Some effort was made in the months leading up to
those Synods of Bishops to consult Catholics worldwide on various aspects of
family life. Family life, after all, is
something we all have experience of.
There is hardly any subject more suitable for consulting people about
but church leadership has not much experience in consulting so the exercise was
not a great success. The encouraging
thing about it was not how effective it was but that it happened at all. No doubt lessons have been learned and future
efforts at finding out people’s views and opinions will be more fruitful.
Synods of bishops have happened regularly since the
end of the Second Vatican Council.
General Councils of the Church are held rarely. They require all bishops to gather in one
place and with there being more and more bishops; General Councils may become
even more rare. There are far more
bishops now than there were fifty years ago when Vatican II ended. The Council insisted that bishops should have
a stronger role in the Church than they were afforded by a strongly centralised
papacy. Pope Paul VI decided that
regular Synods of Bishops would help.
These Synods are attended only by a fraction of the total number of
bishops. Each conference of bishops
delegate those who will represent their views – and hopefully the views of
those in the pews.
These two Synods on family life made
recommendations on how the Church should be the Church in a world in which
family life is changing so rapidly.
Obviously the gathering of bishops from all parts of the world expressed
widely different views. Whatever
opinions particular groups of bishops sincerely held, they would naturally hope
that the Pope and the majority of bishops would agree with them!
In his Apostolic Exhortation, ‘The Joy of Love’,
Pope Francis looks at some of those recommendations – often quoting from them –
and he then expands into his own considerations. The document – copies of which are available
in the shop – also quotes from recent Popes and from the documents of the
Second Vatican Council and from certain Conferences of Bishops. He writes about the difficulties faced by
many people and quotes from Pope John Paul II, now canonised, who puts forward
the notion of ‘graduality’, meaning that Catholics may sometimes grow over time
towards an understanding of Church teaching.
‘The Joy of the Gospel’ says that ‘the Church possesses
a solid body of reflection concerning mitigating factions and situations. Hence it can no longer simply be said that
all those in any ‘irregular’ situation are living in a state of mortal sin and
are deprived of sanctifying grace.’
Quoting from the Catechism of the Catholic Church he says: ‘A negative
judgement about an objective situation does not imply a judgement about the
culpability of the person involved.’ In
other words, he is saying that though a person is in an objectively wrong
situation this does not necessarily mean that (s)he is guilty of sin. He says: ‘No-one can be condemned forever,
because that is not the logic of the Gospel.
Here I am not speaking only of the divorced and re-married, but of
everyone, in whatever situation they find themselves.’
He speaks realistically about the problems people
face and how we learn to help each other and work for the strengthening of
marriage and family life. He says ‘No
family drops down from heaven perfectly formed.’ He asks that we never lose sight of our own
true goal and never give up on it. That
goal is expressed in the vision of faithful married love which he describes as
a place where God truly dwells. Family
love is ‘a God enlightened space.’ For
this reason, we must never stop proposing ‘the full ideal of marriage, God’s
plan in all its grandeur.’
While searching for God’s plan for marriage he
wants the Church to be like a ‘field hospital’ with a particular concern for
all those who are in ‘situations which do not yet – or no longer – correspond
to her teaching on marriage. He speaks
of love as a craft at which we have to work hard with care, understanding and
perseverance.
