VATICAN CITY — A fight for the soul of the Catholic Church has broken out, and the first battlefield is a document on family values that pits increasingly alarmed conservatives against more progressive bishops emboldened by Pope Francis’ vision of a church that is more merciful than moralistic.
On Tuesday, conservative Catholic bishops distanced themselves from the document’s unprecedented opening toward gays and divorced Catholics, calling it an “unacceptable” deviation from church teaching that doesn’t reflect their views and vowing to make changes to the final version.
Its message was one of almost-revolutionary acceptance and understanding rather than condemnation. Gays, it said, had gifts to offer the church and their partnerships, while morally problematic, provided gay couples with “precious” support. The church, it added, must welcome divorced people and recognize the “positive” aspects of civil marriages and even Catholics who live together without being married.
The document was remarkable both in what it said and what it didn’t say: Gone were assertions of Catholic doctrine present in most church documents that gay sex is “intrinsically disordered” and that couples who cohabitate or who divorce and remarry are living in sin. In their place were words of acceptance and welcome.
The head of the Polish bishops’ conference, Cardinal Stanislaw Gadecki, called it a deviation from church teaching.
South African Cardinal Wilfrid Fox Napier said the report didn’t reflect the opinion of the synod in its entirety, and said he was sure the final report “will show the vision of the synod as a whole and not the vision of a particular group.”
Hard-line American Cardinal Raymond Burke, head of the Vatican’s supreme court, accused the Vatican press operation of releasing “manipulated” information about the synod debate that didn’t reflect the “consistent number of bishops” who opposed such a tone.
The Vatican acknowledged the sharp divisions over the report, hinting at the ideological battle underway over the soul of the final document.
