{"id":9082,"date":"2015-10-20T08:03:14","date_gmt":"2015-10-20T15:03:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/popes-family-synod-no-changes-but-everything-has-changed\/"},"modified":"2015-10-20T08:03:14","modified_gmt":"2015-10-20T15:03:14","slug":"popes-family-synod-no-changes-but-everything-has-changed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/popes-family-synod-no-changes-but-everything-has-changed\/","title":{"rendered":"Pope’s family synod: No changes, but everything has changed"},"content":{"rendered":"

VATICAN CITY \u2014<\/strong> It\u2019s now quite certain that Pope Francis\u2019 big summit on family issues won\u2019t endorse any changes to church doctrine on the church\u2019s teaching about homosexuality or whether civilly remarried Catholics can receive Communion.<\/p>\n

And yet, it seems, everything has changed.<\/p>\n

From the crucial role African bishops have played in the debate, to calls to remove \u201cintrinsically disordered\u201d from the church\u2019s language on gays, to the freedom bishops now enjoy to speak their minds on once-taboo issues, Francis\u2019 synod on the family has at the very least shaken up the church for years to come.<\/p>\n

And if Francis has his way, there\u2019s more ahead.<\/p>\n

Francis delivered a sleeper bombshell of a speech over the weekend kicking off the final week of the synod in which he called for nothing less than a revolution in the concept of the Catholic Church itself. He said it\u2019s not a top-down organization with the pope in charge but rather an inverted pyramid where the summit \u2014 the pope \u2014 is underneath and in service to the \u201choly faithful people of God\u201d who are its base.<\/p>\n

He called for a \u201chealthy decentralization\u201d of authority on certain problems from Rome to local bishops\u2019 conferences, and said the papacy itself should be rethought, with the pope guiding the church but really just one bishop among many, one Catholic among many.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a very delicate moment, where you realize that the relationship between the church and the world is at stake,\u201d the Rev. Antonio Spadaro, a Jesuit close to Francis, said as the synod entered its third and crucial week.<\/p>\n

The 270 synod \u201cfathers\u201d are hammering out a final document to submit to Francis on Saturday conveying a host of proposals. They will vote paragraph by paragraph on the text, amending what has been a near-universally scorned draft.<\/p>\n

What Francis does with the final paper is up to him: He can use it as a basis for a document of his own, he can ignore it, or he can publish it as a synod document. During Round One of the bishops\u2019 family meeting last year, Francis not only published the final document in full, he published the three paragraphs that didn\u2019t receive the necessary votes to pass \u2014 those that dealt with the vexing issues of ministering to gay Catholics and civilly remarried Catholics.<\/p>\n

The key question of Round Two has been how the bishops would pick up those two outstanding issues, after Francis called for a more merciful, less doctrinaire approach.<\/p>\n

Francis has shown a far more pastoral attitude to gays, famously saying \u201cWho am I to judge\u201d about a purportedly gay priest. But church teaching holds that while gays themselves should be treated with dignity and respect, homosexual acts are \u201cintrinsically disordered.\u201d<\/p>\n

Progressives have sought a new language that is more welcoming and less condemning, but proposals last year to recognize that homosexual unions had some merit were quashed by conservatives. While the final document won\u2019t be known until Saturday, several bishops have said the church\u2019s language towards gays must emphasize that gays like heterosexuals are children of God, regardless of their sexual orientation, and must be welcomed into the church.<\/p>\n

On the civil remarriage issue, church teaching holds that unless these remarried Catholics annul their first marriages, they are committing adultery and cannot receive Communion.<\/p>\n

Progressives have sought wiggle room, to look at remarried couples on a case-by-case basis, accompanying them on a path of reconciliation that could lead to them eventually receiving the sacraments. Conservatives led by Africans have held fast to doctrine, insisting that Jesus himself taught that a valid marriage is indissoluble.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think we\u2019re ever going to get consensus on some of these hot-button issues,\u201d Australian Archbishop Mark Coleridge told reporters Monday. \u201cBut was that ever a realistic possibility? I doubt it. The one thing that is certain about next Sunday is that we won\u2019t have finished the task. This journey will continue.\u201d<\/p>\n

Indeed, many participants have spoken about the remarkable freedom they now feel to speak about previously taboo topics \u2014 encouraged by the Jesuit pope to use the Jesuit spiritual exercise to discern what God really wants from them. That has implications for how bishops at home will deal with pastoral issues, listening to their flock more and perhaps being more creative in their ministry than merely reciting doctrine. And it may well trickle down to ordinary Catholics, called upon to discern in their conscience what God wants from them.<\/p>\n

On the first full working day of the synod, Canadian Archbishop Paul-Andre Durocher proposed ordaining women as deacons, to help relieve the priest shortage and give women more roles in the church.<\/p>\n

The proposal hasn\u2019t gone anywhere, but the fact that it was even tabled is indicative of a new atmosphere Francis has ushered in, where bishops can speak in total freedom in the protected synod hall, knowing that journalists are kept at bay and that the pope is the guarantor of the church\u2019s unity.<\/p>\n

And even after the synod ends, Francis may have more surprises up his cassock sleeve. On Dec. 8, he launches his yearlong \u201cJubilee of Mercy,\u201d during which he has already given ordinary priests rather than just bishops the ability to absolve women of the sin of abortion.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have to understand that we are living an ecclesial process of huge dimensions,\u201d the Jesuit Spadaro told Vatican Radio. \u201cSo we shouldn\u2019t be surprised that there are moments of fatigue, of blockage, difficulty and tensions. There\u2019s also the joy that we are creating history together.\u201d<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Follow Nicole Winfield at www.twitter.com\/nwinfield<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

VATICAN CITY \u2014 It\u2019s now quite certain that Pope Francis\u2019 big summit on family issues won\u2019t endorse any changes to church doctrine on the church\u2019s teaching about homosexuality or whether civilly remarried Catholics can receive Communion. And yet, it seems, everything has changed. From the crucial role African bishops have played in the debate, to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[65],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-9082","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-nation-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9082","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9082"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9082\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9082"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=9082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}