Is the world spinning faster than usual on its tilted axis?

Difficult to keep up these days with events.

In NZ we have had a No to increasing our refugee quote followed by a Yes to a limited period but sizeable in numbers increase. The churches are promising to assist.

Of course in Europe there are tens of thousands streaming in, quota or no quota, somehow they are going to be housed in Germany ... France ... Britain ... Austria (the dots representing the momentary pause as countries chime in with promises to take amazing numbers of refugees. And even, I see on the news, Iceland. Dare we ask how many of the young men pouring across Europe from Syria wish to end up in Iceland? (That is nothing against Iceland per se, but it is an island and Down Under we live in islands and sometimes they are a little isolated ...!)

But my eyes were taken a day or so ago by another story in which the world seems to spin faster than we are used to, H/T to KiwiAnglo. According to one of the articles linked to by Ron Smith, Pope Francis has been up to his new but increasingly familiar trick of doing the unexpected. He has met with Bishop Jacques Gaillot, once out of favour as a more or less exiled, wandering bishop now possibly drawn in from the cold to the warm fires of Francis' compassionate heart for humanity.

In this article, Gaillot gets to talk with Francis at length and the matters they traverse are more, shall we say, on the Samaritan side of things than on the priest and the Levite side.

"Now, in yet another remarkable turn of events under the current pontificate, Pope Francis on Tuesday (Sept. 1) met privately with Gaillot at his Vatican residence.“I don’t want to ask anything of you, I told the pope, but a whole people of the poor are happy that you are receiving me, and feel acknowledged too,” Gaillot told the news service Agence France-Presse.“I spoke to him about … the sick, the divorced, gay people. These people are counting on you,” Gaillot told AFP.Gaillot, who at 79 is just a year older than the pope, said he told Francis how he had recently blessed a divorced couple as well as a homosexual couple.”I am in civil cloth(ing) and I just bless them. This is not a marriage, it is a blessing,” Gaillot said he told the pope, according to another French media report (translated by New Ways, a ministry of LGBT Catholics). “We have the right to give the blessing of God, after all we also bless houses!”“The pope listened,” Gaillot said, “he seemed open to all that. At that particular moment, he specifically said that to bless people also involves to speak well of God to those people.”Gaillot said Francis told him to “continue, what you do (for the downtrodden) is good.”Francis certainly seemed to understand the import of this meeting."

Of course the Vatican can say that it was (a) a private meeting, and (b) what is being reported is Gaillot's version of the conversation. Indeed if we read Gaillot carefully in this extract, he mostly reports what he said to the Pope and not what the Pope said. When he quotes the Pope on blessing of same sex couples the Pope says that to bless people also involves to speak well of God to them. But that is not quite the same thing as the Pope saying what Gaillot is doing is all OK by the Catechism and Canon Law. It is a theological truism that when we bless then we also speak well about God to those whom we bless.

Nevertheless this is a remarkable conversation because it happened. No Pope needs to speak to out of favour clerics. They can remain in their home country. Rome is expensive to travel to, etc. And it doesn't sound as though the Pope protested when Gaillot told him about whom he was blessing.

As we Down Under, in the Anglican stable, tune in to these conversations, there is food for thought, n'est ce pas?

Can we distinguish blessing of any couple seeking to live faithfully, to each other and to God, from marriage between a man and a woman? Will we be a church which offers discretion to clerics to bless as Gaillot has done?

As I reflect on our debate on Motion 30 at our synod a couple of days ago, posted on here, I discern (more intuitively than anything because there were not many speeches made) that we might be a church which in large part would settle for the ability for clergy to have that discretion.

But would those who are opposed to blessings (let alone same sex marriage) see their way to being part of a church which grants permission to exercise such discretion while retaining (as Motion 30 already says) the traditional doctrine of marriage?

That is the question of our day (I suggest, as I ruminate, but don't ask me next week as I may be intuiting differently).

I am not talking about compromise so much as making space for differently held views. A space which already exists on other matters on which we disagree. My sense after the synod is that many want that space to be available on this matter even if there are not many who take up any opportunity to exercise discretion.

The thing about Francis is that he seems to be pushing out the 'space' in the Roman sphere. Making more room for more people, including the divorced (noting the major conference on the family coming up very soon) and, it seems, subtly enlarging space for those identifying as gay.

As the world spins faster, it can also seem that its axis is tilting more than usual!

Update: read about Francis' motu proprio on speedier annulments in a Damian Thompson column here. Why do the psychologically immature get a free pass here?