Final Report of Synod – English translation
The final document of the Synod of Bishops on the family has, at last, been translated into English and posted to the Vatican’s website.
We carry a copy for your information Click Here
The final document of the Synod of Bishops on the family has, at last, been translated into English and posted to the Vatican’s website.
We carry a copy for your information Click Here
Brendan Hoban in his Western People column questions the commitment of the leadership of the Irish Church to follow Pope Francis on the issue of family.
“Ireland will be represented at the synod in Rome by an archbishop and a nun. In a way no more needs to be said about the response of the Irish Church. While both may well be up to speed on the realities of marriage and family life in Ireland today, neither is married or has children so the signals are all wrong. Isn’t it inexpressibly sad for our Church that there was in Ireland no one the Irish bishops could find to trust who was married and had children?”
For your information we publish the New Synod questionnaire on family issues published by the Vatican. It requests episcopal conferences to choose a suitable manner of involving all components of the particular churches and academic institutions, organizations, lay movements and other ecclesial associations.
Mark de Vries in his blog ‘In Caelo et in Terra’ comments on and provides a translation of the third commentary of the German language bishops’ group at the Synod.
Perhaps we can all learn from the German speaking bishops when they ask for forgiveness;
“Here, a confession was important to us: wrongly understood efforts to uphold the Church’s teachings time and again led to hard and merciless attitudes, which hurt people, especially single mothers and children born out of wedlock, people living together before or in place of marriage, homosexually oriented people and divorced and remarried people. As bishops of our Church we ask these people for forgiveness.”
An Invitation to come to Rome 02 – 05 October 2014 to ensure that families are recognized, included, and listened to by the Bishops attending the Synod in Rome.
Carol Glatz, Catholic News Service, reporting in www.cruznow.com writes about the call made by a Canadian bishop for women deacons.
The issue of the role of women in our church is not going away, and won’t, no matter how many attempts are made to suppress and close down dialogue and debate.
St. John Paul II called for “no more degradation of women” in the world in “Familiaris Consortio”, 1981.
But there is a credibility issue for us with huge numbers of people, in making such calls, when women are still excluded from ordained ministry and from real decision making roles.
Ordaining women as deacons would be seen by many as a very tentative first step in righting a wrong.
Press Release by the Association of Catholics in Ireland concerning the forthcoming Synod on Family .
” a synod without the significant involvement of married laity will lack authority.”
Nurse
(for C)
by
Michael Maginn
Not by her own choosing
My friend is married outside the Church
Her abusive marriage of twenty years still stands.
Leaving her in the lurch.
Ministering to the Body of Christ
During her working week,
But never on a Sunday,
Teaching hard as teak.
Denied access,
Christ’s body out of reach
Until she returns to her hospital ward,
Is what we hold and teach.
Cleaning, gently tending
The Body of Christ once more,
But not receiving it into her own,
Pains her to the core.
Lord,
How can this be right?
People in a second marriage, entered into outside the Church, are technically denied access to the Body of Christ in Holy Communion. Some had hoped that the recent Synod on the Family, convened by Pope Francis (October 2014), might sanction a more pastoral application of Canon Law in these difficult and sensitive areas of Church life. The Mid-Synod Summary Report raised hopes. Now we wait and pray.
An aspect of dialogue which might interest some of your readers.
http://dominusvobiscuit.blogspot.ie/2014/10/beating-odds.html
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Bishop Patricia spoke from St. Mary’s altar to an enthusiastic audience.
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Thanks Pol,
Pat Storey sounds like a breath of fresh air, a chink of light into dusty, cob-webbed institutions, theological tomes, age old doctrines and teachings all of it based on male thought, psychology, spirituality, and all of it fast becoming irrelevant and obsolete, in people’s lives.
If you say so, again and again, Nuala!
But don’t be so sure that Bishop Pat Storey would readily agree with your total rubbishing of all that has gone before. Repeated trashing of those “age-old” male institutions, “theological tomes” etc etc etc, is itself fast becoming cobwebby, irrelevant, obsolete, all of it based on dusty, tired, clichéd faux-feminist (lack of) thought. For God’s sake, give us poor males an occasional break!