(OSV News) – Bishop Robert Barron said he is in “frank disagreement” with a section of a report from the Synod on Synodality indicating that scientific advances could prompt “rethinking” of the Church’s teaching on sexual morality.
In an essay titled “My Experience of the Synod” published on November 21 on the website of Word on Fire, a media apostolate Bishop Barron founded and leads, he wrote, “The suggestion is made that advances in our scientific understanding will require a rethinking of our sexual teaching, whose categories are, apparently, inadequate to describe the complexities of human sexuality.”
His remarks respond to a point in the synthesis report from the synod’s first meeting, held from October 4-29 at the Vatican, that states: “Certain issues, such as those relating to matters of identity and sexuality, the end of life, complicated marital situations, and ethical issues related to artificial intelligence, are controversial not only in society, but also in the Church, because they raise new questions. Sometimes the anthropological categories we have developed are not able to grasp the complexity of the elements emerging from experience or knowledge in the sciences and require greater precision and further study.”
It continues: “Church teaching already provides a sense of direction on many of these matters, but this teaching evidently still requires translation into pastoral practice. Even where further clarification is required, Jesus’ actions, assimilated in prayer and conversion of heart, show us the way forward.”
Bishop Barron, who leads the Diocese of Winona-Rochester, Minnesota, said he had two issues with the report’s language: first, “that it is so condescending to the richly articulate tradition of moral reflection in Catholicism, a prime example of which is the theology of the body developed by Pope St John Paul II”.
“To say that this multilayered, philosophically informed, theologically dense system is incapable of handling the subtleties of human sexuality is just absurd,” he said.
Additionally, he said, “the deeper problem I have is that this manner of argumentation is based upon a category error – namely, that advances in the sciences, as such, require an evolution in moral teaching.”
Bishop Barron was among 14 bishops from the United States who attended the 16th Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, which for the first time included voting lay members among its 363 delegates. The complementarity of faith and science has been a particular area of emphasis for the bishop and Word on Fire, and in February the organisation launched a five-episode series on their intersection called “Wonder: The Harmony of Faith and Science”.
Using the example of same-sex attraction, Bishop Barron wrote, “Evolutionary biology, anthropology, and chemistry might give us fresh insight into the etiology and physical dimension of same-sex attraction, but they will not tell us a thing about whether homosexual behaviour is right or wrong. The entertaining of that question belongs to another mode of discourse.”
He said it is “troubling to see that some of the members of the German bishops’ conference are already using the language of the synod report to justify major reformulations of the Church’s sexual teaching”.
“This, it seems to me, must be resisted,” he said.
Bishop Barron said he also questioned whether the synod was too focused on the Church’s internal workings instead of its outward mission, whether it seemed to falsely articulate a tension been love and truth, and whether the term “mission” was used too ambiguously, with an emphasis on the Church’s temporal social responsibilities over its commission to preach the Gospel.
“The primary mission of the Church is to declare the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and to invite people to place themselves under his Lordship,” Bishop Barron wrote. “This discipleship, to be sure, has implications for the way we live in the world, and it certainly should lead us to work for justice, but we must keep our priorities straight. The supernatural should never be reduced to the natural; rather, the natural order should be transfigured by its relationship to the supernatural order.”
Bishop Barron praised the synod for its emphasis on broad listening within the Church, addressing Catholics who feel excluded and highlighting the contribution of the laity.
“The very best part of the synod was, of course, coming into close contact with Catholic leaders from all over the world,” he wrote. “In my various small groups — and during the very lively coffee breaks — I met bishops and laity from the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Lithuania, Hong Kong, Germany, Canada, Mexico, Argentina, Austria, Australia, and on and on. The four weeks in Rome was a uniquely privileged opportunity to sense the catholicity of Christ’s Church – and like it or not, this kind of encounter changes you, compelling you to see that your vision of things is one perspective among many.”
Themed “For a Synodal Church: Communion, Participation, Mission”, the synod included a two-year preparation phase to gather input and insights from the global Church. It was organised in two parts, with a second and final gathering of synod delegates scheduled for October, 2024.
Bishop Barron noted that “all of these ideas and experiences from the synod will continue in the coming year to percolate in the mind of the Church, in preparation for the second and final round next October”, and asked for prayers “for the work that we synod members must do both in the interim and at the Vatican next year”.
Photo: Bishop Robert E. Barron of Winona-Rochester, Minn., arrives for the first working session of the assembly of the Synod of Bishops at the Vatican on October 4, 2023 (CNS photo/Lola Gomez)
It is a fundamental that
1.NO two homosexuals can EVER fall in love [anima/animus].
2.No two homosexuals can EVER reproduce like two heterosexuals .
3.Grace springs from nature, not the other way around. What is
not natural can never EVER be graced with a blessing..
The German bishops have a problem. They have YET to face it.
It is a mammoth apology to the German people. Lawsuits resulting
in U.S. $300,000 for pedophilia should be routinely accepted, and
apologies made. Deflecting attention from the German problem is not
going to change the veracity of that inconsistency.
Attempts by German Bishops to alter the Catholic Catechism so that they (the Bishops)
appear to be squeaky clean is equally scandalous.
Bishop Barron is, frankly, too nice. “Evolutionary biology, anthropology,
and chemistry might give us fresh insight into the etiology and physical dimension
of same-sex attraction, but they will not tell us a thing about whether homosexual
behaviour is right or wrong.”
What Rome should have stated,it should have been stated long ago. Flowery language
won’t get Rome off the hook any more than it will get German Bishops off the hook.
Problems MUST be faced. Using academic posturing does not fool the masses any
more, most of whom are well educated anyway.
Th EU is following an ideology. That much can be seen from its clear stance on pro-choice,
unlike Poland which is pro-life, AND is being persecuted by the EU.
Instead of promoting nonsense, German Bishops could show some backbone by openly
contradicting EU policy on pro-choice, and thus contradicting the ideology that underpins
the EU, an ideology that began in USA, and has spread globally, and is an apostasy
– that much can be gleaned from its 1973 Humanist manifesto. Promoting homosexual
behaviour is part of that ideology/ apostasy/ Secular Humanism.
A Bishop should be a sign of contradiction, not someone who swings along with an
EU profile that promotes abortion.
It was not until 1822 that the church took the work of Copernicus off the index of “forbidden books”, long after windjammers circumnavigated the globe without Satellite navigation.
Giordano Bruno was burnt at the stake for following the work of Copernicus, who claimed the earth revolved about the sun. Galileo was forced to abjure detest curse or suffer the same fate as Bruno.
In any event he was under house arrest for the rest of his days.
When saint Peter went back into the temple he had to involve himself with Judaic myth (Jewish), which meant Sheol was “down there”, heaven “up there”, and the earth was flat into the bargain.
This myth- Jewish influence has continued with the reading of Old Testament regularly (the Divine Office contains much material from psalms), but also in tacit acceptance of myths which are well and truly dated.
The place for science is generally accepted as a secular mindset. It does not offer a glimpse into either God or soul, which do not exist in the sensate anyway (“Crossing the threshold of Hope” JPII- on positivism).
As such science supplies findings which cannot alter basic self-evident moral norms, that a read of the Catholic Catechism contains.