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?<\/p>\n
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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
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: \u201cI have not been happy that so many people \u201d\u201c even church people, priests \u201d\u201c have said: ‘Ah, the synod will be about giving Communion to the divorced\u2019.\u201d\u009d His difficulty was that he \u201cfelt everything was being reduced to casuistry\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n