Converts Ask Synod on the Family to Maintain Church Teaching
Over 100 converts to the Catholic Church signed an open letter to the bishops at the Synod on the Family asking them to maintain Catholic teaching, especially on the question of divorce and remarriage. An Open Letter to the Synod was sent to the bishops in mid-September and released to the public as the Synod opened on Sunday. The Stream‘s executive editor Jay Richards and senior editor David Mills are among the signers.
Explaining that the signers had all found the Catholic Church’s teaching on sexual difference, sexuality, marriage and the family to be true, the Letter explained “the fact that the Catholic Church held fast to the deepest truth about our embodied human existence was for us a point of attraction, and a sign that the Church was the surest link to Jesus Christ Incarnate.” The proposals being floated by some bishops to allow Catholics who have been remarried after divorce without having their first marriage annulled “contradict the Christian doctrine of marriage itself.” But, the letter continues,
we also fail to see how such innovations can be, as they claim, either pastoral or merciful. However well meaning, pastoral responses that do not respect the truth of things can only aggravate the very suffering that they seek to alleviate. We cannot help but think of the abandoned spouses and their children. Thinking of the next generation, how can such changes possibly foster in young people an appreciation of the beauty of the indissolubility of marriage?
The converts turn to the bishops attending the Synod “to uphold Christ’s teaching on the indissolubility of marriage with the same fidelity, the same joyful and courageous witness the Catholic Church has displayed throughout her entire history,” says the letter. “Against the worldly-wise who counsel resignation and concede defeat, let the Church once again remind the world of the beauty of spousal fidelity, when lived in unity with Christ. Who is left who can offer the world something other than an echo of its own cynicism? Who is left who can lead it toward a real experience of love? Now more than ever the world needs the Church’s prophetic witness!”
In a news story on the Aleteia website, one signer, University of Texas sociologist Mark Regnerus, said, “If it weren’t for mercy, we’d all be lost, because the truth challenges us, pointedly so in this domain. Truth without mercy is cruel, but mercy that ignores truth is a cruelty as well, and makes no sense at all.” Another, Baylor University philosopher Frank Beckwith, said that although the Synod, an advisory body, can’t change Catholic teachings, “it can offer its conclusions to the world in misleading language that could serve as a catalyst to ensure that the next generation of Catholics are deprived of knowing and living the fullness of Church’s teachings.”
Included among the 130 signers are Oxford professor John Finnis; Thrill of the Chaste author Dawn Eden; biblical scholar Scott Hahn; Thomas Farr of the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs; Toronto University professor of classics John Rist; R. J. Snell of Eastern University; Alana Newman, director of the Coalition Against Reproductive Trafficking; philosopher J. Budziszewski, author of What We Can’t Not Know; and Sherif Girgis, co-author with Robert P. George and Ryan T. Anderson of What Is Marriage? Man and Woman: A Defense.