“Fifty-seven years ago, I looked across a room and saw a beautiful young woman. We came to know each other over time and eventually took the huge step of committing ourselves to each other in marriage. We soon found that living our new life together was extraordinarily complex. Like all marriages, we have had wonderful times together and also times of anger, frustration and tears and the nagging fear of a failed marriage. Yet here we are, 55 years married and still in love. It certainly is a mystery.”
If anyone had any doubts about the unusual nature of the current Synod of Bishops in the Vatican, it requires only the above contribution from Australian couple, Ron and Mavis Pirola, on the opening day to make the point.
The Pirolas are one of a small number of Catholic couples who have offered their response to the basic question put by the Synod, namely: The Pastoral Challenges Facing The Family In The Context Of Evangelisation.
The Pirolas admit that “the complexities of parenting” would sometimes leave them lying awake at night “wondering where we had gone wrong”. Given their “faith in Jesus”, they looked to the Church for guidance, but the Church response seemed “to be from another planet with difficult language and not terribly relevant to our own experiences.”
Encouraged by Pope Francis, this Synod may well be a genuine attempt to find a less difficult language and, as the Pope puts it, "to grasp the signs of the times".
In his remarks at the first Synod session, the Pope certainly urged the bishops to speak their minds “freely and frankly”, saying: “There is one basic ground rule here – speak clearly. Let no one say, ‘oh I couldn’t say that, whatever would they think of me’. People should say whatever they feel . . . after the last Concistory (meeting of Cardinals) in February when we spoke about the family, one Cardinal wrote to me to tell me that it was a pity that certain Cardinals had not had the courage to say certain things out of respect for the Pope, because they felt the Pope thought differently. That is not good, that is not ‘synodality’, because we must say everything which, in the Lord, we feel we have to say.”
Later, at a Vatican Press Conference, one of the Synod fathers, the Archbishop of Paris, Cardinal Andre Vingt-Trois, gently downplayed any media notion that the free and frank discussion urged by the Pope will lead to tensions and conflicts between the Cardinals as they confront issues such as marriage annulment, contraception, same sex unions, homosexuality, single mothers and much else besides.
Asked specifically about the public pre-Synod disagreements amongst Cardinals in relation to the ban on communion for divorced Catholics, Cardinal Vingt-Trois said: “At the risk of disappointing you, I don’t understand where you see the conflict . . . If Cardinals from different countries with different ideas and theologies were not able to get together (to debate issues) . . . you might just as well wait for the Vatican to issue a daily bulletin . . . The fact that we are free to express different ideas does not mean that we are in conflict.”