Catholic Bishops’ consensus reveals their rifts

VATICAN CITY — Any good compromise allows everyone to claim victory. And that is exactly what the document on family matters approved late Saturday by 270 bishops from around the world did.

But the conflicting interpretations — witnessed in headlines and Catholic blogs in Italy and elsewhere Sunday — underscored the contention and confusion that remains on issues like divorce, homosexuality and cohabitation for Catholics.

Both conservative and liberal commentators and media outlets, deliberately or not, seemed to interpret the passages in a way that reinforced their views, raising the question of whether what the bishops billed as a consensus document may actually widen divisions over critical issues, rather than bridge them.

The bishops’ final report to Pope Francis, each passage of which was voted on separately, amounts to their recommendations. Deliberately uncontroversial in controversial areas, the synod “achieved consensus through ambiguity,” the Rev. Thomas Reese wrote Saturday in The National Catholic Reporter.

That ambiguity served to reassure bishops who feared change to Catholic doctrine that there would be no change at all, while giving those who wanted change the hope that the pope could act freely to liberalize the church should he want to.

But the same ambiguity did less to bring clarity to the pressing family issues that some Catholics and their parish priests must deal with in their daily lives. It may even have added to the confusion, if Sunday’s headlines were anything to go by.

Some Catholic commentators hailed the document as “a prudent opening to divorced remarried Catholics,” as the Rome daily La Repubblica wrote. Others noted that the bishops had built on the existing norms — in effect changing nothing.

“Synod report: Nothing new, merely reinforcing existing pastoral practices with an emphasis on helping with continual conversion,” the Rev. Gabriel Mosher, a Dominican friar, wrote on his Twitter account.

The best example of conflicting interpretations was, perhaps, on the issue of whether divorced Catholics who have remarried without an annulment could receive the sacrament of communion. If anything, the document indicated that the bishops were open to leaving the issue up to the “discernment” of local clergy to handle on a case-by-case basis.

That was not the takeaway for many.

A five-column, front-page headline Sunday in the Rome centrist daily Il Messaggero read: “Yes to communion to divorcees.”

In its headline, Il Giornale, a conservative Italian newspaper, summed up the conclusions in four words: “Divorcees yes, gays no,” a reference to the bishops’ clear rejection of gay marriage.

Some newspapers interpreted the synod, as the bishops’ assembly is called, as a body blow to the pope. “Bishops Hand Francis Defeat on Divorce Issue,” The Wall Street Journal said.

The Spectator, a conservative British weekly, declared outright that “The Vatican Synod of the Family is over and the conservatives have won.”

Not so for Gerard O’Connell, writing in America Magazine, who came to quite the opposite conclusion. Despite a strong push to close doors, the bishop’s document “has greatly strengthened the hand of Pope Francis in his effort to build a church” that is merciful and not judgmental, he wrote.

Others were simply disappointed. While an initial draft of the document last year suggested there could be greater opening toward gay Catholics, the final report this year did not expand on the church’s teaching that gays should be treated with respect.

It also confirmed that the church did not consider same-sex unions to be part of “God’s plan for marriage and the family.” Marianne Duddy-Burke, executive director of DignityUSA, an organization of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Catholics, said the document was “deeply disappointing,” blocking “civil and moral equality for our community.”