The Deacon's Bench
The archbishop of Philadelphia gave an interview this week to Adam Sosnowski, which will be published next week in the Polish Catholic magazine Miesięcznik Wpis (wydawnictwo Biały Kruk). CatholicPhilly.com has just released it for its readers. He covers a range of issues involving the Church today and the Synod now taking place in Rome.
How can one counter the anti-clericalism present in today’s culture and in the media? What should the Church do about this? What about laymen?
The only way to counter it is by living differently; by practicing what we claim to believe. There’s no quick fix. We’re a family of faith, not a religious General Motors, and we need to act like it. Priests, for example, are not little godlings. They’re sinners like everyone else. We’re all equal – laypeople, religious and clergy – in the Sacrament of Baptism. But, as in any family, we all have different tasks. Priests have the duty to shepherd and teach, to serve the needs of their people, to lead as pastors, and most of all, to celebrate the Eucharist and other sacraments. The glue that holds the whole enterprise together is love. If we don’t respect and love each other, and show it by our behavior, everything falls apart.
What might the synod change in Church doctrine or in the interpretation of the doctrine?
No synod has the authority to change core Christian teachings; nor does any Pope. In matters of interpretation, the unstated struggle in the 2018 synod revolves around Catholic sexual morality. As one young female youth minister put it: Underneath all its social science data and verbiage, the instrumentum laboris is finally, very quietly, about sex. It’s especially odd that the word “chastity” appears almost nowhere in the IL text. Humanae Vitae and the theology of the body are completely absent.
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