by FRANCIS X. ROCCA
VATICAN CITY (CNS) — The working document for the October 2014 extraordinary Synod of Bishops offers a picture of a Catholic Church struggling to preach the Gospel and transmit moral teachings amid a “widespread cultural, social and spiritual crisis” of the family.
The 75-page Instrumentum laboris, published by the Vatican on June 26, is supposed to “provide an initial reference point” for discussion at the synod, which will have the theme of “pastoral challenges of the family in the context of evangelisation”.
The document is based mainly on comments solicited in a questionnaire last November from national bishops’ conferences worldwide. But it also reflects comments sent to the Vatican by individuals and groups responding to the questionnaire, which was published on the Internet.
Working document topics include some of the most contested and controversial areas of Catholic moral teaching on the family, including contraception, divorce and remarriage, same-sex “marriage”, premarital sex and in vitro fertilisation.
Bishops’ conferences responding to the questionnaire attributed an increasing disregard of such teachings to various influences, including “hedonistic culture; relativism; materialism; individualism; [and] the growing secularism”.
Recognising that most Catholic couples disregard Church teaching against the use of artificial birth control, the document says that “for many Catholics the concept of ‘responsible parenthood’ encompasses the shared responsibility in conscience to choose the most appropriate
method of birth control”.
The document says the use of natural family planning, condoned by the Church, encourages responsible decisions about family size while respecting human fertility and “the dignity of thesexual relationship between husband and wife”.
Bishops expressed particular concern with the “ideology called gender theory, according to which the gender of each individual turns out to be simply the product of social conditioning and needs” without “any correspondence to a person’s biological sexuality”.
The bishops see a need for better teaching of “Christian anthropology,” the document states. Noting that contemporary culture dismisses or misunderstands theories of “natural law,”
which seek to “found human rights on reason,” bishops increasingly prefer to invoke Scripture in support of Catholic moral teaching.
The document also points to economic factors behind Catholics’ disregard of that teaching: Cohabitation without marriage, which can be driven by financial need; youth unemployment;
and a lack of housing. A widespread “contraceptive mentality” reflects, in part, a shortage of “childcare, flexible working hours (and) parental leave”.
Long working hours and commuting times “take a toll on family relationships”.
“The Church is called to offer real support for decent jobs, just wages and a fiscal policy favouring the family, as well as programmes of assistance to families and children,” the document states.