Editor’s note:  Our Lady Queen of the Most Holy Rosary Cathedral Mass for wedding anniversaries is Sunday, Oct. 19 at 3 p.m.

ROME — In Mass homilies and conference speeches, in literature racks and glossy posters at the backs of sanctuaries, Roman Catholic leaders confidently proclaim the answers to questions of sex, marriage, and family.

They honor marriage as a divinely ordained sacrament, family as the core cell of civilization and as a church in miniature, raising new generations of faithful.

Sexual revolution? They respond with the “theology of the body” by the late pope, St. John Paul II, affirming marital sex as an icon of God’s love.

Birth control? Natural family planning, a combination of abstinence and timing sex according to the fertility cycle.

Divorce and remarriage? A tribunal that can sometimes annul previous marriages, opening sacraments to remarried people otherwise barred from them.

Homosexuality? An “objectively disordered” inclination, according to Vatican teaching, but one able to be managed in celibacy.

But many aren’t listening.

Beyond the minority of frequent Mass attenders who embrace the closely twined Catholic orthodoxies on faith and family, many Catholics in North America and other industrialized lands have tuned them out.

Large numbers of Catholics use birth control; majorities of American Catholics favor legalized abortion and same-sex marriage, contrary to their bishops’ stances, and they’re divided on whether gay sex is sinful. Weddings in Catholic churches are down by half and requests for annulments down by nearly two-thirds since 1990, according to Georgetown University researchers, evidence of declining interest in the sacraments.

‘Extraordinary synod’

Those are only some of the challenges that are facing cardinals, other bishops, and lay people who gathered at the Vatican over the weekend to begin a two-week “extraordinary synod” called by Pope Francis to address “the pastoral challenges of the family in the context of evangelization.”

Pope Francis called the synod in advance of a larger one next year on the same topic, so concrete results, if any, are expected only after next year’s gathering. Before that synod, the Catholics’ World Meeting of Families will be held in Philadelphia Sept. 22-27, and the Pope might attend, though his appearance has not been confirmed.

“I think it’s pretty significant that they’re doing not just the general assembly synod but an extraordinary one,” said Monica Martinez, director of the Diocese of Toledo Office of Marriage and Family Life.

This year’s extraordinary synod is expected to cover concerns ranging from sexual dissent in the West, to polygamy in Africa, to the worldwide economic shifts and migration crises that are pulling apart families of all types.

The delegates mainly include bishops, but also some nonvoting lay people, including married couples, many involved in promoting church teachings, and delegates from some other Christian churches. No one from the Diocese of Toledo is a delegate.

Cardinal Donald Wuerl of Washington — who serves on the Vatican congregations for the doctrine of the faith, for bishops, and for clergy, as well as on pontifical councils for promoting Christian unity and for culture — is a delegate to the gathering.

He said the synod would “not identify some new truth about the meaning of marriage, the gift of human sexuality, the role of family in society.

“All of this has been revealed in the preaching and teaching of Jesus Christ and in the truths of our faith,” he wrote in a recent blog post. “What will be new is how we live and express these truths in the context of this time.”

He expects an affirmation of church family teaching, but also “ridicule of this position in much of the secular information-entertainment industry.”

Massive response

Pope Francis asked bishops worldwide to survey their local faithful on matters facing the synod, and they got an earful.

“A vast majority of responses highlight the growing conflict between the values on marriage and the family as proposed by the church and the globally diversified social and cultural situations,” the Vatican’s official working document said. It laments influences from mass media, commercialism, hedonism, and a “throwaway mentality” — but also admits the self-inflicted damage to the church’s own credibility by bishops’ cover-ups of sexual abuse by priests.

In the Diocese of Toledo, the Office of Marriage and Family Life coordinated the survey in December, Ms. Martinez said. The responses included “a lot of great suggestions [related to] what are we doing to help people going through divorce [or] to prepare for marriage. People out there are like, ‘We can do more. We don’t know what’s being done, but we feel like something more can be done to reach out.’

“Just to see in a church document the fact that Catholics by and large reject the church’s teaching on birth control is a rather revealing admission,” said Nicholas Cafardi, dean emeritus and professor at Duquesne University’s School of Law and former chair of the U.S. bishops’ National Review Board for the Protection of Children and Youth.

The church’s working document also expresses hope this would change if Catholics learn more about their own teachings, although it said even that would be inadequate without a faith experience to go along with it.

Rethinking postures

While those involved with the church expect the synod to uphold church teachings, there could be some changes in how they’re carried out.

“I would have no expectation that the church is going to change any specific doctrines,” said Peter Feldmeier, the Thomas and Margaret Murray & James J. Bacik professor of Catholic Studies at the University of Toledo, “but rather rethink appropriate pastoral postures, like finding ways for divorced and remarried Catholics to be able to return to communion. This theoretical indissolubility of marriage — which has this huge caveat, with annulments which are widely given — I don’t think the church is somehow going to say, ‘We’ve decided marriage is not indissoluble.’ ”

Mr. Feldmeier expects that the church is “still going to hold the ground on forbidding same-sex marriage and artificial contraception.”

But he said the synod will be “finding more hospitable ways to minister to and be with folks who are same-sex, who in fact do use artificial contraception — which is legion in the West — and find ways for faithful Catholics who are in a second marriage to return to communion … or find ways for people to rethink how they might be free to come to communion while still in a remarriage without an annulment.”

With fewer people being married in the church, Ms. Martinez said, “Making marriage more attractive for young couples is important.”

As for same-sex marriage and the issue of homosexuality in the church, Ms. Martinez said, “I’m probably in anticipation as much as the next person as to what’s going to result as far as that topic goes. Giving people better resources and better language to dialogue is necessary. We need to be able to talk about it, and we need to be able to be welcoming and to understand what that means as a church.”

Renewing vows

At Our Lady Queen of the Most Holy Rosary Cathedral, the annual Mass for wedding anniversaries will take place Oct. 19 at 3 p.m. Couples who have been married 25, 40, 50, or 60 years, and any anniversary after the 60th, have the opportunity to renew their vows.

“We honor people who have stuck it out and kind of been a witness to marriage in today’s world,” Ms. Martinez said.

The Block News Alliance consists of The Blade and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Peter Smith is a reporter for the Post-Gazette. Blade Religion Editor TK Barger contributed to this report.

Contact Peter Smith at: petersmith@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1416.

First Published October 9, 2014, 4:00 a.m.