hurch 'must deal with unmarried couples, divorced'

Many Catholics struggle to accept doctrine, says synod document

Vatican City, June 26 - The Catholic Church must find answers over how it deals with unmarried couples, people who are divorced, those who have married more than once and single parents, according the Instrumentum Laboris document that the Vatican has prepared ahead of an extraordinary synod of bishops on the family in October. The document added that many Catholics "show difficulties" in accepting the Church's doctrine on "birth control, divorce...

homosexuality, unmarried couples, faithfulness, sex before marriage and in vitro fertilization". The Instrumentum Laboris was compiled on the basis of feedback the Vatican gathered ahead of the October 5-19 synod on "the pastoral challenges of the family in the context of evangelisation". It said that "in areas of strong secularization, in general couples do not consider the use of contraceptive measures to be a sin" even though the Catholic Church says it is. "As a consequence they tend not to make it a subject of confession and take the Eucharist without any problems," it said.

The document added that the faithful still considered abortion an "extremely serious sin" and "always a subject of confession". It said that while the Catholic Church should not recognise gay unions, it should baptize children living with homosexual parents if those parents request it. The document said that bishops conferences all over the world were against "legislation that allows unions of people of the same sex". But it added that if people belonging to those gay couples requested that their children be baptized, the Church should welcome them "with the same care, tenderness and concern that other children receive".