Under Francis, Catholic Leaders Prepare to Debate Whether Church Should Change

[rug]

By JIM YARDLEY
OCT. 3, 2014

ROME — From the outset of his papacy, Pope Francis has encouraged a robust and open debate over the contentious social issues that have long sundered the Roman Catholic Church. Now, with a critical meeting on the theme of family about to begin at the Vatican, he is seemingly getting what he wanted: a charged atmosphere with cardinals jousting over how and whether the church should change.

Conservatives, in particular, are trying to stop any prospects for allowing divorced and remarried Catholics to receive the sacrament of holy communion. A group of powerful conservative cardinals has released a handful of books — timed to coincide with the opening of the Vatican meeting on Sunday — that are fashioned as rebuttals to such proposals but that some analysts see as thinly veiled swipes at Francis.

“The conservatives have already mobilized,” said Marco Politi, a longtime Vatican analyst and the author of a new book, “Francis Among the Wolves.” “Now it is up to the reformers to come out.”

For Francis, the two-week gathering is the beginning of a yearlong process that could determine what sort of changes he will, or will not, bring to the church’s approach to social issues such as divorce, gay civil unions or single parents. The meeting, known as an Extraordinary Synod, is an open forum at which 191 bishops, cardinals and other church leaders are expected to debate these and other issues, and to set the agenda for a final, decisive synod next October.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/04/world/europe/under-francis-catholic-leaders-prepare-to-debate-whether-church-should-change.html?_r=0

[Fortinbras Armstrong]

1. WRT Communion for the divorced and remarried

I have said repeatedly that the Eucharist is not a reward for being good, but rather our spiritual food. To deny it to those who might be in need is unchristian. I was re-reading Pope Francis' Evangelii Gaudium, and discovered section 47

47. The Church is called to be the house of the Father, with doors always wide open. One concrete sign of such openness is that our church doors should always be open, so that if someone, moved by the Spirit, comes there looking for God, he or she will not find a closed door. There are other doors that should not be closed either. Everyone can share in some way in the life of the Church; everyone can be part of the community, nor should the doors of the sacraments be closed for simply any reason. This is especially true of the sacrament which is itself “the door”: baptism. The Eucharist, although it is the fullness of sacramental life, is not a prize for the perfect but a powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak.<51> These convictions have pastoral consequences that we are called to consider with prudence and boldness. Frequently, we act as arbiters of grace rather than its facilitators. But the Church is not a tollhouse; it is the house of the Father, where there is a place for everyone, with all their problems.

Here is footnote 51

Cf. Saint Ambrose, De Sacramentis, IV, 6, 28: PL 16, 464: “I must receive it always, so that it may always forgive my sins. If I sin continually, I must always have a remedy”; ID., op. cit., IV, 5, 24: PL 16, 463: “Those who ate manna died; those who eat this body will obtain the forgiveness of their sins”; Saint Cyril of Alexandria, In Joh. Evang., IV, 2: PG 73, 584-585: “I examined myself and I found myself unworthy. To those who speak thus I say: when will you be worthy? When at last you present yourself before Christ? And if your sins prevent you from drawing nigh, and you never cease to fall – for, as the Psalm says, ‘what man knows his faults?’ – will you remain without partaking of the sanctification that gives life for eternity?”

Clearly, Pope Francis agrees with me.

[okasha]

2. That makes it pretty clear where Francis stands.

And he's got the people behind him.

The hierarchy can lead, follow or get out of the way.