For the record: Sandro Magister's Chiesa website has published its own translations of selected passages, plus analysis, from the 2015 Synod's Instrumentum Laboris, including Nos. 102, 115, 121, 123 and 129, for which we also provided our own translations in our analysis of this document on June 25 (see Instrumentum Laboris for 2015 Synod published: Translation of Selected Passages and Commentary).
Magister's analysis focuses on the orthodox side of the Instrumentum Laboris, which explains the title of his article: "Synod. Cold Shower for the Innovators." Magister does not discuss passage no. 125, but his interpretation of passage no. 123, while not mentioning Cardinal Kasper, coincides with ours: "As for access to communion for the divorced and remarried, the only case - apart from that of sexual continence between the cohabitors - in which the “working instrument” hypothesizes it, in paragraph 123, is the one examined and possibly resolved in the internal forum between the confessor “deputized for this” and the penitent, firming up a practice in use for some time."
As we took pains to point out in our original analysis of the Instrumentum Laboris, passage 123 -- its second paragraph to be precise -- is the poisoned drop that will most likely be used to inject the "Kasper proposal" into the body of Catholic doctrine. The following is Chiesa's translation, whose meaning does not differ from ours:
There is common agreement on the hypothesis of an itinerary of reconciliation or a penitential path, under the authority of the bishop, for the civilly divorced and remarried faithful who find themselves in a situation of irreversible cohabitation. In reference to “Familiaris Consortio" 84, one route suggested is that of becoming aware of the failure and of the wounds produced by it, with repentance, the verification of the possible nullity of the marriage, the commitment to spiritual communion and the decision to live in continence.
Others by a penitential path mean a process of clarification and of new orientation, after the failure experienced, accompanied by a priest deputized for this. This process should lead the party concerned to an honest judgment on his own condition, in which the priest himself could develop an evaluation of his own in order to make use of the power to bind and loose in a way adequate to the situation.
Magister notes that this is "a practice in use for some time", and this is correct: the Kasper proposal has, de facto, already been a reality in Church life for decades. The big difference is that Rome has never formally approved it. This is what the Kasperites want: the consensus of the Synod that will lead to the final stroke of the papal pen that will allow them to openly say that what is evil and unacceptable is all fine and good.
Forget about the rest of the document, no matter how sound or orthodox; if the substance of IL # 123 makes it into any future set of proposals to be enacted as part of Church law, the Catholic vision of the family as we know it is done for.
