UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter
NCR Editorial Staff | Nov. 7, 2014
EDITORIAL
It is difficult to imagine why any pope would want to engage in the synodal process if it were not to discuss compelling issues of the day. It is equally difficult to imagine a gathering of bishops called to discuss important issues of the day with the expectation that they would not pose difficult questions or generate disagreement among themselves.
Perhaps it is because the Catholic world has come to presume the unreasonable — that discussions can occur with no “dissenting” positions permitted and no forbidden questions allowed — that the most recent phase of the extraordinary Synod of Bishops on the family would cause such strong reactions across the spectrum of expectations.
For more than 30 years and two papacies, Catholics have been conditioned to accept, many grudgingly, that it had become an unalterable fact of life that discussion of certain topics, certain pastoral approaches, certain questions related to contemporary life and, especially, to sexuality were forever forbidden in the community and would surely never occur among church leaders.
And then along came Pope Francis. He said those rules and presumptions no longer apply, that discussion was not to be censored, that no topics or questions were to be off the table. He wanted full, robust debate. The bishops of the world apparently delivered. The debate was worth the effort, if only so that Catholics can understand their leaders actually do disagree on important matters. However, it is essential to keep in mind that it is still a discussion among a tiny sampling of humanity, removed from the ordinary circumstances of life, and exclusively male and celibate.
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