Synod Day 5 – Openness that Deceives?

The Catholic Thing ^ | 10/10/14 | Robert Royal

[marshmallow]

The preparatory Synod that completes its first week of work today is something of a paradox. Previous Synods have actually released formal remarks as they were given, day by day. Reporters were able to sit in on the – often enough, quite boring – daily sessions. This one offers only one-page “summaries,” usually for two sessions per day, which largely relate uncontroversial generalities and don’t identify which speakers make the key points. (You can read yesterday’s here.). And yet the current event is being characterized as more “open.”

It’s worth contemplating, in a fresh way, what “open” discussion in the Church actually means, in practice, these days. St. John Paul II created the Pontifical Council for the Family in 1981, but none of its deliberations in the thirty-plus years that followed raised doubts about Catholic teaching – let alone descended into rippling anxieties (what the White House, in a different context, has colorfully called “bed-wetting”) over the difficult situations people get themselves into when marriage goes bad.

In past synods, too, there was plenty of talk of mercy and forgiveness, though to judge by the amazed look on certain observers’ faces, this is all but forgotten now. In those events, however, there wasn’t the belief that some magic elvish rune might be found to make intractable conflicts between teaching and life simply go away. Today, talk of mercy and forgiveness sends out a very different signal. Though the Church may actually be one of the few places where a deep reason is still valued on these hard questions, the world does not read such deliberations as orderly, rational inquiry, but as an expression of doubt. And perhaps surrender.

You can Google almost any set of search terms on the current Synod and what will you find? Not much, really..........