As the Synod on the Family approaches, those pushing for radical reform in the Church — or rather dissent from established Church teaching — and those upholding the Church’s doctrine, are both making their views more widely known.

Beginning with the dissenters, Swiss Vaticanist Giuseppe Rusconi has helpfully summarized their views on Pope Francis and the synod. The heterodox views of 30 individuals including Italian priests, a bishop, and a leftist politician appear in a special issue of “Micromega,” a secularist journal, published in time for the synod.

With the exception of two who are strongly critical, the other contributors are very satisfied with the Pope and see him as a vehicle for their ideas and agendas.

For example, Rusconi cites Vittorio Bellavite, national coordinator of the dissenting group “We Are Church”, who praises the fact that opinions “which only ten years ago few were hardly talked about (divorced and remarried, homosexual relationships) are now at the center of the discussions of the synod.”

He said Francis is in “a difficult position” given the “very strong resistance to change”. But he’s hopeful that the Holy Year of Mercy might provide a solution to “impasses”. Recourse to mercy, he said, “should be the message to welcome and re-welcome all into the Church,” a solution that takes “priority over what is doctrinal”. Doctrine, he said, “while not explicitly disavowed” should become a “plan B response” to problems.

Anthropologist Adriana Destro and historian and biblicist Mauro Pesce talk of a “preceding magisterium” that is “difficult” for Pope Francis to deny.  They then argue that “true institutional change” has to be carried out in a radical way, such as “allowing divorce to be legitimate in the Catholic Church, in line with what Protestant churches have done for a long time”. But they add: “Bergoglio knows that in a hard theological-institutional battle, if it’s not impossible, a change in practical attitude, which is more easily achieved, is preferable.”

This coincides with widespread concerns about the synod among orthodox-thinking Catholics: that proposed changes in pastoral practice are subtle ways of changing doctrine because they alter the “Catholic culture”. Such “innovations”, critics argue, change attitudes to effectively pave the way for a slow weakening of the Church’s teaching that ultimately changes it over time.

Martha Heizer, international president of We Are Church Austria, is also cheerleading the Pope, saying she is sure “the Bishop of Rome is doing his best.”  Heizer, who excommunicated herself in 2014 for simulating celebration of a Mass, welcomed the Pope for being “more willing to listen and to learn than his predecessors”, and praised his willingness to dialogue and cooperate over “papal absolutism.” She also praised his appointments, such as removing Cardinal Raymond Burke from the Apostolic Signatura.

Read the article “Dissenters Express High Hopes for Catholic Synod on Family” on ncregister.com.