Scottish Catholic Observer

As expected, attempts to whip up a storm of controversy over the discussion of pastoral care for the family has already started and the Synod of the Family is not even a week old. The flawed concept, within and out with the Church, that the Catholic doctrine could or even must bend to the will of the modern world clashes completely with the evidence-based assertion that Catholicism offers a pastorally proven path through the challenges of chastity, marriage and family.

Pope Francis did not shout from the rafters or employ bullying tactics at the World Meeting of Families. Instead he showed care, understanding, empathy, a sense of humour and real humanity.

Yes the synod will tackle trying issues, including sexual orientation and global economics, but it is the direction of pastoral care, not doctrine, that is being discussed and true progress is not just change for the sake of it, it has to be change for good so that our Church can be a true prophet of change.

Pope Francis opened the synod on Sunday by asserting that marriage is an indissoluble bond between man and woman, adding that that the Church cannot be ‘swayed by passing fads or popular  opinion.’ Sadly the secular world, which can feel judge by the Church, is watching not, we fear, for guidance from Catholic teaching, but for some announcement that could be perceived as an admission that the Church was or is wrong. Why? So the secular world can somehow free itself from the Church’s moral compass.

As Bishop John Keenan of Paisley said on Radio Scotland on Sunday, however, the synod is a consultative body and the real conclusions on the pastoral care for marriage and the family will be drawn by Pope Francis next year in a post-synodial Apostolic Exhortation in the Year of Mercy. We are all encouraged to pray for the synod.

Uplifting news that Mary’s Meals, a Scottish-founded charity named after Our Lady, is to receive match funding by the UK Government for a special three months’ project—the Feed Our Future appeal—that runs until December 28 2015.

UK Aid Match, which helped SCIAF’s Wee Box Lenten campaign this year to record results, will double public donations to Mary’s Meals’ Feed Our Future’ appeal, a move which could give over 100,000 children in the developing world the vital nutrition they need and the chance to stay in school.

A donation of £12.20 to Mary’s Meals can feed one child for a year. Until December 28 that amount could feed two children