Archbishop Paul Cremona (right) with bishops Mario Grech (left) and Charles Scicluna. Photo: Darrin Zammit LupiArchbishop Paul Cremona (right) with bishops Mario Grech (left) and Charles Scicluna. Photo: Darrin Zammit Lupi

Whether you are married, divorced or in a same-sex union the Church wants to hear from you and will be issuing a detailed questionnaire in the coming days.

In an unprecedented move, the Vatican has embarked on gauging the pastoral challenges the family faces in the context of evangelisation by releasing a worldwide questionnaire ahead of its synod in October 2014.

The Church in Malta is no exception. Gozo Bishop Mario Grech, president of the Episcopal Conference, said an action plan had just been drawn up with Discern, the research institute, for the questionnaires to be distributed to “all the people of goodwill”.

Apart from targeting the Church’s consultative groups at every level, Discern director Joe Inguanez said the questionnaires would also be distributed through newspapers and be available online to seek input from lay Catholics.

In the coming week his team will be reformulating the questions to simplify them before embarking on the mammoth task of then distributing the questionnaire and collecting all the replies by the end of December. Once these are collated the Synod of Bishops in Rome has to receive all the countries’ replies by the end of January.

This is a very important sign of the times, we need to rediscover the beauty of being Church; we are all Church together

The document, released together with the questionnaire, spells out in a frank manner the daunting challenges facing the family in today’s society.

It highlights the urgency for the Church to address these challenges and poses deep questions about pastoral care in difficult marital situations, the education of children in irregular marriages and same-sex unions, among others.

“This is the process where we can hear what Catholics have to say and clearly shows the Church has a pulse on reality. The themes are not new to us pastorally and we need to give an evangelical reply,” Mgr Grech said, welcoming this move.

Asked if the Church was opening a Pandora’s Box by asking questions it did not necessarily wish to hear the answer to, Mgr Grech said he felt there was no experience good or bad that should be swept under the carpet.

“The teachings of the Church need to be further clarified in the light of experiences and faith. It would be suicidal if we said we had all the answers,” he said. Mgr Grech elaborated on the continual process every human being and the Church had to embark on to uncover the truth and explore today’s realities.

Auxiliary Bishop Charles Scicluna felt that tapping into these realities by going directly to the people was a very important development in the experience of synods organised by the Church.

“The true meaning of a synod is walking together; a pilgrimage that engages every one of us as a family, as a community.

“This questionnaire will bring people’s experiences to the synod; it is a concrete way to tell the community that the Pope wants to listen to the situation Catholics across the world are facing in their local churches.”

The Pope wanted 2014 to be a stocktaking exercise by engaging the community in a very proactive way, Mgr Scicluna said, adding this would be followed by a year of reflection on what pastoral initiatives should be adopted for discussion in the 2015 synod.

The Church, he insisted, would never be served by avoiding the pertinent questions staring it in the face and it was important to face the challenges and work out a response.

Asked if this exercise, while refreshing, would raise expectations among the lay faithful, Mgr Scicluna said he believed these expectations were legitimate.

“It is high time that the lay faithful feel it is not only the Church that belongs to them but also the challenges; that they are not only a part of the problem, but also a part of the response, if not to say the solution,” he said.

“This is a very important sign of the times, we need to rediscover the beauty of being Church; we are all Church together,” Mgr Scicluna said.

On the other hand, Fr Joe Borg, columnist and University lecturer, was cautiously hopeful about this “almost universal” poll on the opinion of Catholics on myriad topics including contraception, same-sex marriage and divorce.

He questioned whether there was a risk that this could just be a repetition of previous practice of pre-synod consultation with Episcopal conferences, with a little tweaking to secure wider consultation. “The answer to these questions would help us assess the importance or otherwise of this questionnaire,” he said.

Fr Borg referred to the moment when Archbishop Lorenzo Baldisseri, general secretary of the Vatican’s Synod of Bishops, recently asked the bishops’ conferences to distribute the questionnaire “immediately as widely as possible to deaneries and parishes so that input from local sources can be received”.

This immediately gave rise to media reports leading people to believe this was an unprecedented action.

Some even got the impression that the Church would now adopt a doctrine-by-polls system; another in the series of firsts by Pope Francis, Fr Borg said, adding that the Vatican’s spokesman immediately dispelled such ideas.

He felt a recent incident should be an eye-opener – the Archdiocese of Freiburg in Germany published guidelines saying a divorced and remarried Catholic could come to a “responsibly reached decision of conscience” to receive Holy Communion.

However, Archbishop Gerhard Ludwig Müller, head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, asked the archdiocese to withdraw these guidelines.

“A lot of hype was unfortunately created and this could easily lead to a lot of disappointment and frustration,” Fr Borg said.

“On the other hand, one should not go to the other extreme and think that the extraordinary synod on the family will not come up with credible and worthwhile results – I am cautiously optimistic.”

Challenges facing the family in today’s society

The social and spiritual crisis, so evident in today’s world, is becoming a pastoral challenge in the Church’s evangelising mission concerning the family, the vital building block of society and the ecclesial community.

The document recognises that never before has proclaiming the Gospel on the family in this context been more urgent and necessary. The many new situations requiring the Church’s attention and pastoral care include:

• Mixed or inter-religious marriages.

• Single-parent family.

• Polygamy.

• Marriages with the consequent problem of a dowry, sometimes understood as the purchase price of the woman.

• A culture of non-commitment and a presumption that the marriage bond can be temporary.

• Forms of feminism hostile to the Church.

• Migration and the reformulation of the very concept of the family.

• The influence of the media on popular culture in its understanding of marriage and family life.

• Underlying trends of thought in legislative proposals which devalue the idea of permanence and faithfulness in the marriage covenant.

• An increase in the practice of surrogate motherhood (wombs for hire).

• New interpretations of what is considered a human right.

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