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The truth of Our Lord Jesus Christ is crystal clear so when the language of prelates becomes torturous and hard-to-follow we know that the truth is somehow at stake. So I’ll state this clearly – if this bedrock of Catholic doctrine on the sanctity marriage and the sanctity of the Blessed Sacrament is changed, even changed indirectly, then we are departing from the truth. If we move from the revealed truth of Our Lord Jesus Christ then what shall we believe? Any of the Church’s moral doctrines can then be changed. Will we hear at some future date a cardinal using the language of pastoral care and mercy saying that the Church could tolerate, though not accept, contraception and IVF? Or even that the Church could tolerate, though not accept, homosexual sex and same-sex marriage?

So what happens if the dual synods of 2014 and 2015 come up with an ambiguous form of words that states that the Church’s teaching on marriage and the Blessed Sacrament cannot change but allows, in some circumstances to be determined by national episcopal conferences, divorced and re-married to receive Holy Communion?

If this tragic day comes I ask you to join me in not regretting or resenting the sacrifices that we have made through being faithful to God’s divine teaching. With all the focus on those who have broken their marriage vows and entered into second unions it appears that many of the bishops have forgotten the faithful who remain true to the Church’s doctrine often at great personal cost. The October synod should honour all those husbands and wives who remain faithful to their marriages, raising children on their own, even though they have been abandoned by their spouses. The Synod bishops should also respect those couples who do not have children because they refused to avail themselves of IVF as the solution to their infertility. The synod should also congratulate all those couples who enjoy large families on small incomes for rejecting contraception.

When I consider the synod in October I find consolation and guidance in what Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman wrote about the orthodoxy of the faithful during the betrayal of the Faith by many bishops during the Arian crisis. He wrote:

‘The Catholic people, in the length and breadth of Christendom, were the obstinate champions of Catholic truth, and the bishops were not. It is not the wise and powerful, but the obscure, the unlearned, and the weak that constitute the Church’s real strength.’

No matter what happens I will trust Our Lord’s confidence in the Holy Spirit, when He said "I bless you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for hiding these things from the learned and the clever and revealing them to little children”. (Luke 10:21). Let us stay in love with the truth of the Holy Spirit.