THE gospel this week is an important one for Catholics. We are often accused of adhering blindly to tradition in our practices and moral beliefs and not keeping apace of with the modern world.
It is true that we respect the Church and expect that it will guard what is of value to our faith so that nothing is lost, ever keeping before us the entire tradition, lest we end up absolutising one particular era or way of acting.
This absolutising was no doubt the core of what is identified in the gospel: “You put aside the commandment of God to cling to human conditions.”
Pope Francis is emerging as a reformer and he speaks with a refreshing directness. But we should not read our Pope from ‘outside’ the Church as many in the media do. The secular press will look at developments within the Church through their own ‘lens’.
They are not generally familiar with our language or tradition. This is especially true with the upcoming Synod on the family. The Pope is not talking about changing church teaching but he has indicated that we need to look at changing some of the church’s procedures and practices. These are two different matters.
What is new in the approach of the Pope to the Synod is that he is saying ‘let’s not start with the rules but let’s start with where people’s lives are’, what they are going through in family life, breakdown and sexuality, what their pastoral needs are at this point that cannot be ignored if the church is to extend the mercy of Christ. That is where the Pope starts.
What he has shifted is the starting point. It is not the laws and the rules. It is the situation in which people are living and how to extend to them the mercy of Christ. That is where the Synod will start and the Pope says that nothing is off the table. Everything must be talked about. It was this attitude to religion that was missing in the gospel today. Some were not open to change of any kind and they were consequently closed to the mercy of God.