VATICAN CITY
Christian Science Monitor
By Nicole Winfield, Associated Press
VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis on Sunday opens a two-week meeting of bishops and cardinals from around the world aimed at making the church’s teaching on family life — marriage, sex, contraception, divorce, and homosexuality — relevant to today’s Catholic families. The pre-synod debate has been dominated by mudslinging between liberals and conservatives over divorce and remarriage, but there are many more issues up for discussion.
Here are five things to know about the synod.
What’s on the table?
Last year, Vatican officials sent out a 39-point questionnaire to bishops’ conferences across the globe asking for frank input from clergy and lay Catholics on a host of hot-button issues like pre-marital sex, contraception, and gay unions. They got it.
In a brutally honest compilation of the data released in June, the Vatican conceded that the vast majority of Catholics reject church teaching on sex and contraception as intrusive and irrelevant. It said the church had to do a better job ministering to gays in civil unions and legal marriages and to children being raised in such families.
It blamed pastors for failing to adequately preach church teaching and said a “new language” was necessary to convey the church’s message. The findings are to form the basis of the discussion.
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