Pope Francis wants to know about the state of marriage and the family
in the Church, before the bishops meet in Rome for an extraordinary
synod next year.
However, the lay faithful should not expect to be
receiving a survey on their views from the Vatican anytime soon.
For one thing, the Vatican’s survey is being handled at the diocesan
level, and the aim is to collect raw data, not opinions on Church
doctrine or discipline, in advance of the 2014 synod.
The data will help
inform the bishops as they develop pastoral solutions for the
challenges faced by modern families.
“Each bishop determines what is the most useful and reasonable manner
of consultation to assist him in preparing his report for the Vatican,”
said Don Clemmer, assistant director of media relations at the U.S.
Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB).
Clemmer said once a diocese completes its report, the data will be sent back to the USCCB and then forwarded on to the Vatican.
It is too early to say how each of the U.S. dioceses will handle the
questionnaire. The Archdiocese of Denver’s communications office
informed the Register that the archdiocese is studying how best to
approach the questionnaire and will be forming a plan over the next few
weeks.
In the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend, Ind., according to the
communications office, Bishop Kevin Rhoades has not yet had an
opportunity to meet with his cabinet to discuss how they will gather the
survey data.
The Diocese of Harrisburg, Pa., said that it will be distributing the
survey to all priests and deacons in its 15 counties and that it may
include those involved in parish marriage ministries as well.
“It will be a big job to read and compile all the surveys in the short
time allotted, but I feel that it will be worth it to share this
information about marriage in central Pennsylvania with the larger
Church,” said Victoria Laskowski, the diocese’s director of marriage and
family ministries.
The responses from all the dioceses have to be returned to the Vatican by the end of January 2014.
2014 Synod
The synod is set for Oct. 5-19 and will focus on “The Pastoral
Challenges of the Family in the Context of Evangelization.”
The bishops
and Pope Francis will discuss pastoral responses to the problems of
divorce and same-sex “marriage,” as well as other challenges to the
health of families.
The 39 questions in the Vatican survey form part of a preparatory
document that addresses such topics as "Pastoral Care in Certain
Difficult Marital Situations," the "Union of Persons of the Same Sex,"
the "Education of Children in Irregular Marriages," "Openness of the
Married Couple to Life" and the "Relationship Between the Family and the
Person."
“This is huge, to have an extraordinary synod focused specifically on the family,” said Bill May, president of Catholics for the Common Good, a lay apostolate focused on evangelizing the culture.
May is the author of a recent book called Getting the Marriage Conversation Right, and his organization has been focused on presenting the Church’s teachings on marriage and family in a compelling way.
“The questionnaire reflects an interest in trying to understand the
problems of the family more deeply as they try to prepare and address
it,” he said.
Misunderstandings
The Vatican’s worldwide survey, however, has been misunderstood by
others and inaccurately described in a number of media outlets as an
opinion survey or a poll of the views lay Catholics may have on
marriage, family and sexuality.
Vatican officials involved with preparing for the synod have made clear
that the preparatory document and questionnaire are geared toward
finding pastoral solutions for the modern challenges to the family, not
altering Church teaching.
Cardinal Péter Erdő, primate of Hungary, said at a Nov. 5 press
conference that the aim of the Vatican survey is to obtain “concrete and
real data” from dioceses to inform the synod’s discussions.
“The document contains, as well as a general presentation on the
matter, various essential biblical and magisterial quotations on the
theme as well as a questionnaire on the main challenges regarding the
family,” Cardinal Erdő said.
One lay Catholic organization, however, has taken upon itself to
publish an online version of the survey. Catholics in Alliance for the
Common Good — a separate and distinct organization unrelated to
Catholics for the Common Good — has posted a truncated version of the
Vatican questionnaire, under a heading that reads, “Communicating the
Sense of the Faithful in the United States to Pope Francis."
The
organization says it will send the responses to the USCCB “and to the
appropriate officials in the Vatican, including the Holy Father
himself.”
Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good has been criticized by some Catholic observers, who note that it is a politically partisan group that has acted to undermine Church teachings on abortion.
During the 2008 election campaign, then-Archbishop Charles Chaput of Denver publicly criticized the organization, commenting
that “… the work of Democratic-friendly groups like Catholics United
and Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good have done a disservice to
the Church, confused the natural priorities of Catholic social teaching,
undermined the progress pro-lifers have made and provided an excuse for
some Catholics to abandon the abortion issue, instead of fighting
within their parties and at the ballot box to protect the unborn.”
Only a Preparatory Document
However, it appears unlikely that anything other than the diocesan responses to the official Vatican survey will be considered.
Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi explained
that the Vatican questionnaire is “only a document sent to bishops’
conferences throughout the world” to help prepare for the extraordinary
synod.
The USCCB Office of Communications also said it could not comment about
third-party surveys — only on the official survey being sent to the
bishops.
Pope Francis’ call for an extraordinary synod of bishops in 2014 was announced by the Vatican in October.
The synod’s discussions on the family are expected to be taken up again
in 2015, at the regular worldwide synod of bishops, which falls on the
50th anniversary of the restoration of the synodal system by Pope Paul
VI.