Archbishop Chaput, in New York Talk, Addresses Synod, Meeting of Families

Posted

“It’s important that families who believe in the Christian understanding of family show up and be part of that discussion” at the World Meeting of Families in Philadelphia next September, said Philadelphia’s Archbishop Charles J. Chaput in a New York address.

The archbishop extended the invitation after delivering the 27th annual Erasmus Lecture presented by the Institute on Religion and Public Life, publisher of First Things magazine, Oct. 20 at the Union League Club in Manhattan.

“You’re all welcome” to the international gathering, he told attendees. “You’d be a part of a crowd of about a million and a half people” anticipated to converge on Philadelphia to see Pope Francis who is expected to attend.

In the question and answer session following his address, Archbishop Chaput was asked about his assessment of the Oct. 5-19 Extraordinary Synod of Bishops on the Family in Rome.

“I was very disturbed by what happened…The public image that came across was confusion,” he said.

He said he would defer extensive comment until he had spoken with synod delegates Archbishop Joseph E. Kurtz of Louisville, Ky., president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, and Byzantine Archbishop William C. Skurla of Pittsburgh.

“There’s no doubt that the Church has a clear position on what marriage means, and that you don’t receive Communion unless you’re in communion with the teachings of Christ,” Archbishop Chaput continued.

“Gay marriage,” he said, “is not a possibility in God’s plan and therefore it can’t be a reality in our lives.”

At the same time, “we have to be charitable toward people who disagree with us,” Archbishop Chaput said.

Additionally, more attention should be given to reaching out to divorced Catholics, Archbishop Chaput said, “so they don’t think they’re immediately excluded from the Church.”

Regarding proceedings at the Synod, Archbishop Chaput said he was not “fundamentally worried.”

“I believe the Holy Spirit guides the Church. The last report at the end was certainly much better than the interim listing of the topics that were talked about, and there’s another synod to complete this work next year at this time,” he said of the October 2015 World Synod of Bishops on the Family in Rome.

Archbishop Chaput’s talk also addressed religious freedom, marriage and the family, abortion, catechesis, Mass attendance, vocations and evangelization as well as outreach to the poor, immigrants, elderly and the disabled.

“Ignoring the poor among us is the surest way to dig a chasm of heartlessness between ourselves and God, and ourselves and our neighbors,” he said.

The poor include the unborn child., he added “There’s no way to contextualize or diminish the evil of a law that allows the killing of innocent, unborn human life. Nor is there any way for any Catholic to accept or ignore that kind of legalized homicide when it comes to decisions in the voting booth or anywhere else.”

The subject of Archbishop Chaput’s lecture, “Strangers in a Strange Land,” was a play on the title of the 1961 science fiction novel.

A science fiction aficionado, the archbishop said he always liked that title. “It reminds me of the self-understanding of the Church in its earliest days. We were ‘strangers in a strange land,’ and I think that’s becoming true today.”

In the developed world, increasingly, people of faith, people for whom God is the anchor of their lives, people who once felt rooted in their communities, Archbishop Chaput said, “now feel like strangers, out of place and out of sync in the land of their birth.”

Religious belief and practice remain high in the United States compared to any other developed country, he continued, “but that’s changing and the change has implications.”

“It means that the work of First Things, and the labor of its friends and supporters—all of you here tonight—your scholarship, your voices, your public engagement, become more vital than ever before.”

Cardinal Dolan delivered the Erasmus Lecture in 2004, as did Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the future Pope Benedict XVI, in 1988.