This week, hundreds of delegates from around the world began a monthlong meeting as part of Pope Francis’ “Synod on Synodality”—a gathering to discuss the future of the Catholic Church. It could radically change the religion. The group is considering groundbreaking alterations to orthodoxy on same-sex unions and whether or not women can be ordained as priests. The process has changed, too. For the first time, delegates include women.
A synod is a conference for church leaders and lay people to engage in conversation about how to bolster the good of the church. Since the 1960s, delegates from the global church have come together to discuss evolving issues. The current synod is part one of a multi-year process that will culminate in 2024 with Francis’ decisions and includes particularly controversial topics, like celibacy and divorce.
The lead up has been punctuated by conservative concerns about just how liberal this meeting may get. The synod kicks off days after a letter became public in which the pope considered blessing the existence of queer couples and the allowance of female priests.
Pope Francis wrote that while marriage is an “exclusive, stable and indissoluble union between a man and a woman, naturally open to conceiving children,” pastoral charity is also needed, and may be discretionary. Pastoral prudence, he wrote, “must adequately discern if there are forms of blessing, solicited by one or various persons, that don’t transmit a mistaken concept of marriage.” On female priesthood, the pope asserted that, whereas nobody can publicly contradict the church’s current rules prohibiting women’s ordination, they should study it.
For some, this rhetoric may seem like the bare minimum. But for others, like Americans on the right, it’s scary as hell.
Conservative Catholics across the U.S. have been some of the most vocal globally in pushing against reforms, and fear that the church is changing in a way that doesn’t match scripture or their ideology. One New York City priest, Reverend Gerald Murray, worried publicly that the pope “will authorize things that are not contained in Catholic doctrine or that will contradict it,” like women deacons or blessing gay unions. “We’re not Protestants,” he said.
Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke, Archbishop Emeritus of St. Louis, a vocal opponent to Pope Francis, was in the group that sent the pope a letter inquiring how he would be responding to these issues at the summit. “It’s unfortunately very clear,” Burke said on Tuesday, “that the invocation of the Holy Spirit on the part of some has as its aim to push forward an agenda that is more political and human than ecclesiastical and divine.” (Burke was not invited to the meeting at the Vatican.)
Pope Francis’ track record on queer and women’s rights is complicated. He formally allowed women to read from the Bible during Mass, but also came out against women becoming ordained. Speaking about queer people in 2013, the pope famously asked, “If they accept the Lord and have goodwill, who am I to judge them?” He has argued that homosexuality should not be treated as a crime in different countries but clarifies that he still thinks it’s a sin. Francis has framed many of these decisions as instances where localities should turn toward scripture and an evolving discernment as it befits their needs as part of his hope of growing the Catholic Church.
Because of this potential divide between local and global doctrine and application, it is possible that American Catholics may not even see these changes, should they be formally supported by the pope but not adopted by local priests.
As Mother Jones previously reported, American catholicism has splintered as some of the devout entrench themselves in wider conservative politics. Right-wing provocateurs like Milo Yiannopoulos and Steve Bannon notably have moved in Catholic circles saying Pope Francis should be curtailed. Yiannopoulos, who touts a traditionalist form of Catholicism, has been telling anyone who will listen to him, to “make the Vatican straight again” and “make America homophobic again.”
The pope himself seems unfazed by the ire of American Catholics. “They got mad,” he told reporters in late August after a squabble. “But move on, move on.”
I prefer to read the Abrahamic religious books as a legendary/mythological account of history, not outright historical. The people who wrote these books had an agenda to push and by studying it we can get an idea of what their intentions were in wrtiting them down. You can’t fully understand some of the stories in the Bible if you don’t have some understanding of the culture and history and beliefs of the people that wrote them. Context is vital.
I’d love to hear how you think it would change my life? It’s fun to get different perspectives.
I’ve always hated the idea of original/inherited sin. It’s such a cruel idea to me.
I’ll try to explain what I think (it’s of course my vision and not the Truth), but in advance sorry for my broken English.
It depends on what you put behind these words. American Christianity (but it’s of course not the case only there) is obsessed by the question of hell, thus the idea that everybody inherits the condamnation is indeed cruel. But as you said, one should understand the culture and history of the people who wrote Genesis 1 and 2 (two different texts that are in opposition if one takes them literally, by the way, a proof that it’s not how the authors thought them), and to them, the question of the afterlife was if not irrelevant, at least not central. The oldest parts of the Old Testament even do not presuppose an afterlife at all. It comes later, first as the sheol, a place that welcomes everybody, and finally as a bodily resurrection of the just people only. Thus the original sin is not what condemns you to hell.
Sin is not about hell and heaven. Sin is an existential reality here and now. Etymologically, it’s an archery terms which signifies “to miss the mark”. Sin is the fact that we can’t be what we should be. Our “mark”, a life in communion with God, thus a life free of evil, can’t be not missed. We are not able to attain it, and that’s because of sin. But sin is not our fault, sin is original, it predates us, thus we can’t be accused of sinning. Sin is not a moral question.
Why does sin exist? @[email protected] is right when they ask if God is responsible of the sin. Genesis does say that God created everything, thus he created, if not the original sin itself, at least the possibility of sin. Why would a good God do that? It’s a mystery, but Genesis offers a part of the answer: because of freedom. God wants us free. God wants us able to refuse him. He loves us, and he wants us to love him too, but because he loves us he wants us to be autonomous. Without the ability to sin, we wouldn’t be autonomous.
Thus, the doctrine of the original sin is not an accusation of everybody. It’s a freeing doctrine: you’re not responsible for the evil that inhabits you. It’s not your fault. It’s original, inherited. It’s the price of your freedom. You can now walk freed of culpability (if a Church makes you feel more guilty than before, this Church is not teaching the Gospel). And God doesn’t let us alone in that. It’s not in Genesis 1-2 anymore, but the rest of the Bible is pretty clear about the fact that God accompanies us in our road, he suffers when we suffer, he walks with us, and he offers his presence in our lives. He helps us endure, if we make the decision to ask him. He asks the believers to fight against the consequences of evil, making the world a better place. It’s not always the case, of course, but it’s what he calls us to do.
The doctrine of the original sin changed my life, I do not fell guilty and I’m stronger to change the world.
Edit : it’s very mature Lemmy to downvote a message you disagree with.
So your version of the christians god is not omnipotent and omnicient?