Troubleshooting and the Synod on the Family

Last updated on: October 14, 2014 at 8:00 am by willduquette

Troubleshooting and the Synod on the Family 2014-10-12T16:58:18-05:00 willduquette

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The Synod on the Family is currently going on in Rome; many things are being discussed, and these things are causing many people’s heads to explode.

I’m not going to talk about those things, but I’ve got a few observations about troubleshooting.

Troubleshooting is the process of looking at a problem, figuring out what’s really causing it, and how to make it work. And make no mistake, that’s what the pope and the bishops are doing at this synod. The family, that basic unit of society, is in trouble in country after country, and the Magisterium of the Church is trying to figure out what to do about it.

As a programmer, I spend a lot of my time troubleshooting; though in my field we usually call it “debugging”. And there are a few things I’ve learned to do when presented with an intractable and inexplicable bug.

First, you have to consider all of the possible causes, including the ones that seem obviously wrong on the face of it. Things really do work better when you plug them in, and just because you think it’s plugged in doesn’t mean that it is.

Second, you have to consider all of the possible solutions, including the ones that seem obviously unworkable, infeasible, or (in this case) unethical or heterodox. I honestly cannot count the number of times someone has proposed solution A to me, and I’ve replied, “We can’t do this for reasons X, Y, and Z”…and then realized that X, Y, and Z all have obvious solutions and that solution A is, in fact, perfect. I’d ruled it out out of hand, and I was wrong to do so.

The final solution needs to meet all of the constraints. It needs to be ethical, orthodox, and workable. But in order to get to that solution, you need to open yourself up to the unthinkable…because, frankly, your intuition isn’t perfect, and the non-obvious solution won’t emerge otherwise.

In short, don’t be concerned about that unorthodox notion. They are exploring the territory; and that unorthodox notion might have an orthodox sibling just waiting to be noticed.

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photo credit: Qfamily via photopin cc

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