THE P RTAL
December 2014
Page 24
More on
the Extraordinary
Synod
As we digest the 2014 Extraordinary Synod
and look forward to the 2015 Synod,
Geoffrey Kirk ponders on that questionnaire
N
ow that
phase one of the Extraordinary Synod on the Family is over, I can ask the question: did
you fill in the questionnaire? I will confess that I did not. I meant to; but I put it to one side for further
thought. And my thoughts were these: first, that most of the questions required an essay by way of answer;
second, I wondered how the questionnaire read in Urdu.
It was (as we say in South London) the Urdu wot dun
it. If the good people of the Borough (where I go to
church) found the phraseology challenging, what did
they make of it in a country largely uninfected by the
European enlightenment, where German bishops are
as little regarded as Father Christmas, and where the
names of Kasper and Müller are unknown?
pronouncements. They will, in my view, be more likely
to side with the opinions of a first century celibate rabbi
than will a survey over-weighted by contributions
from divorced and remarried Germans and angry
American gay couples. That fact is one that we should
not try to hide, but rather to celebrate. It is important
to be open about these things.
Not since the regime of Napoleon
III has there been such a creative
experiment in guided democracy
What matters is not what people think,
but what Jesus said and intended
And then there was the question of what was to
be done with all that paper. You will no doubt have
asked yourself that self-same question. The answer, it
seems, is a process of summary and ever decreasing
distillation (at diocesan, national and regional level)
designed to guarantee that whatever reached the
bishops of the Synod was as rarefied as a homeopathic
medicine.
Not since the regime of Napoleon
III has there been such a creative
experiment in guided democracy.
If all this was a subterfuge
intended to mask the undeniable
fact that decisions about human
sexuality were being taken by an
assembly almost exclusively made
up of (hopefully) celibate men,
I cannot for a moment suppose
that it managed to pull wool over
many eyes.
Now let me come clean: I
have no objection whatever
to such a synod making such
contents page
What matters to the Church is not what people
think, but what Jesus said and intended. Liberals will,
of course, make a meal of deciding what he meant.
But on human sexuality their protests are so much
verbiage. It is an issue on which he made himself
transparently (and, for some, embarrassingly) clear.
Just another instance, one is bound to reflect, where
John 6:60 applies.