Reflection on February 9, 1983

https://www.ewtn.com/library/PAPALDOC/jp2tb107.htm

There has been talk recently with the synod on families about divorce and new flexibilities in allowing divorcee’s to receive the Eucharist. If you read some, it is a done deal that this is going to happen, while if you read others (and the more credible ones in my experience) and we will not have any concrete theological directions from this synod for a rather lengthy period of time. All that we have now are snippets for some, and probably a lot of that with the spin of their own particular bias. I was trying to think what SJPII would be saying at the synod in light of what we read here. Marriage is a sign. Any expression of the language of the body “not according to the needs proper to marriage” comes from the man of concupiscence. In other words, if we degrade marriage or become more acceptable of divorce, we distort the sign that marriage is, and as we have seen, marriage is a fundamental sign of our very understanding of God’s relationship with us. Marriage and its meaning, if seen as that foundational sign, the primordial sacrament, is Truth itself. Truth cannot be changed.

The world talks of divorce and gay marriage and civil unions. All of these speak of distorted language of the body, a distortion of marriage as the primordial sacrament. And we can see very clearly in our world what the distortion of fundamental understanding of marriage has done. It has not only devolved our morality, but, and probably the bigger cause for the first, it has totally distorted and deteriorated the world’s belief and trust in God.

I am nervous about what I hear, but we must trust in the Holy Spirit. What has been released is not the final say and if you look at history, when Humane Vitae was released, the world was expecting something very different. This synod’s end result may just be our next Humane Vitae, which would shake the world and further push Catholics into a segregated group. But, as Humane Vitae has been, that small segregated group will be a bright light shining in a growing darkness of the world. We are not called to bow down to the lowest common denominator so that no one’s feelings get hurt or people will feel no shame. We are called to bring a higher standard to the world, called to be like Christ, called to be that light. The world pushes the Catholic Church towards the lowest common denominator, to a world of relativism, to a world without Truth. We must hope in Christ words that the Church He would establish on the rock of St. Peter, the Catholic Church, and “the gates of hell shall not prevail against it”.