Pope Francis Opens Vatican Meeting on the Family

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/06/world/europe/pope-francis-vatican-synod.html

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VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis told bishops gathered at the Vatican for a meeting on the family on Monday to dismiss personal “conventions and prejudices” and remain open to different opinions.

They should allow themselves to be guided by God, the pope said, “who always surprises.”

In his opening address to a three-week council on how the Roman Catholic Church can best address the needs of contemporary families, the pope said the synod was a moment of self-reflection for the church, “to read reality with the eyes of faith and with the heart of God.”

The gathering of more than 300 prelates and lay experts is expected to produce a lively debate, even as a synod official suggested Monday that one contentious issue — allowing remarried Catholics who had not had their first marriages annulled in order to receive communion — was off the table.

The official, Cardinal Peter Erdo of Hungary, a top synod organizer, said the ban had support among prelates, reiterating existing church teaching that people who were remarried without an annulment can already take part in the ecclesiastical community, “in various forms, without admission to the eucharist.”

Cardinal André Vingt-Trois, the archbishop of Paris, told reporters on Monday that those “thinking there will be a radical change in doctrine” on family issues “will be disappointed.”

Archbishop Bruno Forte, one of the synod’s secretaries, said that nonetheless, the synod would continue to search for pastoral responses to the challenges presented by modern family configurations.

“We must look at the doctrine of the church and see how we can be pastors for all these different situations, that’s really what’s at stake,” he said.

Francis set the wheels in motion forthe synod soon after his election as pope in March 2013, concerned by the social, cultural, judicial and economic factors that have been wearing away at the institution of marriage.

The goal of the meeting is to make the family central to pastoral care “in a moment when it is in crisis, with an increase in cohabitation and fewer marriages,” Archbishop Forte told reporters on Monday.

Though the Instrumentum Laboris, the working paper of the synod, amply addresses these issues, attention has focused on how the church should deal with homosexuals and Catholics who remarry without annulments.

Church traditionalists believe that the synod must reaffirm the church’s teachings on the indissolubility of marriage and on homosexuality as a sin if acted upon. Progressives hope that the church will adopt a more inclusive stance, one that would bring back to the fold many Catholics who feel alienated from church teachings.

In his keynote speech on Monday, Cardinal Erdo indicated that the church’s teaching on communion for those who remarry without an annulment — which is banned unless they abstain from sex — was not going to change. Marriage is indissoluble, as Jesus himself taught, he said.

“God’s mercy offers the sinner forgiveness, but it requires conversion,” he said. “It is not the failing of the first marriage but the living in a second relationship that impedes access to the eucharist,” he said.

At a news conference later in the day, Cardinal Erdo noted that over the last year, the synod’s secretariat had received many endorsements from prelates worldwide for current church teaching.

In any case, he said: “Let’s wait. The synod begins now. We don’t have the answers to all the questions.”

Archbishop Forte said the pope had encouraged the synod participants to “have the freedom to say what they wanted to,” encouraging debate.

“This synod did not meet to say nothing,” he said. Even if doctrine does not change, the church must find new ways to approach issues “to allow the church to keep abreast of the times.”

He added, “Situations change and the church can’t be insensitive to these challenges.”