A synod on the family in Paul VI’s spirit

The October 6 to 19 Synod on the Family in Rome has ended and contrary to widely reported western media projections that an “earthquake” could be expected from the Church on some controversial moral issues, the final report; and disapprovingly so for these lobbies, indicates as the President of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Archbishop Joseph E. Kurtz of Louisville, Kentucky, posits that the “clarifications and deepening of scriptural and theological reflection shine consistently" in the report.

And providentially, at the end of the synod the beatification of Pope Paul VI, who equally faced a strong and vocal sexual revolution in the 1960s which inspired him to come up with his famed encyclical “Humanae Vitae” or Human Life, reaffirming the Church’s stance on conjugal love, parenthood, and the Church’s stance on contraception, the report simply puts across a strong message that secular forces cannot dictate or determine the Church’s moral precepts.

That there were heated debates and disagreement following an October 13 delivery of a midterm report that used strikingly conciliatory language toward people with ways of life contrary to Church teaching, including divorced and civilly remarried Catholics, cohabitating couples and those in same-sex unions, is no news, but Pope Francis welcomed these disagreements, which the Church’s detractors consider as signs of a divided Church.

"So many commentators, or people who talk, imagined they saw the church quarreling, one part against the other, even doubting the Holy Spirit, the true promoter and guarantor of unity and harmony in the Church," before he concluded that "Personally, I would have been very worried and saddened if there hadn't been these temptations and these animated discussions if everybody had agreed or remained silent in a false and quietistic peace."

The synod may not have found consensus even among the Church’s leading authorities but it also gave her a chance to weigh the verve of the forces she is up against as in Archbishop Joseph E. Kurtz’s words the real work is just beginning and it would be deceptive and ridiculously presumptuous to conclude that the controversial issues have been done and dusted with, no!

Though Pope Francis had instructed participants during the opening session to speak fearlessly, the hidden agenda and manipulative tactics even from some of the Church’s Princes, indicate the desperate and calculated attempts to browbeat the Church into changing her teachings on issues others may not be comfortable with.

But it is a puzzle the so-called progressive liberals cannot understand that the Church cannot change her discipline and not change her teachings. Curiously, this liberal faction in the Church is dominated by Germans who have played a key role in forging the Church’s present teachings on the present controversies and in spreading the Catholic teachings in other parts of the world.

The “earthquake” talk provoked by the midterm report and made worse by a press conference also carefully tailored to promote contentious liberal positions, caused so much outrage and pushed Rev. Fr. Maurice Agbaw Ebai to lash out against the Cardinal Kasper-liberal faction when he argues that the solution to the contemporary faith crisis and “the empty pews in the German Church is not a dilution of Christ’s teaching!

The Lutherans already did that and the pews became emptier. The Church of England did that and more Moslems go to the Mosques on Fridays than Anglicans go to the Church on Sundays in England!,” before he concludes by quoting Pope Francis who once said, “A crisis of faith is met by a robust re-proposal of the joy of the gospel,” which is exactly what a majority of the Synod Fathers have done.

Some western media are trying to extricate Pope Francis from the present synod report giving the impression he did not approve it, but that he ordered the synod report to be published shortly after the synod shows he is part of the final outcome.

The Pope has, however, not failed to speak out against the traditionalists and intellectuals for their “hostile rigidity” and the progressive liberals for what he calls their “destructive do-goodism.” The synod report shows that, like Cardinal George Pell, the Church has struck with Jesus as Pope Paul VI did during the sexual revolution of the 1960 thus reaffirming the Church moral immutability.