SOME friends of mine have wisely turned their backs on the thoroughly secular, anti-religion mentality that they had during the college, young adulthood and peak-of-professional life stages of their lives. They have—in Scott Hahn’s famous phrase-- “journeyed home.” Some of these friends have become “conservative” Roman Catholics. They somehow disapprovingly viewed the recently concluded Part 1 of the Synod on the Family as nothing more than an effort of the Church to win some “pogi” points with most of world’s secular media, which are massively anti-religion and, specially, anti-Catholic.

But a few have become “liberal Catholics.” These were saddened by the result of the Synod, which rejected ideas that the mass media expectedly gave undue prominence.