What is the point of this world synod of Catholic bishops on the family that is starting in Rome on October 5, a week tomorrow?
Most talk in the papers and in the crabbed and febrile world of the internet has been about whether divorced people who remarry should receive Holy Communion. This matters, because Communion is the symbol and channel of a Christian’s spiritual relations with God. And yet Pope Francis, who, we have learnt, is no friend of laws as a substitute for ideals, says that this is not the point of the synod at all.
The Pope often speaks openly when he shares an aeroplane with journalists, and, on the way back from his pilgrimage to the Holy Land earlier this year, he said: “I have not been happy that so many people ”“ even church people, priests ”“ have said: ‘Ah, the synod will be about giving Communion to the divorced’.” His difficulty was that he “felt everything was being reduced to casuistry”
I’m really not sure what he is worried about since he never actually suggests in his piece what he wants. Mercy? What does he think Mercy is? What Jesus Christ wanted? Adherence to existing doctrine or something new to bring back divorced/remarrieds?
Or does he just want SOMETHING, never mind what that something actually is?