‘Living in sin’ allegation unhelpful, says Vatican

Bishop's gathered in Rome for a landmark meeting on the Church’s approach to families have heard calls for terms like ‘living in sin’ and ‘contraceptive mentality’ to be side-lined.

However, the Synod of Bishops, which is discussing pastoral challenges facing the family, has heard calls for the Church’s core teaching on controversial to remain unchanged.

Fr Thomas Rosica, a Vatican spokesman said that many bishops felt that using terms like ‘living in sin’ to refer to cohabiting couples, ‘intrinsically disordered’ to refer to gay people and applying the term ‘contraceptive mentality’ to couples using contraception was “unhelpful”.

While the synod takes place behind closed doors, Fr Rosica, said there was a lot of discussion about the need for the Church to change language around issues facing the family.

Disagree

Pope Francis is presiding at the two-week meeting which is scheduled to run until October 19. In his opening address, the Pontiff told members – including Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin – that they must speak freely and not be afraid to disagree with one another or the Pope.

Fr Rosica said that, while there were calls for the Church’s teaching to be better explained and better applied, the synod did not hear calls to change the Church’s teaching on controversial issues.

Cardinal Peter Erdo who, as the synod’s relator, has the task of guiding the discussion and synthesising its results, said the bishops would seek to develop shared pastoral “guidelines to help those living in difficult situations,” so that individual bishops would not resort to the “improvisations of a do-it-yourself ministry.”

“What is being discussed at this synod of an intense pastoral nature are not doctrinal issues, but the practical ones, nevertheless inseparable from the truths of the faith,” the cardinal said.

Among the difficult family situations he identified was that of divorced and civilly remarried Catholics, whose predicament Pope Francis has said exemplifies a general need for mercy in the Church today.

The October 5-19 synod is not supposed to reach definitive conclusions but set the agenda for a larger world synod in October 2015, which will make recommendations to the Pope.