Pope Francis, cardinals and bishops from around the world have been given an unexpected lecture on the joys of sex, from an Australian couple brought in to talk about what makes a marriage last.
Ron and Mavis Pirola, Catholics and parents of four from Sydney told a Vatican gathering of some 200 prelates that sexual attraction brought them together 57 years ago and that sex has helped keep them married for 55 years.
"The little things we did for each other, the telephone calls and love notes, the way we planned our day around each other and the things we shared were outward expressions of our longing to be intimate with each other," the couple said in a joint statement to the closed meeting late on Monday.
"Gradually we came to see that the only feature that distinguishes our sacramental relationship from that of any other good Christ-centred relationship is sexual intimacy, and that marriage is a sexual sacrament with its fullest expression in sexual intercourse."
The audience of celibate men was a bit taken aback.
"That's not what we bishops talk about mostly, quite honestly," a sheepish British Cardinal Vincent Nichols told reporters on Tuesday.
"But to hear that as the opening contribution did, I think, open an area ... and it was a recognition that that is central to the wellbeing of marriage often."
The Pirolas told the gathering that they occasionally read church documents on family matters, "but they seemed to be from another planet, with difficult language and not terribly relevant to our own experiences."
Pope Francis called the two-week meeting of bishops to try to figure out how to make church teaching on a host of Catholic family issues - marriage, divorce, homosexuality and yes, sex - more relevant to today's Catholics.
The Pirolas also told the story of how devout Catholic friends reacted when their gay son wanted to bring his partner home to a Christmas gathering.
"They fully believed in the church's teachings and they knew their grandchildren would see them welcome the son and his partner into the family," they said. "Their response could be summed up in three words: 'He's our son."'
Nichols said the synod gave the Pirolas a round of applause.
In an indication, though, that opposition to such a welcoming position remains high, a group of conservative Catholic groups blasted the Pirola's example as "damaging" to the church.
"The unqualified welcome of homosexual couples into family and parish environments in fact damages everybody, by serving to normalise the disorder of homosexuality," said Maria Madise, coordinator of Voice of the Family in a statement.
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