The National Catholic Reporter has also posted an important article noting that over fifty Catholic academics in a dozen countries have signed a statement calling "the church's teachings on marriage and sexuality 'incomprehensible' and . . . asking bishops around the world to take seriously the expertise of lay people in their preparations for a global meeting of the prelates at the Vatican next year."
The signers urge the synod bishops to listen carefully to the experience of ordinary people who find unlivable the traditional church teachings on divorce and remarriage, cohabitation before marriage, same-sex marriage and contraception -- and they also urge all Catholics to take every opportunity to voice their experience by participating in the pre-synod questionnaire.
What is gratifying to me in particular is that the academics' critique of church teachings on human sexuality is sometimes a verbatim statement of the comments I made when I completed the church reform groups' survey.
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Implied in the article linked in this posting is a point that I did not articulate explicitly enough: the expectation of these academics is that if the bishops take the experience and expertise of lay people seriously and positively, they must necessarily make changes in the church teachings which these lay people find unlivable. As Hans Kung points out in the next posting above, only time will tell if Pope Francis has the insight, clarity, clout and courage to insist that pastoral experience and praxis put deficient doctrines in their place.
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