Pope Francis has ordered the Vatican to convene an urgent meeting of senior clerics to reexamine church teachings that touch the most intimate aspects of people’s lives.

“Billed as an ‘extraordinary’ assembly of bishops, the gathering could herald a new approach by the church to the sensitive topics,” says The Los Angeles Times.

The meeting, according to the paper, is to hold this fall, specifically in October. It lists issues to be discussed to include contraception, cohabitation, divorce, remarriage and same-sex unions. Describing these as “issues that pain and puzzle Roman Catholics who want to be true to both their church and themselves,” Latimes says: “Now those issues are about to be put up for debate by their leader, a man who appears determined to push boundaries and effect change.”

According to the paper, “The run-up to the synod has been extraordinary in itself, a departure from usual practice that some say is a mark of the pope’s radical new leadership style, and a canny tactic to defuse dissent over potential reforms.

“Within a few months of his election last year, Francis directed every diocese in the world to survey local attitudes on family and relationships and report back to the Vatican, a canvassing of a sort that few of the faithful can recall previously. The results are being tallied and synthesized behind the walls of the Vatican.

“The exercise reflects Francis’ desire for less centralized and more responsive decision-making, mirroring his own self-described evolution from a rigid, authoritarian leader as a young man into one who consults and empathizes. His training as a Jesuit has taught the pope to cast as wide a net for information as possible, analysts say.

“Taking the public temperature also brings tactical advantages. Nobody at the Vatican will be surprised to learn that vast numbers of Catholics disobey its ban on premarital sex and birth control, or that some are in gay partnerships. Setting down those realities irrefutably on paper, however, could strengthen a bid by Francis to soften the church’s official line and put pressure on bishops inclined to resist, including some in the United States and many in Asia and Africa, conservative areas where the church has been growing.”

“It is telling the pope and the Vatican what they already know. But it’s what the Vatican in the past has not wanted to hear,” author and Vatican expert John Thavis is quoted as saying, adding: “It’s strategic, but it’s also a genuine effort to find out what the voice of the church really is on this. It’s very much Pope Francis who wants less of a top-down model — the bishops preaching the rules and doctrine down to the faithful — and more of a dialogue.”

Latimes reports that “some jockeying is already underway.” According to the paper, Prelates in Germany, Switzerland, parts of the U.S. and a few other jurisdictions who favour a softer line have published their survey findings to bolster the case for change. The report says that German bishops reported that many of their parishioners view the church’s teaching on sexual morality as “unrealistic,” its prohibition on artificial contraception as “incomprehensible” and its treatment of remarried divorcees as pitiless.

That the Germans also publicized their results in English “clearly meant they were trying to influence public opinion in a worldwide manner,” Latimes quotes Robert Gahl, who teaches at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome, as saying.

•Photo shows Pope Francis.

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