"Synod Fathers under intense pressure from the Kasper Front to modify their views - or else"

It seems Walter Kasper's racist remarks on Africa and Africans have caused an understandable shock wave throughout the assembly. They reflect a racist, xenophobic, and anti-African mindset that has removed the Church in Africa from any participation in the Synodal administration and governance, or in the committee formed to help draft the final relatio.

Other than that, Synod Fathers are being strongly pressured by the allies of the racist German cardinal, who are in the minority, to modify as little as possible the partial relatio: as Tosatti explains below, that was one of the main reasons why the racist manipulators did not want the addresses of the first week made public, they can now pressure the more fearful bishops to take 180-degree turns on what they said, and they can do it without losing face. Tosatti is too gentle to say exactly what kind of pressure is being applied, but we can be sure that, as they always do, the "Progressive Legion" have no scruples whatsoever in accomplishing what they deem necessary: they not only offer compensations to those who are weak for career "promotions", but they threaten, they blackmail, they shame, they lie, they deceive, they discriminate, they set continent against continent, nation against nation, cardinal against cardinal, bishop against bishop, they will go to the utmost consequences (even those we may consider absolutely unthinkable, and those we cannot even imagine) -- they are capable of absolutely anything, as long as they manage to accomplish their end: the birth of their "New Church of Worldliness".

Synod, time for pressure

MARCO TOSATTI

[Senior Religious daily for Italian daily] La Stampa

October 16, 2014

In these hours, and already beginning yesterday, an action of pressure by the supporters of the Kasper line is already in motion in the Circuli Minores [the linguistic small groups], in order to shift the opinion of bishops who are undecided or opposed, but [who are] perhaps can be manipulated.

In the meantime, the declarations of Card. Kasper on the African bishops, in an interview to Edward Pentin, have aroused not little astonishment, and also something more. The Cardinal practically affirmed that the ideas that African Bishops have on homosexuality are not listened to by the Western delegates at the assembly. They are heard, he added, in Africa... Remarking that it is "impossible" for Western delegates to comment on African problems, he said that Africans, "should not tell us too much what we have to do."

Many prelates are furious with the Relatio presented in the past days, because they have heard reactions from their nations on how local media have presented the controversial parties, above all on homosexuality, and they consider it causes enormous pastoral damage.

Meanwhile, a strong pressure effort is being developed in view of the Saturday vote on the final relatio of the Synod. Kasper said in the interview that he hopes that a favorable majority will be formed. And the members of the "Kasper legion" are working in this direction. In the circuli minores, it has been noticed that, when one of the Kasperites has to leave for some reason, he is immediately replaced by another one. Cardinal Marx [a Kasperite] has been heard saying out loud that for him it is incomprehensible how the Synod Fathers are more bound to Tradition than to the Pope.

It can be reasonably supposed that the interventions at the Hall have not been made public because it would have been harder to explain afterwards modifications in orientation due to the "moral suasion" being applied in the present hour.

Modifications that probably will happen; the bishops, even if many of them can privately see the inner workings, express sentiments that are not idyllic towards the Synod Secretariat that has organized them and that administers them, and are conscious [of the existence] of a governing style that punishes implacably those who have not been able to, or have not been fast or credible enough, to align themselves to the new style.

The Burke, Piacenza, Canizares, Morga affairs, among the more glaring ones, are an evidence of it. And the bishops see that those who a couple of years ago kowtowed theologically to Benedict XVI have found under Francis the honors to which they aspired.

The circuli minores have yielded up to this moment a large amount of amendments, that should deeply modify the disputed Relatio by Erdo and (above all) by Forte. But, as a Synod Father told us, it remains to be seen how many of these will be accepted by the Commission that will draft the final text. A Commission to which the Pope willed to add, in an unprecedented move, six new members. Guess from which line?...

[Source, in Italian]