Business

Week is a long time in politics of the Church

Less than a week after saying they wanted the Church to be "a welcoming home" to gay people, Catholic bishops meeting in the Vatican changed their mind, writes William Scholes

THE idea that the Catholic Church was about to upend its understanding of the Bible and overnight change centuries of doctrine and practice about marriage and the family was always a bit of a long shot.

And so it has proved, for now at least.

The prospect that the Church could take a different tack on emotive issues such as homosexuality - as much hoped for by some as feared by others - was raised last Monday in a mid-point report of a synod on the family.

The Vatican synod, consisting of around 200 bishops from around the world, including Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin, was announced last year by Pope Francis.

Its two-week meeting concluded yesterday - coinciding with the beatification of Paul VI - after a vote on its final report on Saturday night.

Ahead of a further synod next October on a similar theme, Francis had asked the bishops, with input from a small number of lay people, to consider how the Church could best care for families in the context of evangelisation.

As well as thinking about how it ought best to support married Catholics, this inevitably raised questions in areas in which there are well-known gaps between official doctrine and real-world practice.

These include artificial contraception, cohabitation and sex before marriage and the acutely potent issues surrounding the ability of divorced and civilly remarried Catholics to receive Communion and the Church's attitude to gay couples.

As well as affirming traditional teaching on marriage and calling for more support for married couples, last Monday's document, which pulled together the synod's first week of discussions, caused a minor earthquake primarily because of what it had to say about gay people.

In a section called 'welcoming homosexual persons', the bishops said gay people needed to feel included in the Church: "Homosexuals have gifts and qualities to offer to the Christian community: are we capable of welcoming these people, guaranteeing to them a fraternal space in our communities?

"Often they wish to encounter a Church that offers them a welcoming home. Are our communities capable of providing that, accepting and valuing their sexual orientation, without compromising Catholic doctrine on the family and matrimony?"

In a similar vein, the document noted that the numbers of people living together before marriage and preferring civil ceremonies to Church weddings was increasing.

It was therefore necessary, the bishops said, to acknowledge "constructive elements" in such relationships: "In such unions, it is possible to grasp authentic family values or at least the wish for them."

The comments, albeit in what the Vatican was at pains to stress was a working document with no official authority, were significant.

But were they an outworking of the shift in tone that Francis has brought to the papacy, an expression of his oft-stated desire for a Church that speaks with mercy rather than judgment? Or were the bishops going further and suggesting that the Church's teaching should change?

The breathless reaction to Monday's report from many quarters would have led one to believe the latter.

The impression that the bishops - and it would be difficult to think of a more conservative bunch - had 'gone liberal' was too much for some in the synod, who distanced themselves from their own report because it was confusing.

Worse, it even risked undermining Catholic teaching on the family, thereby having the opposite effect to what was intended by the synod in the first place.

Splitting themselves into 10 small groups, divided according to language, the synod spent the rest of the week thrashing out a final draft of their report. It was voted on by the bishops on Saturday, at a meeting addressed by the Pope. The synod threw out from its final report the more controversial sections, replacing them with statements that critics will regard as watered down.

For example, reiterating previous statements, it said that gay people should be welcomed with "respect and sensitivity" and that "discrimination is to be avoided"; worthwhile, no doubt, but short of the mid-synod report's more embracing language.

Doubtless, this will be analysed as being a defeat for the Church's more liberalising tendencies and a victory for its more conservative elements; it may even be regarded as a slap in the face for the Pope himself.

Francis himself spoke of the tension between the "hostile inflexibility" of the "traditionalists" and the "destructive tendency" of the liberals' and do-gooders' "deceptive mercy".

The Church, he said, should not be afraid to roll up its sleeves "to heal people's wounds", nor should it be aloof and judge people from an ivory tower.

Now the report is brought from Rome to dioceses around the world, as it is intended to inform and guide further discussions ahead of the 2015 synod, which will carry more clout.

Pope Francis has asked for the portions rejected in the bishops' vote to nonetheless be published to aid those discussions.

"We still have one year to mature, with true spiritual discernment, the proposed ideas and to find concrete solutions to so many difficulties and innumerable challenges that families must confront; to give answers to the many discouragements that surround and suffocate families," he told the synod on Saturday.

Following Saturday's vote, Archbishop Diarmuid Martin said the synod's discussions had been conducted in a spirit of openness and honesty.

"The biggest challenge remains; as to how in today's complex cultural situation the Church can open a dialogue with men and women and young people where they are and lead them to a better idea of the Christian under-standing of marriage," he said.

"This will involve a radical rethinking of the Church's pastoral care for marriage and catechises among young people."

As a footnote, it is worth noting that the Pope has demoted one of his most trenchant critics within the Vatican.

Cardinal Raymond Burke, an American, heads the Church's justice system but has said he is to become the patron of the sovereign military order of Malta.

He is on record as being critical of Francis's supposedly liberal approach to social teaching.

"The Pope is not free to change the Church's teachings with regard to the immorality of homosexual acts or the insolubility of marriage or any other doctrine of the faith," Cardinal Burke said last week.

With the genie out of the bottle with regards to a new attitude towards gays, divorced and remarried Catholics and those in what the Church has long held to be 'irregular unions', the build up to the next synod in 12 months' time looks set to be fascinating.

* CEREMONY Bishops, above left, attend the beatification ceremony of Pope Paul VI and a mass for the closing of a two-week synod on family issues, celebrated by Pope Francis, in Saint Peter's Square at the Vatican yesterday. Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, above, greets Pope Francis prior to the start of the beatification ceremony PICTURES: Andrew Medichini/Gregorio Borgia/AP

* SALUTE: Cardinal Donald Wuerl, Archbishop of Washington, is saluted by two Swiss guards as he arrives to attend an afternoon session of a two-week synod on family issues at the Vatican on Saturday. Catholic bishops gave their approval to a revised document on Saturday evening laying out the Church's position on gay people, sex, marriage and divorce, a move critics will say is a shift away from the more controversial elements of the original report PICTURES: Andrew Medichini/AP