Tough topics: When the Rubber Hits the Road

TOUGH TOPICS

When the Rubber Hits the Road HOMOSEXUALITY, DIVORCE & REMARRIAGE ...92

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Tough Topics

Rubber hits the Road The Catholic Church holds assemblies, or synods, of its bishops with the Pope every three years. Pope Francis made an unusual step in the calling of two synods on the same topic – family – in two years.

The Church needs a prayer full of love for the family and for life Pope Francis | Address, May 25, 2015

Two emotionally-charged topics from the Synods on the Family gained media attention: how the Church should respond to divorced Catholics who have remarried outside the Church, and how to better respond to people with same-sex attraction.

Frankly tries to cut through the noise with some words of reflection on these issues.

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Where the

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‘Hot-Button’ Issues at the Synod

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Archbishop Mark Coleridge is the Catholic Archbishop of Brisbane and a 2015 Synod Bishop delegate.

Reflecting on the 2015 Synod ahead of his attendance, the archbishop has pointed out the need to rise above the “predictable antagonisms”. These range from insisting that Church teaching be simply restated without any changes made at all, to demanding that it be summarily overturned.

On the gap between teaching and practice No-one doubts that the gap between the facts on the ground and the Church’s teaching has grown wider. The question is what we do about that. Theoretically, one option is simply to cave into the facts and adjust Church teaching to match them.

But that’s not going to happen, nor should it. Another theoretical option is simply to lament or condemn the facts and go on repeating Church teaching in the hope that the facts might eventually change to match it.

But there’s no sign that the facts on the ground will change any time soon to match Church teaching.

We need a new kind of dialogue between the facts and the teaching – a dialogue respectful of both. This will require some genuinely lateral thinking or, better, a kind of apostolic imagination. It will also need to have a practical edge.

One Church, many cultures The Pope’s choice of theme for the twopart Synod was shrewd; because in many ways marriage and the family is where the rubber hits the road, not just for the Church but for society as a whole.

In the end, the Synod addressed how the Gospel can more powerfully and creatively engage contemporary culture. Yet the Catholic Church embraces many cultures.

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Some of the hot-button issues in the dominant cultures of the West barely appear on the radar screen elsewhere; and hot-button issues elsewhere don’t figure in the West. The centre of gravity in the Church is moving from the so-called First World to Africa, Asia and Latin America.

The Synod may well be a moment when the Churches of the First World have to listen rather than speak, to learn rather than teach. F This is an edited extract from the Archbishop’s article originally published in The Catholic Leader.

Prof. Ron & Mavis Pirola, were one of 13 couples present at the 2014 Synod.

An Insider’s view It was very different to what you would expect from reports in the media. It’s quite unlike parliament where one side battles to defeat the other. At the Synod we saw prayerful listening to each other’s experiences and reflecting on that in the light of Scripture and the teaching tradition of the Church. Yes, there was plenty of robust debate but it was always carried out respectfully.

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Frank Talk

Divorce &

ReMarriage

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Bishop Eugene Hurley is the Catholic bishop of Darwin. For many years he chaired the Bishops Commission for Pastoral Life, which among other responsibilities, supports marriages and families.

During my fifty years as a priest I’ve met and shared with many people the utter devastation of a ‘failed’ marriage.

I’ve never met anybody who entered marriage, hoping or believing that it would end in divorce and disaster.

Everyone I know has entered marriage hoping and believing that it would be life-long and happy.

The reality is that all of us as human beings are imperfect and we bring those imperfections to our marriage... it’s who we are.

The mysterious journey of a marriage relationship is both amazing and scary.

Amazing because of the courage and commitment that couples bring to that relationship in all sorts of trying circumstances.

It has been the greatest inspiration for me in my long years of priesthood. I would love to think that one day I might have that sort of holiness.

Scary, because as a couple enter marriage they have no guarantee of what may lay before them. Sadly, I have seen sickness and weakness enter these relationships, that may have never been identified prior to the marriage, but subsequently have tested the marriage.

In other circumstances I’ve seen couples forced to live a lifestyle that they never intended.

Sometimes these lifestyles have been too heavy for the relationship to carry and it simply collapses under the weight. cont...

Bishop Eugene Hurley

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The mysterious journey of a marriage relationship is both amazing and scary

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I’ve so often shared the deep and abiding sadness of ‘good’ Catholics who find themselves unable to receive the Jesus they love so much, because of what has happened to their marriage and their subsequent “second marriage”.

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I’ve known so many couples whom I completely believe, who would swear that the present relationship they are in, is without a shadow of a doubt, their first ‘real’ marriage.

Because marriage is so important and such a wonderful Sacrament, the Church has very strict rules as to what actually constitutes a valid marriage. Not every marriage celebrated, even in the Catholic Church, is valid. Whilst it may look like a valid marriage, sometimes it simply is not.

When these relationships fall apart, the Church wants an opportunity to test it to determine whether or not it is truly valid.

If not, then an annulment is granted which reassures the couple that they haven’t had a failed marriage, but rather they were in a relationship that lacked some essential elements of a valid marriage. Once the annulment has been granted, then the person is free to marry in the Church.

The two-part Synod on the Family is an important step for the Church and part of an ongoing discussion. It is an opportunity to explore how to reach out to Catholics who are in difficult situations after they have remarried, while holding onto Christ’s teaching of marriage as a life-long exclusive bond. F

For more information about marriage, divorce, and annulment see www.franklymag.org

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Frankly Thoughts An annulment is not saying that a marriage never existed. It is saying that something essential for a sacramental, binding marriage, was not there at the start and was never there during the marriage.

While many marriages might not be valid at the start, the couple later grows into validity/sacramentality.

An annulment is not saying that the couple did anything wrong, individually or together, but that something important is missing.

No one gets married planning to divorce but when it happens, it is often because the missing bit cannot be overcome by one, or the other, or both. Because the marriage started in love and hope and promise, this breach is always very painful.

Not withstanding the reality of this difficulty, a couple’s response to that pain can either make it a time of growth or of more pain and destruction. F

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Insider’s View

My Annulment

Journey

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The journey towards the annulment of my first marriage and full reconciliation with the Church began in early 2012.

However, I had been struggling with the psychological, physical and mental stresses of a failed marriage since 2007.

The end of the civil proceedings in 2011 allowed me to proceed with the petition for annulment in the Catholic Church.

Having just gone through a slow, painful and expensive civil divorce involving lawyers, sadness, anger and much negativity, I did not wish to have to live through the whole experience all over again. In addition, I knew little about what would be involved in the process.

In the meantime, I had also met my current wife, and it was far more tempting to continue our lives in a modern secular model.

By comparison, the Catholic Church’s firm stance against divorce and continued honouring of the marriage sacrament seemed archaic and wholly unfair. I was also made aware that I could not receive Holy Communion due to my new relationship, and this only increased my feeling of alienation from the Church.

Fortunately, I was repeatedly encouraged to make enquiries about the annulment process by family members and past mentors.

My new partner also started to attend RCIA sessions and I too began to feel a strong urge to reconcile fully with the Church.

My advocate, Fr Adrian, was always sensitive and kind. During our meetings, he explained the implications, steps and procedures that would follow the application for annulment. The Tribunal members were very adept at probing for answers in an unobtrusive and sensitive manner.

The total cost of the annulment was nonprohibitive and at no point did I feel as pressured, stressed or strung-out as in the civil proceedings. More importantly, I did not have to meet or deal with my ex-wife although she was called to participate in the process.

The entire process was less intimidating and painful than I had feared.

The introspection helped to deepen my understanding of marriage. This helped me to identify and correct the critical mistakes made before, and to see what is truly essential in a successful marriage.

Taking that big leap in seeking the guidance of the tribunal has been one of the most important steps in the journey towards healing. The ensuing feelings of closure, release and inner peace since receiving my annulment has been something that I cannot explain well with words alone.

It has given me a sense of completion and wholeness. In a way, I felt almost like the prodigal son being welcomed back to the fold.

Being given this opportunity to return to full communion with the Church and to live life to the fullest again is an experience worth more than its weight in gold. F

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The most challenging aspect of the annulment process had to be the writing of the pre-statement for the official petition. There was much soul-searching, recollecting and raking up of past events: the flaws, mistakes, plastered-over cracks, blind spots, and most importantly, realisation of my errors and expectations. It was absolutely humbling.

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Name withheld. This article originally published in Catholic News, www.catholicnews.sg Reprinted with permission.

Frank Talk on

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SaMe-Sex

Attraction

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Archbishop Anthony Fisher OP is the Catholic Archbishop of Sydney. He is a bioethicist and a Dominican.

Photo: Catholic Archdiocese of Sydney

We all know and love people with same sex-attraction. This is not something alien to the experience of the Church.

This, in fact, is there in everybody’s families or workplaces or friendship groups, whether or not they are aware of it. So what’s our attitude to that to be? These are children of God. If God loves them, then the Church has to love them, we have to love them: it’s as straightforward and clear as that.

The Church loves people with same sex attraction and that has to be made clear and I think that sadly that hasn’t been made clear historically.

That’s then the starting point. The question then becomes, well, these people often are struggling in one way or another, struggling to live the Christian life, struggling for acceptance and respect in society, struggling with their own identity, struggling to form healthy relationships and so on. How can we be in there helping? And to be a church that says to every human being, and that includes

our brothers and sisters with same sex attraction, ‘We are a Church for you. We want you in the Church, we want you in the Church active, engaged, and struggling with the rest of us to live the Christian life, as fully as possible’.

When you come into the Church we’re going to set the bar high for you, like we do with everybody. It’s not going to be, ‘Oh there are two classes of Christians here, there are the ones that can aspire to sanctity and the second rate ones whom we can’t expect much of’.

No, we’re going to set the bar high for everybody in terms of living the Christian life. But no one is shut out of that; we want everyone in. [The Church is] a group of sinners seeking to be saints”. F Excerpted from a transcript interview with journalist Noel Debien on ABC’s Radio National.

Two powerful films on people with SSA are: The Third Way | www.blackstonefilms.org Desire of the Everlasting Hills | everlastinghills.org

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We want you in the Church, we want you in the Church active, engaged, and struggling with the rest of us to live the Christian life, as fully as possible Archbishop Anthony Fisher OP | ABC Radio National Interview

Insider’s View

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Gay, Catholic,

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and Doing Fine Joseph Prever is a writer and web developer. Here he shares his experience of living the Catholic faith as a person with same-sex attraction.

I have heard a lot about how mean the Church is, and how bigoted, because she opposes gay marriage. How badly she misunderstands gay people, and how hostile she is towards us. My gut reaction to such things is: Are we even talking about the same church?

When I go to Confession, I sometimes mention the fact that I’m gay, to give the priest some context. I’ve always gotten one of two responses: either compassion, encouragement, and admiration, because the celibate life is difficult and profoundly counter-cultural; or nothing at all, not even a ripple, as if I had confessed eating too much on Thanksgiving.

Of the two responses, my ego prefers the first - who doesn’t like thinking of themselves as some kind of hero? - but the second might make more sense.

Being gay doesn’t mean I’m special or extraordinary. It just means that my life is not always easy.

When I told my family a year ago, not one of them responded with anything but love and understanding. Actually, the only time I get shock or disgust or disbelief, is when I tell someone who supports the gay

lifestyle. Celibacy?? You must be some kind of freak.

I’m grateful to gay activists for some things - making people more aware of the prevalence of homosexuality, making homophobia less socially acceptable but they also make it more difficult for me to be understood, to be accepted for who I am and what I believe. If I want open-mindedness, acceptance, and understanding, I look to Catholics.

So, yes, it’s hard to be gay and Catholic - it’s hard to be anything and Catholic - because I don’t always get to do what I want.

Show me a religion where you always get to do what you want and I’ll show you a pretty shabby, lazy religion. F This is an edited extract of an article originally published under the pseudonym Steve Gershom at littlecatholicbubble.blogspot.com.au

Courage is an international ministry of the Catholic Church which supports people with same-sex attraction and their family members. www.couragerc.org

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Being a Catholic means believing in a God who literally waits in the chapel for me, hoping I’ll stop by just for ten minutes so he can pour out love and healing on my heart. Which is worth more - all this, or getting to have sex with who I want?

Joseph Prever

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Love &

Truth

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It’s easy to be drawn into the “predictable antagonisms” on these issues. The challenge for us all is to take the attitude expressed in Pope Francis’ famous line, “Who am I to Judge?” For example, he has spoken compassionately about people with same-sex attraction but strongly against same-sex marriage and gender politics; he has responded with understanding to people in second marriages while affirming the beauty of life-long marriage.

The notion of ‘hating the sin but loving the sinner’ speaks to this challenge but is not as easily heard in today’s culture. Authentic love will always be honest about harmful choices as well as empathetic. The call to mercy invites us to love without condemnation while upholding the truth as revealed by God.