'We must lend our ears to the beat of this era and detect the scent of people today, so as to be permeated by their joys and hopes, by their sadness and distress, at which time we will know how to propose the good news of the family with credibility." – Pope Francis
In welcoming delegates and observers to the first synod of his pontificate, Pope Francis spoke on Sunday in Rome’s St Peter’s Basilica of both their challenge first and foremost to listen to the faithful and understand their experience, and of the need for humility and sensitivity in the priesthood. In a severe rebuke to clericalism he warned of “evil pastors [who] lay intolerable burdens on the shoulders of others, which they themselves do not lift a finger to move”... “God’s dream always clashes with the hypocrisy of some of his servants.”
That the context is a two-week meeting to address the theme of “the pastoral challenges of the family in the context of evangelisation” has encouraged many Catholics to believe that the Pope’s listening exercise is going to lead to a reappraisal of church teaching in such areas as contraception, the remarrying of the divorced, sex outside marriage, gay marriage, and perhaps even abortion. The papal injunction ahead of the synod to the 191 cardinals, archbishop and bishops, 61 experts, fraternal delegates from other churches and lay speakers was to consult “as widely as possible”.
Importantly they will also take note of evidence of widespread disillusionment of Catholics with traditional teaching, like last year’s survey of more than 12,000 Catholics from 12 countries in five continents which found that 78 per cent favour the use of condoms, 50 per cent approve of priests marrying, and 58 per cent disagree with the ban on divorcees and remarried couples receiving communion.
The sense of expectation and of much being at stake has been fuelled by the sight of theological battlelines being drawn in advance between church reformers like Germany's Cardinal Walter Kaspar and conservative cardinals like the Australian George Pell, the German Ludwig Muller and the American Raymond Burkewho produced an eve of synod book, Remaining In The Truth Of Christ.
The central thrust of the summit, however, is not so much the great theological orthodoxies, and whether or not to call them into question, but the challenge these pose to evangelisation, and notably to convincing believers to live a Christian life. If the faithful insist increasingly on living a life outside the teachings of the church while remaining within it, can the latter produce a new elaboration of those elements that are truly crucial, and a sidelining or deprioritisation of others that are more disharmonious to the “beat of the era”? And without taking on or demolishing the old truths? It is a path that reforming Pope Francis seems to want to tread that may be able to reconcile the church’s conserative and liberal wings. The first step is to show that he is listening. That is above all the synod’s role.