“Ever since the Holy Father announced his intention to host an Extraordinary Synod on the Family, speculation has run rampant that the Church is about to make some fundamental modification to its teaching on marriage,” said COLF director Michele Boulva. “It seems that wishful thinking has fueled this speculation.”
Boulva acknowledged “there is a huge disconnect between the Church’s vision of marriage — based on God’s plan for human love — and the lived experience of countless Catholics the world over.”
“It does not, however, follow that the Church will or should change her teaching.”
Boulva spoke in advance of COLF’s annual seminar March 20-21 in Quebec City. The seminar’s theme, “The Christian Family witnessing to hope,” comes against a backdrop of news reports including Pope Francis’ recent interview with an Italian newspaper that led to speculation he may not oppose gay civil unions and other stories about a push to change the Church’s teaching concerning communion for divorced and remarried Catholics.
In the run-up to the Synod, bishops’ conferences around the world were asked to respond to a questionnaire concerning how ordinary Catholics perceive the teachings of the Church on such topics as marriage, contraception and natural law. The Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, like most other bishops’ conferences, kept its report on the consultation confidential. But several, including the German bishops’ conference, published theirs, revealing a wide gap between the Church’s teachings on marriage and human sexuality and what Catholic respondents actually believe.
Redeemer Pacific College president Christine Jones, who was to present her talk “The Christian Family as a building of a culture of life” at the seminar, has been following the wider debate. She said she senses in the pontiff a “genuine desire to go deeper into the Church’s teaching on the family, to show its beauty,” but predicts the Church will not change its teaching on issues such as communion for divorced and remarried Catholics.
“They won’t be admitted to communion even though there has been some debate among cardinals,” she said. “The Church is bound by the teachings of Christ.”
Sacramental marriage is a “sign of the perfect unity between Christ and the Church,” she said.
“Because all sacraments have a public meaning, in a sense, as signs, the couple who doesn’t live this can’t be this public sign in the same way.”
Yet Jones said much more needs to be done to accompany couples “on their journey” in love, to help those who may be “locked into situations,” she said. “It’s not that these people are less in the eyes of the Church.”
Boulva acknowledged many who desire change in the Church’s teaching have “experienced real pain” on this and other moral issues.
“It is equally likely, however, that they have never been empowered to live the demands of the Gospel; demands that, apart from the empowerment that an authentic relationship with Christ offers, are experienced as intolerably burdensome,” she said. “Surely that is what the New Evangelization is all about: announcing again that Jesus Christ is Lord and providing people with the opportunity for a life-changing, life-empowering encounter with Him.”
Jones noted that instead of changing the Church’s teaching because people don’t understand it, “we should explain it much better than we do.”
Gillian Roussy of the Canadian branch of the International Federation for Family Development was to talk at the seminar on “Christian families: witnessing to hope in the formation of children.”
Roussy is not concerned about the Church “suddenly changing her position” on issues of faith and morals, though she is “concerned about society’s disdain for the Church in general.”
She believes many urging change have not actually studied what the Church teaches.
“A lot of people don’t understand natural law applies to everyone. It’s part of our human nature.”