The deliberate ambiguity of the Synod statement is a prescription for trouble

By Phil Lawler ( bio - articles - email ) | Oct 28, 2015

Some Synod fathers say the final statement opens the way for divorced-and-remarried Catholics to receive Communion. Others say it does not . You might say the Synod’s message is ambiguous.

But Cardinal George Pell would disagree. “It’s not ambiguous,” he told the National Catholic Register. With his usual candor, the Australian prelate went on to say that the wording in the crucial paragraph is “insufficient”—and deliberately so. “The document is cleverly written to get consensus,” he explained.

Thanks to some careful phrasing, the Synod achieved consensus—barely. (Paragraph #86 received just one vote more than the required two-thirds majority.) But we don’t have clarity. The Catholic Church either does, or does not, hold that couples who are involved in a second conjugal relationship should not receive Communion. Which is it? Ask different prelates, and you’ll hear different answers.

When bishops gather in a Synod we expect to learn: to deepen our understanding of what the Church teaches. Admittedly the Synod does not teach with authority; only the Pope, in his own post-synodal statement, will do that. But bishops are teachers, and we have a right to expect instruction rather than confusion or, worse, obfuscation.

During the Synod discussions, we frequently heard suggestions that the Church should use more welcoming language, adopt more compassionate attitudes, make more winsome arguments. Yes, we all want welcoming pastors, compassionate confessors, and winsome evangelists. But from our teachers we want clarity.

At this Synod, we are told, the bishops were taking a pastoral approach, rather than addressing doctrinal issues. But that’s exactly the point at issue, isn’t it? The “Kasper proposal” appeared to raise a major doctrinal question, and rather than addressing that question directly, the Synod tried to finesse it.

On questions of doctrine, as on questions of law, precise language is crucial. If a lawyer is careless in his use of words, his client is likely to suffer for his negligence. A lawyer who deliberately uses ambiguous language, in order to secure an agreement between parties who really don’t agree, is courting disaster.

In this case, since the Synod’s statement is not binding, the danger to the faith can still be averted, if Pope Francis addresses the question that the Synod fathers fudged.