From: Ouko joachim omolo
The News Dispatch with Omolo Beste
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 10, 2013

Sr. Veronica from Nairobi, Kenya writes: “Father Omolo I watched on EWT News flash yesterday that Pope Francis has called for an extraordinary synod in October 2014 to discuss the subject of the family.

The extraordinary synod will see heads of Eastern churches, presidents of the bishops’ conferences, and heads of Curia offices gather at the Vatican from October 5 – 19 for a meeting entitled “Pastoral Challenges of the Family in Context of Evangelisation”.

That the pope wants to unify church teaching about marriage, divorce and remarried Catholics to receive Holy Communion. Annulments also he says “has to be reviewed, because ecclesiastical tribunals are not sufficient for this. Can you help understand this father?”

Thank you Sr. Veronica for raising this important issue. Yes, Pope Francis has called for special synod of about 150 synod fathers who will take part in the session, compared with about 250 bishops who attended the three-week ordinary general assembly on the new evangelisation in October 2012.

According to the Code of Canon Law, an “extraordinary general session” of the synod is held to “deal with matters which require a speedy solution.” This will be only the third extraordinary synod since Pope Paul VI reinstituted synods in 1965, to hold periodic meetings to advise him on specific subjects.

A 1969 extraordinary session was dedicated to improving cooperation between the Holy See and national bishops’ conferences; and a 1985 extraordinary session, dedicated to the 20th anniversary of the end of the Second Vatican Council, recommended the compilation of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which was published seven years later.

Pope Francis has realized that the pastoral care of marriage is complex. Such problems, he says, exemplified a general need for forgiveness in the Church today. “The Church is a mother, and she must travel this path of mercy, and find a form of mercy for all,” the Pope adds.

This synod fulfills what he had told reporters accompanying him on his plane back from Rio de Janeiro in July that the next synod would explore a “somewhat deeper pastoral care of marriage,” including the question of the eligibility of divorced and remarried Catholics to receive Communion.

A recently translated book by Pope Francis also exhibits a call for Catholics who have been divorced and are remarried to be made welcome in parishes, in the hope that they can remedy their situations.

“Catholic doctrine reminds its divorced members who have remarried that they are not excommunicated — even though they live in a situation on the margin of what indissolubility of marriage and the sacrament of marriage require of them — and they are asked to integrate into the parish life,” he says in his newly translated book On Heaven and Earth.

On Heaven and Earth (Spanish: Sobre el cielo y la tierra) is a book that presents conversations between Argentine Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, who later became Pope Francis, and Argentine rabbi Abraham Skorka. The book is about faith, family and the Catholic Church in the 21st century. It was first published in Spanish in 2010 and appeared in an English translation in 2013.

Speaking on the New Evangelization, and using the Emmaus Journey as a framework, the Pope encouraged his listeners to reflect on why people reject the Church today—why, like the Emmaus disciples, they decide to walk the other way. To bring people back to Christ and his Church, we must understand why they leave in the first place.

To that end, Pope Francis offered ten specific reasons:

1. The Church no longer offers anything meaningful or important.
2. The Church appears too weak.
3. The Church appears too distant from their needs.
4. The Church appears too poor to respond to their concerns.
5. The Church appears too cold.
6. The Church appears too caught up with itself.
7. The Church appears to be a prisoner of its own rigid formulas.
8. The world seems to have made the Church a relic of the past.
9. The Church appears unfit to answer the world’s new questions.
10. The Church speaks to people in their infancy but not when they come of age.

Faced with this situation we need a Church unafraid of going forth into their night. We need a Church capable of meeting them on their way. We need a Church capable of entering into their conversation.

We need a Church able to dialogue with those disciples who, having left Jerusalem behind, are wandering aimlessly, alone, with their own disappointment, disillusioned by a Christianity now considered barren, fruitless soil, incapable of generating meaning.”

On celibacy, Francis upholds the existing rule in the Western church but also hints at openness to reconsidering things down the line. “It is an issue of discipline, not of faith,” he says. “It can be changed.”

Pope holds the opinion that Religion has a right to give an opinion as long as it is in service to the people. We have also to help the poor. A poor man must not be looked at with disgust; he must be looked at in the eyes.

Fr Joachim Omolo Ouko, AJ
Tel +254 7350 14559/+254 722 623 578
E-mail omolo.ouko@gmail.com
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Real change must come from ordinary people who refuse to be taken hostage by the weapons of politicians in the face of inequality, racism and oppression, but march together towards a clear and unambiguous goal.

-Anne Montgomery, RSCJ
UN Disarmament
Conference, 2002