Towards the end of the second week of the family synod the media divulged the unconfirmed story one bishop had reportedly shared with the assembly, a story from his diocese: a little boy whose father was re-married had, on the day of his first Holy Communion, broken a bit off the Host and given his dad the fragment.
The father would normally be barred from Communion on account of his irregular circumstances, yet on that day he communicated nonetheless, at the hands of his son. The bishop told this story to further a particular cause, to speak out in support of admitting re-married men and women to Communion. He was profoundly moved when he described the impression made on him by the boy’s spontaneous gesture.
This incidents calls for reflection. Is it acceptable for a bishop to invoke a child’s innocent action in a kind of emotional canvassing that smacks a little of manipulation? To probe more deeply: is the work of the bishops assembled in Rome driven by sentiment?
The media reported how touched the synod fathers were by this particular testimony. It is an account that sits well with the media’s normal approach. The media know that our world is largely governed by emotion. They readily play on emotions. The world we live in discerns reality by comparing it to a Hollywood movie full of sentimental kicks. We wish these kicks to be part of our own lives. We feel we’ve failed, somehow, if the kicks aren’t there.
Today’s world considers a marriage successful if one is passionately in love with one’s spouse, if the relationship is charged with desire and attraction, if the spouses enjoy each other and have fun. We tend, these days, to find out how we feel, then make evaluations and choices based on feeling. A thing is a good thing if it feels good. We are ready to break up a family if the good feeling is not there, or if we feel better with someone else. Yet the way we feel is no reliable criterion for serious choices. We are easily misled by our emotions.
A marital relationship is only to a limited extent a matter of feeling. Marriage is an unsentimental business. It depends on the exercise of rightly-ordered will, like most things in life. Of course it is great if a marriage feels good, but good feeling is not the goal of marriage. Marriage is a matter of constructing a family with another, of assuming responsibility for this family and providing for it, of caring for children, of showing loving consideration for one’s spouse. Thus the spouses endeavour, together, to entrust all aspects of their family life into God’s hands. For it to work, it is crucial not to think too much about how things feel – with the paradoxical result that things end up ‘feeling’ not just good, but very good.
Instead of focusing on stories like the one about the boy’s First Communion, instead of governing the Church from feeling, the bishops will perhaps serve their dioceses’ families best if they do not so much ask how they ‘feel’ but support and encourage the great task entrusted to spouses and families in society. This task is best served by unsentimental attitudes.