The Encyclical and the Synod: A Miscellany

On the Encyclical:

1) Towards the end of yesterday's General Audience, Pope Francis declared that this upcoming Encyclical "places itself in the line of the Church's social doctrine." (Source.)

For the Record: As everyone knew, Pope approved most shocking document in the History of the Church of Rome

It was what Italians call a "segreto di Pulcinella", that is, not a secret at all: the Pope was personally aware and personally approved the relatio post disceptationem, the "midterm" report released on Monday following the first week of the 2014 Extraordinary Assembly of the Synod of Bishops "on the Family".

The Great Division - Papal Intervention on Franciscans of the Immaculate reaches insanity levels: Commissioner warns Italian bishops in person

Tosatti: "Not a very good atmosphere to breathe right now in the Church."

If one wants a reason why Synod special secretary Abp. Bruno Forte, a man currently very close to the Pope and one of his closest advisers, suffered a major defeat in this week's assembly of the Italian Bishops' Conference (CEI) in the election for Vice-President representing Central Italy (including the Latium...), one must only look at what was going on inside the assembly halls in Assisi, as Marco Tosatti reports below. Despite John Allen's spin to the contrary as not a big deal, the most ultra-liberal of Italian Vaticanists, Marco Politi, was right to identify it as a major message to the Vatican from Italian bishops who are honestly fed up. In an organization so marked by symbols as the Catholic Church, this symbolic message by those bishops in the Bishop of Rome's own country, and own region, was a huge deal. 

There is a general feeling not only of great unease with the direction a strong cabal around the Pope wants to take the Church on moral doctrine, undoing the hard work of Benedict XVI and in particular of John Paul II - a cabal in which Abp. Forte has a strong presence - but also with the heavy-handedness of it all. As Cardinal George is to say in an interview to be released tomorrow, it seems as if there is a desperate rush to implement irreversible change that is hard to understand - George identifies it perhaps with an apocalyptic view of history. (It is not that, though: it is not so hard to understand it when one realizes that ultra-liberal clerics are in a race against time to refashion the Church.)  Many bishops are feeling suffocated by the authoritarian fumes, a weight of unproclaimed persecution that is getting on the nerves not only of conservative prelates, but also of very many very moderate bishops, who form the immense majority of Italian bishops. By the way, a similar interpretation of the election of the United States Conference's four representatives in the 2015 Synod is not off the mark: most U.S. Bishops are also understandably alarmed. Not to mention the Bishops of Poland, in complete resistance to the very notion of the possibility of communion for "remarried" divorcees - the same position of the Bishops of Ghana at the end of their Conference's assembly this week.

Marco Tosatti shows just one example of what was going on in the CEI meeting in Assisi - in the middle of it all, the Papal Commissioner that has been destroying the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate for over a year warning Italian bishops not to welcome those priests desperate to get out of their ordeal:

FFI: "Watch out" for the fugitives

AP confirms: "Outed" Forte exclusively responsible for "Gayspel", only ONE Father had even mentioned issue in Synod Hall

Bruno "Outed" Forte

From Nicole Winfield's Associated Press article on Synod special secretary Abp. Bruno "Outed" Forte. We post it here for the record of the history of the most embarrassing document in Catholic history, and its most infamous passage, where Forte sneaked his own "New Gospel":

Erdo has already "outed" the official who wrote the section on gays, Monsignor [Archbishop] Bruno Forte, appointed by Pope Francis as the special secretary to the synod. Forte is an Italian theologian known for pushing the pastoral envelope on dealing with people in "irregular" unions while staying true to Catholic doctrine.

"The Counterfeit Synod" There's a problem with it. - A Devastating Critique of a Sick Assembly

A Synod that's kind of a counterfeit?

While it is true that the Church is not a democracy, and that one cannot go forward by majority coups, the faithful as a whole cannot be subjected to theological and doctrinal mini-coups. Just as nature, the Church does not appreciate leaps.

Marco Tosatti

[Senior Religious Analyst for Italian daily] La Stampa

October 15, 2014

When the rapporteur - a Cardinal of the Holy Roman Church - ignores more or less explicitly the fatherhood of a report that has his signature on it, then there's a problem

What an Amazing Coincidence! Abp. Bruno Forte's Personal "Gayspel" and Italian Politics - Plus: Saint Paul the Apostle versus Forte

Who needs Saint Paul, anyway,
when one has a Forte?

It is by now well known that Abp. Bruno Forte, special secretary to Synod rapporteur Cardinal Peter Erdo, sneaked in the "Relatio post disceptationem" his own personal views on homosexuals and homosexual unions as if they were prevalent Synodal views, and not his personal "gay moment". Now, Vaticanist Sandro Magister reveals that Forte's "New Gospel", the "Gayspel", conveniently came out on the same day as the two major Italian political parties announced their astounding support for "homosexual unions," a secularizing revolution based on falsified statistics. What an amazing coincidence! The "Gay Lobby" must indeed come from the supernatural world, since it truly works in mysterious ways...

From Sandro Magister's Italian-only blog Settimo Cielo:

The coincidence must be fortuitous, but on Monday, October 13, precisely on the very same day on which in the Italian political arena both the party of [Socialist prime-minister] Matteo Renzi as that of Silvio Berlusconi [the main "conservative" party] announced their will to legitimize homosexual unions, on the other bank of the Tiber the special secretary of the Synod on the Family, archbishop Bruno Forte, said that he also hoped for the same thing, because "it is an issue of civilization."