October 2014
LESSONS LEARNED FROM THE SYNOD
10 14 , 00:17 Filed in: News
Written by Thomas Mulcahy, a practicing Catholic, holds a Master's Degree in Religious Studies
The recently concluded Synod on the Family ultimately concludes in Rome next year, and only the document approved by the Pope then will carry real weight. The release of the draft "Relatio" this year under suspicious circumstances reminds us that there were people in the Church willing to rush the draft Relatio to publication in order to further their own agenda. The next thing I know my daughter is getting a Facebook post from a relative claiming the Church has changed its teaching on homosexuality! We cannot trust the press; we cannot trust non-official, preliminary documents. Ultimately, the Bishops rolled back the controversial language in the original Relatio to incorporate traditional Catholic teaching in the final, voted on Relatio.
Now if the Church intended to change its teachings on sexual morality – which it cannot do – it would have been ludicrous to beatify Pope Paul VI at the end of the Synod, for his encyclical on artificial contraception, Humanae Vitae, is the very touchstone of Catholic Sexual morality.
The lesson to be learned is that crazy things may happen in Church Synods (think of all the contention at Vatican II), and yet we can firmly rely on the Successor of Peter to protect the Church from error – this based on the promise of Jesus (Matt. 16).