Update on the Synod in Rome–People ask the Pope to make a solemn declaration to end the impasse

PRESS RELEASE

Rome, 22nd October 2015 – After delivering 790,150 signatures to the Vatican Secretariat of State on the 29th September, the Filial Appeal Association has just handed in a further 68,052 signatures requesting Pope Francis for a “clarifying word” as the “the only way to resolve the growing confusion amongst the faithful”—in regards to allowing divorced and civilly remarried couples to receive Holy Communion, as well as in regards to homosexual unions—in the certainty that these words would “never separate pastoral practice from the teaching of Jesus Christ”.

The timeliness of the request has been made evident during the course of this Synod now approaching its end.

According to a recent editorial column of an American magazine well-known to be “innovating”: “Midway through the general assembly of the Synod of Bishops on the family, confusion, if not chaos, reigns, to paraphrase a synod father. And in that confusion is fear, fear of uncertainty and the unknown.”

This is not surprising. Under the guise of employing very inclusive pastoral language, leading figures of the Synod strike at the root of fundamental concepts of Catholic morality such as “indissolubility” of marriage, the “intrinsically disordered nature of homosexual relations”, the classification of “adultery” for civil marriages after a divorce and even the aphorism that “one must love the sinner, but hate the sin”.

Even greater confusion comes from the proposal that pastoral practice towards the divorced and civilly remarried, as well towards homosexual unions, be decentralised—something that will inevitably lead to divergence and divisions.

The coordinators of the Filial Appeal deem it to be of the utmost importance that, as has happened many times in the past, Pope Francis himself—as supreme judge of the Faith and utilising his power as successor of St. Peter—definitively decide all these matters of Faith and Morals that have come up during the Synod; and that he do so in a clear, solemn and irrevocable manner: Roma locuta, causa finita.