Fr Alexander Lucie-Smith skrev nylig et brev til The Catholic Herald der han forklarer hvorfor han undertegnet brevet der 500 engelske prester ba høstens bispesynode om å holde fast på Kirkens lære om ekteskapet. Der skriver han noe veldig interessant om hvordan folk flest oppfatter ekteskapet i vår til – også i katolske menigheter:
… First, I am a moral theologian. That’s my job, and it seems incredibly important to me that the underlying moral issue is not obscured here. Yes, there are pastoral issues, but there can be no pastoral solution without taking account of moral truth. Rather oddly there seem to be very few moral theologians taking part in the Synod. Pastoral theology is about the application of moral theology. Talking about pastoral provisions without reference to morals is a bit like having a discussion in a room from which the oxygen has been pumped out.
Secondly, I am, like almost all the signatories, a parish priest. As such I know that divorce is no longer really an issue in the way it was. There are, of course, people who are divorced and remarried in my parish. But there are many more who have never been married. Divorce is not the problem in developed societies like ours: the problem is that divorce has been so successful that it has undermined marriage. Marriage has become “a piece of paper”, a devalued currency. We need to rebuild the institution of marriage from the foundations up. …