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
Massimo Faggioli reports on the outcome of the synod in http://www.globalpulsemagazine.com/news/life-begins-at-50/2070
“Yet the final document, which received the quorum of the two thirds for all its paragraphs, is more cautious than the text of 2014.
It is also silent on some important issues, namely the attitude of the Church towards gay people (except a weak passage on families with gay members).”
“But in this sense the final relatio of 2015 is a document that gives us a picture of the Church – more accurately, of its bishops – that is closer to reality,”
“The Synod also showed that much of the Catholic debate today is the expression of a debate between American bishops. The fact that they disagreed in public … is in itself surprising. It is the symptom of the extremism and sectarianism of some … but also the sign of Francis’ breakthrough in the American Catholic hierarchy.”
“The Synod’s final document is important, but it says less about the future direction of the Church than Francis’ great speeches of October 17 (a new ecclesiological framework for a synodal Church) and October 24 (against the ideologues in the Church). This is why the Synod of 2015 will disappoint some liberals, but it is clearly a victory for Francis.”
Gerard Moloney gives his vision of church in his own blog
https://gerardmoloney.wordpress.com/author/gerardmoloney/
Gerard says it exists for many but we need those in authority to institute changes that will make it all real and give us a church that is fit for purpose.
To provide ACI members and supporters with an alternative approach to the consultation process the ACI Steering Group is organising an ‘Open Forum’ on the Family’ in the Regency Hotel in Dublin on Saturday, 21 March, 2015.
The ACP Leadership Team welcome the publication by the Irish Bishops of a summary of the responses they received to the Synod survey, and note the similarity with the results produced by a similar survey on this website: all reveal a gap between church teaching and practice.
Brendan Hoban writing in the Western People wonders if marriage really only means what we want it to mean. Brendan says ‘The Catholic Church, it could be argued, has a similar problem. It makes a distinction between two kinds of marriage: ‘sacramental’ and ‘natural’.
However this ‘may be an important one to remember when the October Synod reassembles in Rome. In short, marriage doesn’t have to be sacramental to be accepted by the Catholic Church.’
Joshua J. McElwee, NCR Vatican correspondent, reports on the German language group report from the Synod.
The group, which includes Cardinals Walter Kasper and Gerhard Muller, says in their report “The mercy of God reveals to us in this way the reason and the entire purpose of the work of salvation. The justice of God is His mercy, with which He justifies us.”
Joshua J. McElwee says that as a consequence of this understanding of salvation, the German speaking group write, “there cannot be one universal principle that accounts for all particular situations.”
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
.
Bishop Patricia spoke from St. Mary’s altar to an enthusiastic audience.
.
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!