Pope Francis had harsh criticism for conservative bishops in the church who would rather stick to strict dogma and “bury their heads in the sand” while families are struggling.
As the Huffington Post reports:
The pope spoke at the end of a three-week gathering, known as a synod, where the bishops agreed to a qualified opening toward divorcees who have remarried outside the Church but rejected calls for more welcoming language toward homosexuals.
It was the latest in a series of admonitions to bishops by the pontiff, who has stressed since his election in 2013 that the 1.2 billion-member Church should be open to change, side with the poor and rid itself of the pomp and stuffiness that has alienated so many Catholics.
He said the synod had “laid bare the closed hearts which frequently hide even behind the Church’s teachings or good intentions, in order to sit in the chair of Moses and judge, sometimes with superiority and superficiality, difficult cases and wounded families”.
He also decried “conspiracy theories” and the “blinkered viewpoints” of some of the gathering, and said the Church could not transmit its message to new generations “at times encrusted in a language which is archaic or simply incomprehensible”.
. . .
The synod is an advisory body that does not have the power to alter church doctrine. The pope, who is the final arbiter on any change and who has called for a more merciful and inclusive Church, can use the material to write his own document, known as an “apostolic exhortation”.
Throughout the gathering Pope Francis called on the church to move away from rigid and archaic practices that placed adherence to rigid policy over the kindness and care of those seeking the acceptance of the church.
For more on this, read the article from the Huffington Post titled: “Pope Francis Ends Synod by Excoriating Bishops With ‘Closed Hearts’ and ‘Heads In The Sand.”
