The Catholic Church in Ireland was moving from a rigorous tradition to one that is more lax, the Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin said in Rome today.
He was also critical of the slow pace of annulment procedures in the Irish Church.
Archbishop Martin represents the Irish Episcopal Conference at the extraordinary synod of bishops currently underway in Rome.
Speaking in the Holy See press office at a media briefing on synod discussions, he remarked how Pope Francis in his interview with Italian Jesuit magazine La Civilta Cattolica had spoken about "rigorism and laxism and we have both in the church".
The Archbishop said: “We come in my country from a very rigorist tradition. Maybe we’re moving into a laxist tradition. But most people live their lives in the grey area between those two and we have to exercise our pastoral responsibilities in the grey area not falling into either extreme. That again is something I think we have to learn.”
Where annulments were concerned he said current procedures were “certainly difficult”.
“They sometimes end up in long delays and even in a fairly developed country with canonical expertise, in my country, they are too slow because it is so difficult to get teams of judges and experts and so on together to carry out investigations.”
On annulments in general he observed that culture had changed.
“There’s been an anthropological change and therefore many of the concepts of our understanding of marriage, permanence, fidelity, they have changed and people’s understanding of them has changed.
They may enter into a marriage but not into the real anthropology. And secondly there is the theological or faith dimension. As to people who enter into a sacramental marriage without any real understanding of the faith dimension. It’s not an easy one to find an answer to.”
There was also “a move away from simply an understanding of the church’s teaching on marriage as being something that is taught to people”, the Archbishop said.
A greater understanding of the fact that “the couple who are married sacramentally develop an ecclesial status”.
The church had to find a way in which “the lived experience of this ecclesial reality of marriage” was something it “learns from rather than simply tries to carry out an external survey on”.
All at the synod agreed on the indissolubility of marriage, he said, with one participant telling Pope Francis directly: “You can’t change it. This is something that belongs to revelation.”
The issue of child sexual abuse emerged “in passing” during synod discussion, “but there has been no specific debate on that question,” he said.
Some theological debates at the synod had been going on for years Dr Martin said he did not think this synod would bring them to a conclusion.
"But this synod can't simply repeat what was said 20 years ago. It has to find new language to show there can be development of doctrine, that there has been a willingness to listen to the questionnaire that went out (from the Vatican last November) and what was said in the synod itself."
The atmosphere was “very, very relaxed”.
Pope Francis at the very beginning had said he didn’t want “anyone going away feeling they couldn’t speak their mind and I believe bishops have done that. Some have done it with great clarity, with strength”.
Pope Francis had been present except for the day of the Wednesday general audience.
“ He arrives very early...and you can see the interaction he has himself also contributes very much to the relaxed atmosphere,” he said.
