Rorate Caeli

Synod, first day: "Unacceptable" - the danger of the Great Division has arrived

A follow-up on the procedural rigging created by Cardinal Baldisseri and Archbishop Forte (and the other Bergoglian strongmen) for the 2015 Synod.

The Synod has officially opened today (right now, in fact, with its opening mass), and Xavier Rynne II explains in the Catholic Herald why the manipulation of this year's Synod is even worse than last year's - in fact, it is not a "synod" at all, barely a chat at tea time.

More than one Synod father has described both the procedures and the final-report commission as “unacceptable.” ...

Speeches (“interventions,” in Synod-speak) to the full assembly of the Synod will be limited to three minutes in duration, ie, about 750 words – less than the length of a typical daily Mass homily. These interventions, according to the announced procedures, are the Synod’s property and will not be made public.

The bulk of the Synod’s discussions will be conducted in language-based discussion groups (circuli minores, in Synod argot), the results of which will not be made public.

Filtered reports on the Synod will be given at daily press conferences, the speakers being chosen by the Synod general secretariat – presumably, for their reliability in conveying the messages that Cardinal Lorenzo Baldisseri, the general secretary of the Synod of Bishops, and Archbishop Bruno Forte want conveyed. (Archbishop Forte is Synod-2015’s special secretary and the man who is widely thought to have been the principal author of the deeply flawed Interim Report that caused a large-scale revolt of the Synod fathers at Synod-2014.)

There are, it seems, to be no “propositions” generated by the discussion groups, which means that there will be no votes on propositions, which means that the Synod fathers will not be asked to express their convictions publicly on anything.

As to the final-report commission:

Its membership includes serious churchmen, but as one Synod father put it, very few of the commission’s members have been vocal, public supporters of the Church’s classic teaching and practice on Holy Communion for the divorced and civilly-remarried. Moreover, the commission includes none of those who have most vocally defended that teaching as irreformable because of its basis in divine Revelation. It is also striking that none of the elected American, Canadian, or Australian, or Polish Synod fathers are members of the commission, just as it is striking that none of the four Synod delegate-presidents are members. The commission does, however, include Cardinal Baldisseri and Archbishop Forte.

All of this is quite…remarkable.

There is absolutely no precedent in the contemporary history of the Church for a synod at which there are neither propositions nor votes – the primary instruments by which the Synod fathers make known, publicly, their convictions.

What will it all boil down to? A moment of deep, intense crisis. Rynne recalls insistently that all this manipulation seems to contradict the spirit of "dialogue" promoted by the Pope, but since it is the men whom he trusts most who are rigging the Synod, he should reach the conclusion that is correct: they are acting under higher orders. And, yes, this will reach boiling point, and soon, and it will get nuclear:

Synod-2014 reached its crisis point mid-way through its three weeks of work. Synod-2015 will likely reach its first crisis point in its first days. What is decided in those early days will determine whether Synod-2015 is the “open dialogue” for which the Holy Father has repeatedly called. a dialogue in which the light of Revelation is brought to bear on a set of problems that is causing immense suffering throughout the world; a dialogue that in fact settles the question, at least for this moment of history, of whether the Catholic Church remains a Church founded on, and ultimate governed by, divine Revelation.

Which, in turn, suggests that we return to the original Greek meaning of “crisis,” remembering that a “crisis” is a moment of great opportunity, as well as a moment of considerable danger. (Catholic Herald)

As Father Edward Tomlinson wrote yesterday:

The modernists want to overthrow traditional Catholic teaching and methodology to conform to the Spirit of the age. And with the Synod deck stacked in their favour, and with it now being a matter of public record that they have control of the Vatican and have been manipulating the process for years, we stand at a moment of genuine crisis for those whose desire is to be faithful to Christ. (source)
***

The danger of the great division has arrived. Listen!

The time is coming - it's fast approaching,
When wiser men, and greater men,
Men with proper authority,
Will rise up, and proclaim,
Innocent as they are,
Innocent as the child by the road:
"the Emperor has nothing on!"