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"The Post-Synodal Exhortation has been ready since September"
by Father Pio Pace
Will there be a Post-Synodal Exhortation of the Synod of the Family, the commentators on Vatican matters ask. In fact, it was already completely ready before the Synod! Several months before the Ordinary Assembly of the Synod of Bishops for the Family, last October, the group of Cardinal Lorenzo Baldisseri, Secretary General of the Assembly, together with men such as Abp. Bruno Forte, Special Secretary, Abp. Paglia, President of the Council for the Family, and a few others, had already established a campaign plan in four stages:
1st: Pretending to base itself on the conclusions of the Extraordinary Assembly of October 2014, the Instrumentum Laboris, the roadmap for the 2015 Assembly, was unveiled in June 2015. It was in its third part that the explosive mines were placed to destroy the bastion of traditional doctrine: regarding eucharistic access for "remarried" divorcees, the Instrumentum inserted this proposal (n. 123): "Others refer to a way of penance, meaning a process of clarifying matters after experiencing a failure and a reorientation which is to be accompanied by a priest who is appointed for this purpose. This process ought to lead the party concerned to an honest judgment of his/her situation. At the same time, the priest himself might come to a sufficient evaluation as to be able to suitably apply the power of binding and loosing to the situation."
2nd: Then on September 8, without waiting for the meeting of the Synod at all, the Pope published a double text, prepared under the greatest secret under the direction of Msgr. Pinto, Dean of the Roman Rota, to reform the Code of Canon Law and the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches, regarding the procedures of the declarations of nullity of marriages. Shocked canonists found out only then the introduction of a kind of "annulment by mutual consent" asked directly of the bishop judging by himself in one month and a half. The grounds for "mercy" were prepared.
3rd: But the most important element of the Baldisseri Team's plan was this: the group was working in great secret on the document that the Pope was to publish after the Synod, whose crucial point would hinge on the famous "penitential path", or "path of mercy", presented in a maliciously ambiguous way, in order to open up a liberal gate with the pretense of not changing traditional doctrine. In such a way that, in the month of September 2015, one month before the opening of the Synodal assembly, the Post-Synodal Exhortation was ready.
4th: What was left was simply to manipulate the October synod enough -- which was not easy, as we know, due to an opposition which was much better organized than the Pope's men had foreseen (for instance, the letter to the Pope from the 13 cardinals). It was at the last minute, the group having been forced to redo the text of the final relatio presented to the vote at the next-to-last day, that three destructive articles were passed by a couple of spare votes, including n. 86: "The path of accompaniment and discernment orients these faithful to becoming conscious of their situation before God. The conversation with the priest, in internal forum, concurs to the formation of a correct judgment on what prevents the possibility of fuller participation in the life of the Church and on the steps that may favor it and make it grow."
The Baldisseri Team would have preferred that the Papal exhortation would have said, "Many Fathers have demanded that a penitential path of mercy, under the guidance of the internal forum by the confessor, may lead to Sacramental communion." They had to make do that the relatio speaks of a "fuller participation in the life of the Church." It remained for Fr. Spadaro, director of Civiltà Cattolica, the official Vatican journal, to explain the the Synod Fathers, "have effectively established the bases for access to the Sacraments" (November 28).
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In sum, the October 2015 assembly was nothing but a theatrical play destined to prepare the final act which is already written: the post-Synodal Exhortation of mercy and forgiveness for all. Its message will count on the unanimous support of the secular media, and of the vast majority of the Catholic media which a long tolerance for liberalism naturally inclines towards solutions that please the world.
What remains are grains of sand, which, as the letter to the Pope of the 13 dissatisfied Cardinals proves, can always jam the cogs of the machinery...
