Synod of Bishops hears plain talk from Australian couple

This morning, Pope Francis called for open and honest discussion at the Synod of Bishops. This evening, the bishops heard it loud and clear from an Australian married couple, who urged the church to learn from the sometimes “messy” lives of modern families.

Ron and Mavis Pirola of Sydney were the first of several couples to address the synod as “auditors.” They don’t have a vote in the proceedings, but they do have a voice – and they delivered a message that contrasted with the ecclesial-speak of the synod’s official documents.

Ron Pirola told the synod that his 55-year happy marriage began when he looked across a room and saw a beautiful young woman. Their attraction, he said, was basically sexual and a longing to be intimate with each other. He went on to call marriage a “sexual sacrament with its fullest expression in sexual intercourse.”

The arrival of their four children filled them with joy but also brought nights when, as parents, they would lie awake wondering what went wrong.

Although practicing Catholics, Pirola said, the couple only occasionally looked at church documents for guidance, and “they seemed to be from another planet with difficult language and not terribly relevant to our own experiences.”

He suggested that to have a greater impact, the church should learn from families. For one thing, the church wants to uphold truth while expressing compassion and mercy – something families try to do all the time, he said:

“Take homosexuality as an example. Friends of ours were planning their Christmas family gathering when their gay son said he wanted to bring his partner home too.

They fully believed in the Church’s teachings and they knew their grandchildren would see them welcome the son and his partner into the family. Their response could be summed up in three words, ‘He is our son’.

What a model of evangelization for parishes as they respond to similar situations in their neighborhood!”

Pirola cited other parents they know who face deep challenges – a divorced woman who remains faithful to the church, a widow who cares for a disabled son. Like the families depicted in the Bible, modern families have lives that are “chaotic and full of messy dramas,” but they deserve to be listened to and treated as co-responsible for the church’s action by clergy, he said.

He said the church can also learn a lesson about effective transmission of values from parents who have struggled with their children:

“A high respect for authority, parental, religious or secular, has long gone. So their parents learn to enter into the lives of their children, to share their values and hopes for them and also to learn from them in turn. This process of entering into the lives of our other persons and learning from them as well as sharing with them is at the heart of evangelization.”

Synod kicks off with a papal call for candor

Pope Francis convened the working phase of the Synod of Bishops on the family with a strong call for frank discussion, saying bishops should not feel afraid to disagree openly but respectfully – even with the pope.

His brief talk Monday was followed by the reading of a revised synod working document that downplayed a topic at the center of fierce debate in recent weeks: the possibility of Communion for divorced and remarried Catholics.

The pope sat at a dais in the Vatican’s synod hall before about 180 bishops and some 70 other participants at the start of the two-week-long assembly. He said “synodality” means talking clearly and listening with humility.

Francis recalled that after last February’s meeting of cardinals on synod themes, one participant wrote to him and lamented that some cardinals were afraid to say what they thought, because they disagreed with the pope.

“That’s no good. That’s not synodality. We need to say what we feel and at the same time listen and welcome with an open heart what our brothers are saying,” the pope told the assembly.

But if Francis seemed to be calling for candor, the text of the revised working document or relatio, prepared by Cardinal Peter Erdo of Hungary, went out of its way to defuse a growing and public disagreement over the situation of Catholics who have divorced and remarried without an annulment.

Cardinal Walter Kasper, invoking Pope Francis’ theme of pastoral mercy, has said the church needs to search for a way to give Communion to such Catholics. Other cardinals, including the Vatican’s top doctrinal official, have pounced on Kasper’s suggestion, saying it would be tantamount to disavowing the indissolubility of marriage.

Cardinal Erdo’s relatio treated the situation of divorced Catholics at length, but without explicitly mentioning the issue of Communion. Indeed, he said, “it would be misleading to concentrate only on the reception of the sacraments” in discussing the issue.

Erdo emphasized that the synod was not in any sense challenging the permanence of marriage. He mentioned, as a matter needing further study, the practice of some Orthodox Churches in recognizing second marriages, but said this study needs to avoid “any questionable interpretations and conclusions.”

In another section of his text, Erdo said that pastoral mercy cannot go against the remands of the marriage bond, and that “a second marriage recognized by the church is impossible, while the first spouse is still alive.”

It remains to be seen whether Cardinal Kasper’s proposal receives more attention from this synod. But judging by today’s opening summary text, which is supposed to set directions for the discussion, the synod planners clearly do not want this very controversial issue to take over the assembly. I think they also wanted to reassure the doctrinal conservatives who have spoken out against Kasper’s ideas that what’s up for discussion are pastoral policies, and not established church teaching.

What was striking about Cardinal Erdo’s text was that it took almost for granted that streamlining the annulment process would go forward. He said there was a “broad consensus” for simplifying annulment procedures, and even suggested the church might institute an administrative, “extra-judicial” process in which a local bishop could annul a marriage. That in itself would be a remarkable change, and the pope has already named a commission to study these possibilities.

What Erdo had to say about cohabitation was also interesting, and unusually positive by Vatican standards. Some couples, he said, choose to live together without marriage in relationships that are marked by stability, deep affection and parental responsibility. He said the church should see these relationship as an opportunity and “a seed to be nurtured” toward the sacrament of marriage.

The opening relatio made two points about homosexuality. It said gay men and women should not be discriminated against. But it said most Catholics still reject the idea of gay marriage. What most Catholics appear to want, it said, was a change in culturally conditioned traditional roles and discrimination against women, but without denying the differences between the sexes and their “complementarity.”

In general, the relatio tried to strike a balance between alarm at the erosion of marriage and traditional family values, and confidence that the family “is not an outdated model.”

“The family is fast becoming the last welcoming human reality in a world determined almost exclusively by finance and technology. A new culture of the family can be the starting point for a renewed human civilization,” it said.

The synod and birth control

In recent months, I’ve often been asked whether the October Synod of Bishops on the family will be looking at the issue of birth control.

There are so many other important questions on the synod’s agenda, including the real-life struggles of families that face separation, poverty and violence, that one hesitates to focus on a doctrinal issue like contraception.

Yet it’s a logical question. Birth control is arguably the biggest and best example of the disconnect that exists between the Catholic Church’s official teaching on marriage and actual practice by Catholic couples.

The church teaching, proclaimed in the 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae, says the use of contraceptive methods is intrinsically evil. Yet surveys in many countries, including the United States, show that the vast majority of Catholics have used contraceptive birth control and believe it to be morally acceptable.

Synod planners have declared that ignorance or rejection of church teaching on marriage and the family represents a major challenge to pastors, one that needs to be discussed at the October assembly in Rome.

But don’t look for birth control to be a big part of that discussion.

The synod’s working document, which will be the basis for discussion when the synod opens Oct. 5, frames the issue in the traditional Vatican perspective: If only people understood our arguments, they could accept our teachings. Many of the Catholic faithful, the document states, have no knowledge of the relevant church documents or a poor understanding of the “Christian anthropology” that underlies the teaching on birth control.

If the working document sets the tone, we can expect to hear much during this synod about the need for better catechesis, better preaching, better training of priests and a renewal of language that makes concepts like “natural law” more comprehensible to the average Catholic.

What we won’t hear, I think, is any suggestion that the church should revisit the teaching against contraception. Nor is there likely to be much clamor for a closer look at a related, crucial issue: the exercise of papal teaching authority, which, as seen in Humanae Vitae and subsequent declarations, has become increasingly authoritarian and less collegial.

The synod, in other words, does not appear eager to probe too deeply into why most Catholic couples reject this fundamental teaching, and whether the experience of these Catholics might offer fresh insight into the church’s understanding of natural moral law. This is surely one of the elephants in the room: the relationship between the magisterium, the church’s teaching authority, and the sensus fidelium, the instinct that enables the faithful to recognize authentic Christian doctrine and reject what is false.

In reviewing pre-synod survey results from dioceses, the synod’s working document was forced to acknowledge that “for many Catholics, the concept of ‘responsible parenthood’ encompasses the shared responsibility in conscience to choose the most appropriate method of birth control.” In response, the document says the church should make Humanae Vitae better known, explain natural family planning more effectively, and offer better pre-marriage preparation and “instructional courses on love in general.”

Pope Francis, while calling the teaching on birth control “prophetic,” has indicated some space for discussion when it comes to pastoral practice. Francis pointed out in an interview last spring that even Pope Paul VI, who wrote Humanae Vitae, recommended to confessors “much mercy and attention to concrete situations.”

“The issue is not changing the doctrine, but going deeper and making sure that pastoral action takes into account that which is possible for people to do. This, too, will be discussed in the synod,” Pope Francis said.

Given the outcry from doctrinal conservatives every time “freedom of conscience” is invoked on unpopular church teachings, it’s hard to imagine this kind of discussion gaining much traction in Rome. Maybe the synod will surprise us.