THE
P RTAL
November 2015
Page 24
Who won?
Geoffrey Kirk reviews
the recent Synod in Rome on the Family
S
o it’s all over – and the question we are all asking is the question we are not
supposed to ask. Who won? In a Synod memorably described in the Catholic
Herald as a tussle ‘like ferrets in a bag’ (one where both sides accused the other of
unethical conduct) we seem to have a final document which will satisfy no one.
There has been movement certainly. Liberals can
plausibly claim that a ‘pastoral’ approach to marital
irregularities has been endorsed and enhanced.
Conservatives can counter that with the (truthful)
assertion that not much has altered and that (particularly
in the form of the two outstanding contributions to
the debate – by an Orthodox woman doctor and the
spokesman for the Moscow Patriarchate) they got the
best of the argument.
Ralph Wiltgen’s classic eye-witness account of
Vatican II was famously entitled ‘The Rhine flows into
the Tiber’. It can truthfully be said that at this Synod
that flow was stemmed. If the Cologne/Brussels Axis
was the dominant force at Vatican II, it is clear that
the centre of gravity has moved south – to Africa and
perhaps even SE Asia.
Synod had some sharp criticism of its conduct, but
(characteristically perhaps) gave no clear indication of
the direction of travel. Where does this Pope stand?
All we can do is wait and see.
That was inevitable. Not only are the hierarchies
of those areas fresh, vibrant and articulate, but they
have also pressingly in mind, the real crisis of the
family which the Synod was required to address: the
joint attack on Christian doctrine by the forces of
Western secularism and of a newly resurgent Islam.
Both present challenges to the Christian ethic of
family and of human dignity. In the West, there is
the rampant individualism which, in a culture of
human and individual rights, tramples upon the rights
and well-being of the child. In Islam, there is a male
chauvinism which too often reduces women to mere
property and which, in arranged and child marriages,
stifles personal choice. Both ideologies are intolerant
of the other, and intolerant of any median alternative.
Christian values are trapped between the upper and
the nether millstone; and it is in Africa that the pain is
most acutely felt.
Beside this unprecedented joint attack, the concerns
of Western theological liberals seem trivial and selfobsessed. Never more so when the subject raised (as it
was by Bishop Doyle of Northampton) is homosexual
rights. Of course, the final documents of the Synod
do not const