Forte... ma non troppo
Abp. Bruno Forte, special secretary of the Synod on the Family, presented to the media on June 26 the working document that will guide the bishops’ proceedings next October. After the protests in response to the lecture by Cardinal Walter Kasper on the divorced-and-remarried during the Consistory on February 20 (see DICI no. 296 dated May 16, 2014), Abp. Forte tried to sound reassuring: “The Church’s doctrine is not up for debate, because it has been repeated many times in recent years in various Magisterial interventions,” but he was anxious to add that the Synod would have to reexamine the pastoral applications of this doctrine.
He was eager also to highlight a “medicine of mercy”, warning that if anyone does not understand it, “he will be irremediably wrong about what the Synod will be able to say about the situation of separated persons, divorcés, the divorced-and-remarried, about those who are cohabiting [living in concubinage] or about unions between persons of the same sex.”
As usual, they remind us loud and clear that the doctrine is set in stone, but that its pastoral application is elastic. Forte doctrinally, ma non troppo pastorally.
Father Alain Lorans
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