Catholic bishops failed to back a more open stance by the Vatican on homosexuality and divorce, in a vote that dealt a blow to hopes that Pope Francis will deliver a big shift away from the church’s rigid tone on contentious social issues.
At the end of a two-week meeting, or synod, that had been compared to the Second Vatican Council of the late 1960s for its potential to modernise Catholicism, bishops failed to approve language in the final report saying “people with homosexual tendencies must be welcomed with respect and delicacy”.
The rebuke was significant because the wording on gays had been significantly toned down in recent days, after conservative Catholic bishops rebelled at even more conciliatory language in an interim report issued last week. The prior report declared that “homosexuals have gifts and qualities to offer to the Christian community”.
Most bishops were still in favour of the revised section on gays, by a margin of 118 to 62, but this fell short of the two-thirds majority needed for approval as the will of the entire synod. Other disputed portions of the final report – chiefly one opening the door for the divorced and remarried to take communion – also failed to reach that threshold.
The vote – which followed two weeks of heated debate and attacks between conservative and progressive cardinals – highlights the challenges facing Pope Francis as he tries to set a new course that is closer to the lives of ordinary Catholics in the twenty first century and less stuck to its inflexible official doctrine.
The reformist Argentine pontiff, who was elected to the helm of Catholicism last year, gave a short speech at the end of the synod, saying he would have been “worried and saddened” if there hadn’t been such “animated discussions and movement of spirits”.
At the same time, Francis warned the conservative wing of the Church against “hostile rigidity”, or shuttering itself inside the “letter” without allowing itself to be “surprised by God”. He also warned progressives against “treating symptoms instead of the causes and the roots”, in a sign of the fine line he is treading to avoid an even bigger split in the Vatican hierarchy.
Saturday’s vote does not mark the end of the debate on family in the Vatican, but sets the stage for a new synod to be held a year from now, which will be even more crucial in determining whether the Catholic Church will change its attitude towards many key issues. At the end of next year’s gathering, Pope Francis will have to reach his own conclusions and set guidelines for priests across the world.
The synod was never expected to change the Vatican’s doctrine opposing gay marriage or the ban on communion for divorced and remarried faithful. But reformers had framed it as a chance for more “mercy” to be introduced in a less punitive relationship between the Catholic church and its followers – and Pope Francis had delivered strong hints of support for such a shift.
However, the backlash from the conservative wing of the Vatican was powerful this week, slowing down any steps in that direction. “We are not giving in to the secular agenda,” George Pell, an Australian cardinal, said in an interview with Catholic News Service last week. “We are not collapsing in a heap. We are not following those radical elements . . . and going out of business.”
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2014. You may share using our article tools.
Please don't cut articles from FT.com and redistribute by email or post to the web.
No comments:
Post a Comment