Last weekend Cardinal Peter Erdo and his staff could not enjoy the good Italian food and wine that Roman restaurants are renowned for. They burned their candles throughout the night to prepare for yesterday’s meeting of the Synod the document technically called relatio post disceptationem. This five thousand or so words they scripted are a synthesis of the first week of the Synod’s discussions. They will serve as the working paper that will guide the workshops that the Synod’s participants will participate in during this week. This is a work in progress and not a final document.

The document presents effectively the traditional doctrine in a new garb or a new language, as the Synod’s fathers asked for. I waited for the media reports about the document, the blogs and the comments people post under these reports and blogs. The document, as was to be expected, ignited both enthusiastic and critical reactions. Some were intelligent comments, though coming from opposite positions. Others were thouroughly superficial, a clear sign that those who wrote the comments had not even read well the media reports, some of which were ill informed and biased.  

Some said that the Synod is all for gay marriages or that the church is revising its policies or that it has surrendered its values or diluted its doctrines, or opened its arms wide open to lost sheep or is betraying Catholic traditions. Some said that this is a pastoral earthquake while others opined that the end of orthodoxy could be near. Some opened bottles of champagne while others spit and looked the other way.

Look at the documents take on homosexual relations, for example.

The position of the Church is as it was: “unions between people of the same sex cannot be considered on the same footing as matrimony between man and woman.” The document also adds that there are “moral problems connected to homosexual unions.”

However the document refrains from using the traditional phrases of ‘intrinsic evil” and ‘disordered’. On the contrary it adds that they [people in such relationships] “have gifts and qualities to offer to the Christian community.”

It adds:

“…  it has to be noted that there are cases in which mutual aid to the point of sacrifice constitutes a precious support in the life of the partners. Furthermore, the Church pays special attention to the children who live with couples of the same sex, emphasizing that the needs and rights of the little ones must always be given priority.”

Principles are stated clearly but persons are treated with dignity.

This is not the language spoken by all participants in the Synod. Ron and Mavis Priola, one of several couples invited to speak at the October session of the Synod, for example, said that a couple’s son should be welcome to bring his partner to a Christmas family dinner to meet the grandchildren. Cardinal Burke argued against bringing the son and his partner to a family dinner  as “homosexual relations are intrinsically disordered.”

Cardinal Erdo’s report faithfully presented the division that there is about the possibility or otherwise that in certain limited cased the divorced and remarried without annulment could receive communion. Some argued in favour of the present practice because of their theological foundation, while others proposed greater opening if certain precise conditions are met when dealing with situations that cannot be resolved without creating new injustices and suffering.

The document concluded that “greater theological study was requested” on this issue. This means that the intervening year between this preparatory Synod and next year’s definitive one will be very important.

Those of you who are interested in reading more on the subject should visit the web-sites of the Vatican, Catholic News Service, Catholic World News, The Tablet and the National Catholic Reporter. These sites can give you information much more reliable that the secular media reports whose selectivity tends to sensationalise.

As Cardinal Tagle said semi-humorously but totally on target: the drama continues!