This October, the Catholic Church is bracing itself for the Synod on the Family. Last October, there was an Extraordinary Synod to prepare for this one, and in the intervening year, in Catholic circles, there has been talk of little else. Anyone hoping for a synod of bishops that would meet in a cloistral hush and produce some clear pronouncement for the edification of the faithful has already been disappointed. The synodical process and subsequent conversations have been marked by leaks, controversies, open fights between cardinals, accusations of skulduggery, and a sense that the Pope and the church has “lost control of the process” (“Pope faces mass uprising over divorce and gays,” World, Aug 28).
It may be that this was exactly what the Pope, who called the synod, hoped for: a mess. Two phrases help us to understand the pontificate of Pope Francis: Hagan lío, a Spanish phrase that means “Make a mess” or “Shake things up”, and “Going out to the peripheries”. Both come from the Pope’s experience in Argentina, but they have deeper roots than that. Jesus is the original “shaker up of things” who went out to the peripheries. Some of his actions were provocative, such as his violent cleansing of the Temple and expulsion of the traders and moneychangers. That was clearly a challenge to the established order.
Jesus wanted to restore the Temple to its original state, that of a house of prayer for all nations. He shook things up for a purpose. His earthly life ended with a literal shake-up. No sooner had he died on the Cross than the ground shook in an earthquake, and the veil of the Temple was torn in two. This inaugurated a new era, and a new relationship between God and human beings.
Going out to the margins was a hallmark of Jesus’s ministry. He called the least obvious of followers, not just fishermen, but tax collectors, people beyond the pale of ritual purity in the eyes of his contemporaries. As with Saint Matthew the publican, so with Saint Mary Magdalene. Tradition has always seen her as a woman on the margins of society, brought to the centre by Christ, chosen to be the first herald of the resurrection.
Jesus reached out to people on the margins, such as the lepers, and todaythe major saints of our times have all been people of little worldly importance who have encountered God in unexpected places: for Mother Teresa, it was the slums of Calcutta; for St Thérèse, it was the diurnal round in the Carmel of Lisieux; and for Bernadette, it was a muddy riverside outside the obscure town of Lourdes. If one were to search for God today, these would be the sorts of places to look.
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It may be hard, certainly, to see the hand of God at work in the chaos of the synod, which has dealt a serious blow to the traditional perception of a strong and united church. The main areas of contention have been the question of admission to Holy Communion of those living in “second unions” (that is, the divorced and remarried) and the status of those who are living in same-sex unions. There is more to family life than these two matters, but the Pope may be right in recognising that these questions touch those at the margins of the church.
While the controversies will only increase between now and October, ahead of the final struggle, especially over the church’s teaching on the indissolubility of marriage, its fruits might only emerge in years to come. Things are being shaken up, but what will matter is how they come together again, and the consensus we achieve after this period of debate. Pope Francis leaves many confused, but so did the actions of Jesus. The legacy of Pope Francis, once the dust settles, may well be a renewed Temple, a house of prayer for all. The real test of Pope Francis’s skill will be seen, not in his ability to shake things up, which is beyond doubt, but in his ability to bring things together again, once the synod is over.
Fr Alexander Lucie-Smith is parish priest of St Hugh of Lincoln, Knaphill, and consulting editor of The Catholic Herald