39 questions

When the Yolanda typhoon crisis ebbs, Catholics here will be asked to give their views on 39 questions that Pope Francis fielded earlier.

“A survey of ordinary believers' views on sexual ethics signals a potentially ground-breaking change of emphasis,” BBC’s religious affairs correspondent Robert Pigott writes.  Many Catholics   passively murmur amen to counsel from the Vatican. Now, Francis prods them to speak up.

Francis “unprecedented initiative is a survey sent to Catholic bishops. Consult widely on touchy issues from contraception, sex outside marriage to divorced and remarried receiving Communion.

The Catholic Church in England and Wales was the first in the world to put the survey online. It urged members: Submit by 20 December.

Responses will be given to bishops before they gather in Rome next September. They meet for a synod to discuss the family". And their conclusions will be stitched into 2015 guidelines.

A covering note hints all might not be well. "Many Catholic children and young people will never see their parents receive the sacraments".

Their responses are likely to confirm what bishops already know, Pigott writes. The daily lives of Catholics—including the roughly one third who go regularly to church—is diverging dramatically from earlier norms. Divorced people who remarried are, according to the strict interpretation, committing adultery. They are denied Communion.

In the Philippines, there are the “KBLs”: Catholics who come to church three times in their lives: binyag or baptism; kasal or marriage and libing meaning funeral  

 A  Social Weather Stations survey in February 2013 found: (a) weekly church attendance slumped from a high of 64 percent in July 1991 to a low of 37 percent in February 2013.  (b)  29 percent of   Catholics considered themselves “very religious,” compared to 38 percent among Muslims and (c) one out of 11 “sometimes think of leaving the Church.”

The data reflect a worldwide historical trend of “secularization.” Inquirer’s Randy David notes. Not going to church regularly is not giving up one’s faith. Social scientists call this phenomenon “de-churchification”.  “In the Philippines,  I  guess that it is—the conversion of Catholics to other religions, especially to the Evangelical Christian churches that particularly troubles the church  today”....

Rome tried to fix this problem by increasing the number of saints who could serve as models of religious commitment for the young generation. John Paul II beatified 319 individuals during his papacy, far exceeding the 259 blessed persons named by all previous popes since 1585. Between him and Benedict, they elevated 124 people to sainthood. Two are Filipinos: Lorenzo Ruiz and Pedro Calungsod.

There is a shortage of priests. One priest here must serve 20,000 compared to the ideal of 2,000. “Talakag is 30 kilometers plus from Cagayan de Oro. I said mass there and people dressed in mourning surrounded me.  “Father, will you bless our cemetery? For years our dead have lain in unholy ground. When they were dying there was no priest to lift his hand above them in absolution. In death, there was no priest to give them final absolution. We buried them like pagans, without chant, or book or bell.”

“And so I went to the cemetery—and the dead of years sleep at last in hallowed ground. And the people, with tears in their eyes, pressed gifts into my hands—oranges and coffee and alligator pears, and strange tropical fruits.

Every priest has a dozen Talakags, different only in setting. But wherever a priest comes to stay, attendance at Mass doubles and triples in a few months”

That was written 50 years ago by the late Fr. James Haggerty, SJ. It is still true today.

As societies modernize, the place of religion in society will become sharply defined and limited, but religious faith will not disappear. What we cannot know except in retrospect, the sociologist Niklas Luhmann wrote is what shape religion will take as it adapts to new circumstances.

Even without touching core beliefs, there could be changes in practice, Pigott adds that’d stem from Francis's "style", i.e. to reduce conflict in the Church's ideal values and the real lives of its members.

To a great extent "style is substance" when it comes to applying the rules.  In contraception for example, new thinking could call for Catholic couples to be "open to life" in their sexual relationship. But it’d leave up to their consciences how exactly they manage it.

The Pope's survey, broaches issues that once were no-no for debate. This has raised expectations and, assumptions. Whether justified or not, (they) might be hard to satisfy.”  

A few weeks back, Francis slammed those too focused on enforcing rules. He spurned being locked up in "small-minded rules", and an obsession with "the transmission of a disjointed multitude of doctrines".

There is no sign that Pope Francis plans a major overhaul of Church doctrine. But it is clear that he wants a switch in emphasis to a message of mercy and forgiveness, especially towards those who are suffering.

Pope Francis is not offering to change teaching on contraception.  It is not diluting what it regards as a "gold standard" Like the Church's understanding of what constitutes a "valid" marriage—that is, between a man and a woman—is not open to reform.

But there is elbow room change of focus to the "kinder" and non-judgmental approach Francis repeatedly calls for. “The Pope has shown that he is aware that even those Catholics who shun the rules are hurt by the way the Church deals with them, in deeds as well as words.”