Synod approves final document, Pope moves forward on key issues

Oct 30, 2015

By Gerard O’Connell
The Synod of Bishops on the Family concluded its work on Saturday evening, Oct. 24, by approving the final document by a two-thirds majority. While re-affirming traditional church doctrine on marriage and the family as expected, the synod significantly closed no doors, despite a strong push to do so, instead it cleared the way for Pope Francis to respond to the unanswered questions in a future magisterial text.

The approval of this consensus document has greatly strengthened the hand of Pope Francis in his effort to build a church whose “first duty,” as he said in his speech after the vote, “is not to hand down condemnations or anathemas, but to proclaim God’s mercy, to call to conversion, and to lead all men and women to salvation in the Lord.”

The synod fathers, in their introduction to the text (so far only in Italian) offered the pope “the fruit of our reflections, with an awareness of the limits that these present”—in fact they provided more questions than answers. And in the last paragraph (n.94) they ask him “to evaluate the opportunity” to write “a document on the family.”

The approved text is “a document of consensus,” Cardinal Christoph Schonborn (Austria) told the press in a briefing at the Vatican before the Synod actually voted. That is already an achievement, given the hard discussions during the three week assembly which the Pope referred to in his speech.

Part 3, which was the most discussed and disputed section, looks at the mission of the family in today’s world, under the title Family and Pastoral Accompaniment.

Indeed, the most heated discussion in the synod revolved around one theme in this chapter: the controversial question of whether Catholics who have divorced and civilly remarried could, under certain circumstances, receive communion. A sizeable group of synod fathers, including three cardinals heading Roman Curia Offices (Ouellet, Sarah and Pell), sought to totally exclude this possibility from the text but in the end they failed.   

“Discernment” is the key word to understand the synod’s approach to this question, Cardinal Schonborn told the press. He said the synod gives “great attention” to their situation, which is so diversified that “there is no black and white answer, no simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’” as some insisted, instead “it’s necessary to discern in each case.” He recalled that this was exactly what John Paul II had advocated in his 1981 apostolic exhortation on the family, "Familiaris Consortio." Moreover, he added, “discernment” is something that Pope Francis knows a lot about; with his Jesuit background of the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius, he has been doing it all his life.

Another contested subject is the Church’s approach to homosexuals. Cardinal Schoborn acknowledged that “there’s not much about homosexuality in the text” since it only looks at this question within the context of the family, where a member — “a brother or sister” — has homosexual tendencies.

On this question, Paragraph 76 has this to say:

The Church conforms her attitude to the Lord Jesus who, in a love without frontiers, offered himself for every person, without exception. When faced with families that live the experience of having, within them, persons with homosexual tendencies, the Church reaffirms that every person, independent of their own sexual tendency, must be respected in their dignity and welcomed with respect, (and) with care to avoid “every mark of unjust discrimination (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith; considerations about the project for legal recognition of unions between homosexual persons, 4).

The Synod added that “special attention is reserved for the accompaniment of families in which persons with homosexual tendencies live.” As for the projects of equating the union of homosexuals to marriage, “there is no foundation whatsoever for assimilating or establishing analogies, not even remotely, between homosexual unions and the plan of God for marriage and the family” (from the same CDF document). Furthermore, the Synod stated that “it considers it totally unacceptable that the local Churches are subjected to pressures in this matter, and that international organizations condition financial aid to poor countries on the introduction of laws that establish ‘marriage’ between persons of the same sex.”

Apart from these hot-button issues, the Synod’s finals document is divided into three parts and covers much ground. One can only offer a rapid overview here, of a text which reaffirms Christian teaching that marriage is between a man and a woman who commit themselves to a lifelong union that is open to having children, and that it is indissoluble. --America