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| Pope Francis on his way into the Synod |
Well the Synod on the Family,
Part II is underway and the kettle has come to a boil. Several Cardinals have written a letter to
Pope Francis complaining that the Synod is “stacked” to get pre-determined
results in favor of the “Kasper Proposal” for greater inclusion in the life of
the Church of the divorced/remarried and the LGBT community.
The Cardinals expressed three
specific complaints about the processes of the synod.
1.
In the past,
Synodal documents contained a series of propositions which could be voted up or
down according to the mind of the Synod to give an adequate reflection of where
the Synod members stood on the concrete issues at hand. The current Instrumentum Laboris—the Synod agenda—lacks this structure of
propositions and makes it difficult to draw the lines of approval/disapproval
of the final text.
2.
The Committee
which drew up the Synod’s Instrumentum
Laboris—was not elected by the Synod members but appointed (presumably by
the Pope) and thus the agenda does not reflect the ideas of the Synod but ideas
being imposed on the Synod from above.
3.
The real agenda
at work behind the scenes is not about the spiritual welfare of the Family but
about communion for those in irregular unions (divorced and remarried, same-sex
couples) and this involves doctrinal principles which, if shifted, put the
Catholic Church more in line with the cultural trends espoused by the liberal
Protestant Churches who are facing extinction as they move away from sound
biblical and doctrinal principles. (To
be precise, the letter only mentioned the “divorced and civilly remarried.”)
Frankly, I think the
objecting Cardinals have some interesting points, especially the final
one. However, anyone familiar with the
Synod process knows that for decades now the conservative curiae of Saint John Paul II and Benedict XVI had extremely tight
control on the previous synods and the documents were pretty much
pre-determined. The Synods have rarely,
if ever, been the truly open discussion forum for the bishops of the world to
give honest and open advice to the Popes.
It was always ok when the conservatives did it; but now some people are
smelling a rat.
The strange thing about the
letter is that when it was leaked to the press (through the anti-Francis
Italian journalist, Sandro Magister) it was alleged that thirteen
Cardinal-delegates had signed it. (There
are thirteen Cardinals in the faction determined to block the Francis Agenda,
and the Synod is “stacked?” I am missing
something here.) Four of the alleged
signers have, however, denied ever seeing the letter, much less having signed
it.
Pope Francis gave a rather
strong address to the Synod during the first week condemning a “hermeneutic of
conspiracy”—a perspective on the Synod that suspects there is a lot of
back-room/back alley pushing and pulling for one agenda to win out over the
other. Signing Cardinals’ names to a
letter they had never seen sure sounds to me like there is a conspiracy, but
not a conspiracy to push the alleged Francis/Kasper agenda, but rather one to
block any significant change in Church practice.
On a much smaller scale, this little contretemps reminds me of the infamous "black week" during the third session of Vatican II -- a little coterie of conservatives convinced Paul VI to intervene personally in the conciliar deliberations and reserve to himself certain tendentious issues. Paul caved and the council was unable to press the issues of episcopal collegiality, priestly celibacy and birth control. One might say that Francis has imitated Paul by "reserving" certain synodal outcomes to himself and hence seeming to limit a truly collegial exercise of teaching authority. On the other hand, Francis is no Paul and will not give in to an (apparently) unrepresentative group of malcontents. Magister, moreover, is no Rynne, Kaiser et. al. On another note, the synod, as with the council, points out the difficulty in ascertaining just what the "ordinary (universal) magisterium" teaches since it is so difficult to know with certainty just what the bishops really think and believe when such gatherings can be manipulated if not hijacked. Add to that the mendacious and craven careerism that leads so many bishops to hide their real beliefs so as to win favor with whoever is backing their candidacy and dangling preferment before their hungry eyes and fueling their scarlet fever.
ReplyDeleteProtestant? As has been often said the Orthodox permit at least three tries at marriage.
ReplyDelete