According to the article in today’s Daily Star, Pope Francis’ big summit on family issues won’t endorse any changes to church doctrine on homosexuality or whether civilly remarried Catholics can receive Communion.
And yet, it seems, everything has changed!
“From the crucial role African bishops have played in the debate, to calls to remove “intrinsically disordered” from the church’s language on gays, to the freedom bishops now enjoy to speak their mind once-taboo issues, Francis’ synod on the family has at the very least shaken up the church for years to come.
The article reported that Francis delivered a “…bombshell of a speech over the weekend kicking off the final week of the synod in which he called for nothing less than a revolution in the concept of the Catholic Church itself. He said it’s not a top down organization with the pope in charge but rather an inverted pyramid where the summit – the pope – is underneath and in service to the “holy faithful people of God” who are at its base.
“He called for a “healthy decentralization” of authority on certain problems form Rome to local bishops’ conferences, and said the papacy itself should be rethought, with the pope guiding the church but really just one bishop among many, one Catholic among many.”
Jesus would be proud.