Who has non heard of the recent Synod on the family? The printing and the media have covered it and that is rather reassuring: the positions taken by the Church are not met with indifference. The Church is not chosen to delight but to make disciples (past attraction and non by proselytism, says Pope Francis in the exhortation"The Joy of the Gospel") and to cognominate in the proper noun of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Some positions – or at least co-ordinate to the media – accept sparked questions and puzzlement. What should we remember of this? What is in fact a synod? What is not a synod?

The Synod of Bishops is a permanent institution established by Pope Paul VI, on 15 September 1965, in response to the desire of the Fathers of the Second Vatican Quango to go on alive the spirit of collegiality engendered by the conciliar experience. Literally speaking the word "synod", derived from two Greek wordssyn significant "together" andhodos meaning "road" or "way", means a "meeting".  A Synod is a religious meeting or assembly at which bishops, gathered around and with the Holy Father, have opportunity to interact with each other and to share information and experiences, in the mutual pursuit of pastoral solutions which take a universal validity and application. The Synod, more often than not speaking, can be defined as an assembly of bishops representing the Catholic episcopate, having the chore of helping the Pope in the governing of the universal Church past rendering their counsel. Pope John Paul II has referred to the Synod every bit "a particularly fruitful expression and instrument of the collegiality of bishops".[1]

A dialogue takes place at the highest level in the Church.Who could complain? Also, Pope Francis had invited the bishops to express themselves very freely. Should we be surprised that they did then? In his endmost speech at the Synod, the Pope himself says:" Personally I would exist very worried and saddened if it were not for these temptations and these animated discussions; this movement of the spirits, as St Ignatius called it (Spiritual Exercises, half dozen), if all were in a state of agreement, or silent in a false and quietist peace. "[2] From the beginning, heinvited the fathers to speak"clearly":"it is necessary to say all that, in the Lord, one feels the demand to say: without polite deference, without hesitation. And, at the aforementioned time, i must listen with humility and welcome, with an open heart, what your brothers say. Synodality is exercised with these two approaches".[three] The Pope took care, in the following sentences, to specify that he remains the guarantor of unity.

Information technology is a thing of searching together for pastoral solutions  that are universally valid and applicable. Here once more the recent Synod is very clear: it addresses"the pastoral challenges of the family unit in the context of evangelisation." This also ways that it is not a thing of doctrinal changes. Let us be clear: there tin be an evolution in the teaching of the Church merely no radical alter. Saint Vincent of Lérins expressed this in the following way in the 5thursday century: "Theintelligence, theknowledge, the wisdom, both ofindividualsand of the community, both of i human being and of the wholeChurch, ought, in the class of ages and centuries, to increase and make much and vigorous progress; but yet just in its own kind; that is to say, in the samedoctrine, in the same sense, and in the same meaning." (Commonitorium, 23) In other words, an apple tree develops what is initially contained in planted seeds and that might have been difficult to perceive, but if you plant apple seeds information technology is absolutely vain to hope to meet a pear tree grow ! The disappointments will hence be proportionate to the false hopes and wrongful comprehensions of the nature of the Church.

Finally, the Synod is at that place to help the Pope. Information technology is not a determination-making body. Deciphering majority tendencies may be interesting, but no determination may legitimately be drawn equally regards the society of government. The bishops' proposals do not have a decisive collegial graphic symbol unless they are accepted and taken upward by the Pope: "Through the Holy Father's credence of the advice or the decisions of a given Assembly, the episcopate exercises a collegial activity which approaches but does not equal that manifested at an Ecumenical Council. This is a direct result of various factors: the ensured representation of the whole episcopate, the convocation by the Holy Begetter and "the unity of the episcopate, which, in guild to be one, requires that there be a Head of the College" (John Paul Two,Pastores Gregis, 56), who is first in the episcopal order."

The Synod is hence a consultative assembly composed of bishops from the whole world that the Pope gathers when he considers it necessary to help him in pastoral decisions.

It is unfortunate that the media focused on the problems of unions between ii persons of the same sex and on non-access to communion for divorced and "remarried" persons (for the Catholic Church, a remarriage is only possible later on the death of one of the spouses). The challenges are not express to these ii issues! The very outset challenge is that of evangelisation. Then comes a reflection on the place of the family unit in this evangelization.

It is also unfortunate that technical discussions among experts have been exposed openly without a minimum of precaution, not in order to hide anything, simply in the interest of providing the necessary elements to understand the debates.  Hence, although it is non a matter of reviewing the indissolubility of wedlock, information technology is always possible to improve the understanding of the reasons for not-access to communion for persons who are divorced and "remarried" and it is important to search for means to welcome persons who are concerned past such situations! How? That is precisely one of the pastoral challenges upon which the participants in the Synod are invited to reflect.

It would certainly have been desirable to recall that a truthful dialogue can only be based on common ground: thedepositum fidei (the deposit of the faith). Without common foundations, any dialogue is condemned in advance to become a dialogue of the deafened.

The contempo Synod is only the start part of a reflection that will have two.The intention of this Synod is expressed in the title: "The pastoral challenges in the context of evangelization". Pastoral questions be and require reflection. The Pope wants bishops from all over the world to take office in this reflection. This is a reason to rejoice.The pastoral bug are much larger than those generally depicted by the media, co-ordinate to the current trends. This reflection is necessary in guild to pursue evangelization, recalling that what matters is to evangelise the world and not to make the gospel and the Church worldly.

Allow u.s.a. rejoice that the pastors reverberate on these issues and let us pray for them, keeping in mind that the Holy Spirit leads the Church building : " Many commentators, or people who talk, have imagined that they run across a disputatious Church building where i function is against the other, doubting even the Holy Spirit, the true promoter and guarantor of the unity and harmony of the Church – the Holy Spirit who throughout history has ever guided the barque, through her Ministers, even when the sea was rough and choppy, and the ministers unfaithful and sinners. " said the Pope in his endmost address of the Synod. Permit the states give back to this supernatural view its rightful identify: the get-go !

What then are the challenges? The terminal written report (Relatio) of the Synod contains 3 parts: Listening: The Context and the Challenges of the Family; Looking at Christ: The Gospel of the Family; Facing the Situation: Pastoral Perspectives. The latter part indicates the diverse aspects that need to be adult co-ordinate to the Synod fathers: announcing the gospel of the family, marriage grooming, accompanying the get-go years of married life, accompanying those who are civilly married or live together, caring for wounded families, pastoral attending to persons who accept a homosexual orientation, transmitting life and the claiming of failing nativity rates, educational challenges and the office of the family unit in evangelisation. The positive formulation of the challenges merits attending: it is not as much a thing of responding to problems – which would imply constantly running behind – as of helping to perceive and live the truth and dazzler of family unit life. It is of import not exist overwhelmed past the difficulties – which are real – just to emphasise the beauty – which is just every bit existent, and maybe even more than real – of marriage and family, a true way of sanctification, "school of humanity" (Gaudium et Spes, 52, referred to in the concluding written report).

The synodal fathers conclude their report (Relatio) recalling that the Holy Male parent " invited united states to exist mettlesome in faith and to humbly and honestly embrace the truth in clemency." The  truth without charity is unbearable, charity without truth is an illusion. This claiming applies to u.s. all.