The Vatican’s synod on family is underway, and it’s not exactly going as planned. In a surprise that clearly discomforted a number of bishops, an Australian couple hand-chosen to talk to the bishops about the importance of marriage gave an impromptu lecture about the importance of loving gay people–and about sex.
Ron and Mavis Pirola, an Australian couple, have been married for 55 years. They have four children and eight grandchildren and are practicing Catholics. In short, everything the Vatican would like to tout as the ideal couple. So no doubt, the couple’s statement at the synod was about as welcome as a, well, a gay couple.
“Friends of ours were planning their Christmas family gathering when their gay son said he wanted to bring his partner home too,” the Pirolas recounted to the 200 assembled bishops (and one nun). “They fully believed in the Church’s teachings and they knew their grandchildren would see them welcome the son and his partner into the family. Their response could be summed up in three words, ‘He’s our son’.”
Not content to stop there, the Pirolas then told the bishops that they should follow that example: “What a model of evangelization for parishes as they respond to similar situations in their neighborhood! It is a practical example of what the Instrumentum Laboris [the Synod’s working document] says concerning the Church’s teaching role and its main mission to let the world know of God’s love.”
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But that wasn’t all. The Pirolas also spoke eloquently about the joy of sex, which had the group of (presumably) celibate clerics squirming. “Gradually we came to see that the only feature that distinguishes our sacramental relationship from that of any other good Christ-centred relationship is sexual intimacy, and that marriage is a sexual sacrament with its fullest expression in sexual intercourse,” the couple said.
As for Church teaching on sexual matters, the Pirolas politely described it as “from another planet.”
The bishops somehow mustered a round of applause for the Pirolas, though perhaps it was an attempt to get them to shut up. What the episode proved, however, is that the Vatican is out of touch with many of its most faithful members. The question is, will it deign to do anything about it?
Ronbo
Hopefully, when truth speaks to power, truth wins.
Leonard Woodrow
Bravo that couple! They are more Christian than the Pope and his peers.
Paul Nadolski
“…the Vatican is out of touch with many of its most faithful members.”
No kidding!
My niece will be baptized Catholic next month. (I’d rather she wasn’t but whatever, it’s not up to me). However, I know for a fact that her parents (my sister and brother-in-law) will raise her to love her gay uncle (me) just as much as her other aunts and uncles.
Cam
This is the problem that Churches like the Catholics and the Mormons have. Under the old Pope especially they were so out of touch with their parishioners, that they needed to get rid of him because he was killing off the church. Attacking people for using birth control when something like 90% of American Catholics use it.
Now this couple, the model of a good Catholic couple is lecturing them on how out of touch they are. Good for them!
Saint Law
@Cam: That is exactly why they got rid of the sclerotic old kween – because they understood that within a couple of generations the Catholic church – in Europe and probably America too – would be finished.
Truth is that when it comes to homosexuality the liberals have won.
The conservatives will be dead before they realise this fact, but then it was ever thus.
Bauhaus
Clearly, having an active sex life, they’ve used birth control and took control over their own family planning.
Welcoming a gay son and his partner as part of the family is also telling.
One nun on the panel?
How can any of these celibate nitwits have any meaningful insight into family dynamics in general, and sex in particular? They are so far removed from any notion of family and sex, it’s absurd.
Unless of course, they know a lot more about sex and relationships than they are letting on. If that’s the case, they need to come out of the closet and do away with cecilacy all together.
krandall
On the other hand…The very fact that they were allowed to make these comments and finish them rather than being ushered out of the room by the Swiss Guards, say a great deal that is good about the current pope. Not long ago they would have been shut down and made to leave before they finished what they had to say.
Like every other injustice, it is merely a matter of time before it is undone. And in the end, I believe history will show that Pope Francis played an important part in changing the way the church operates and what it teaches. Unlike Pope Benedict, Pope Francis is a pastor, not an administrator. We should all support him when he does things we approve of that make our lives better. In fact, I am going to write to him thanking him for allowing this couple to express their views in what must have felt like a hostile environment and for directing the bishops to listen and learn from the lay members who would be talking to them. He does not have an email address (neither would I, if I were pope) but you can send a letter to
His Holiness, Pope Francis PP.
00120 Via del Pellegrino
Citta del Vaticano
Shocking as it is, he not only reads a lot of them, he actually calls people when he’s moved by their letters. He recently called a 19 year old Italian guy in Padua after he left a letter for the pope when he went to mass at the Vatican. The guy wouldn’t say what he wrote. Once I looked at his face I felt I had a good idea of what he wrote about. I just wish I could have heard that phone conversation.
The Pirolas are very courageous and we owe them our gratitude. We must try to follow them and support them when they return home and are maligned and made scapegoats by ignorant and unenlightened members of their parish.
Lance Mullholland
Please give this new pope a break! He’s already confronted mafia money laundering (and traveled multiple times to Sicily) in the Vatican Bank. He’s just now beginning to break a stride as a progressive pope (and as a liberation theology Jesuit from South America). Can’t re-build Rome in a day, folks. It’s a big ship to turn around. Would you travel on a plane with this man ? I wouldn’t. He’s not just kissing babies and deformed people – he’s deeper than pure PR spin.
As an Old Catholic priest, I say God preserve and bless him + For us, he is still the bishop of Rome, may eventually help our Roman mother church catch up with us.
o.codone
wtf
SteveDenver
@Lance Mullholland: “Would you travel on a plane with this man ? I wouldn’t.” What a bizarre statement, where is your “faith.” Of course you wold, you would carry his shoes in your mouth like a puppy and crawl on all-fours.
Too bad this couple didn’t say, “We were discussing this last night and decided to leave the church and it’s bizarre bu||sh!t. You all know this is a big lie, but you have your pretty robes and hats, and love to parade.”
Lance Mullholland
Oh ye of little faith and knower of All Things. God gave us a brain to use, and (unfortunately) a small percentage of it at that.
Broad generalizations about whose shoes I would lick said in a mean way. Why is GayWorld so freakin’ coarse and rude ?
Bless your heart, as we say in the South…
Cam
@Lance Mullholland:
I give him a break, but part of his behavior is no doubt a response to the fact that the Catholic Church was dying a fast death under the previous Pope. Ratzinger seemed to prefer a hyper orthodox church that was much much smaller, angrier, and not interested in any good works. This Pope is walking the only path to recovery that could have possibly saved the church and seems to be doing a good job of it so far.
He also seems to be weeding out the crazy orthodox followers of the previous Pope one by one. It will be interesting to see what the church becomes under him, but it already seems to be heading in a far better direction.