Their general assumption has been (and the report’s half dozen authors clearly intended that the assumption should be) that what it conveys is that the Catholic Church is gearing up, not for any change in pastoral strategy, but for fundamental changes in the Church‘s teachings (hitherto immutable) on important questions to do with marriage and with sexual morality.

Have a look at this from the Mail Online. The headline reads as follows: “Massive Vatican shift on gay sex: Summit on ‘family life’ says unmarried couples living together can be ‘positive’, gays and divorcees must be welcomed and contraception ‘respected’.” Beneath that is a four-part standfirst:

• Catholic Church adopts rare progressive tone during talks of family issues
• Two-week summit reached midway point today with the release of a document summarising the extent of the closed-door debate so far
• Meeting is the first time Catholic Church has held a ‘family synod’ since 1980
• The summit has been described as a ‘step in the right direction’ by activists

That this “progressive tone” reflects the unanimous views of all the synod fathers is taken for granted by the Mail’s writer, John Hall, who went on to say that “Catholic bishops meeting to discuss ‘family issues’ at a two week summit have said unmarried couples living together can be ‘positive’, and gay relationships and divorces must be welcomed. Continue reading

Source

William Oddie in The Catholic Herald

Dr William Oddie is a leading English Catholic writer and broadcaster. He edited The Catholic Herald from 1998 to 2004 and is the author of The Roman Option and Chesterton and the Romance of Orthodoxy.