Clear as a teacher and tender as a mother : the interface between doctrine and pastoral care

Abstract

Clare Watkins' approach to shift the focus of her paper from the thorny debate on which doctrine needs to be developed, or which pastoral practice is unacceptable in the light of church doctrine, to some major theological themes related to faith-full living of marriage and family today is highly commendable. During the plenary meetings and at the ten circuli minores (the different language working groups) of the 2015 October Extraordinary Synod of Bishops on the family as well as during the press briefings on the works of the Synod and interventions by individual bishops and Cardinals to the media, the two areas in the life of the church, namely her teaching and the pastoral practice, continuously featured as the Synod's major bone of contention. Some claim that failure to deal with problems that remain unresolved on a doctrinal level will simply lead to the church's teaching being seen as rigid and lacking sensitivity. Others maintain that, though doctrine and pastoral care refer to two different areas of theology, they cannot contradict each other and for this reason pastoral solutions must be deduced from doctrinal truths. Watkins' theological arguments go beyond the myopic perspective of attempting to strike a "balance" between those who are concerned about a given situation being "in line with the church's teaching" and those who give greater focus to the "individual persons".