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Friday, October 9, 2015

AS MY CLAIRVOYANCE HAS INDICATED LOUDLY AND CLEARLY, THE SYNOD ON THE FAMILY IS NOT GOING TO BE A RADICAL DEPARTURE FROM CATHOLIC DOGMA, DOCTRINE OR DISCIPLINE: IT WILL BE COMPLETELY POSITIVE AND HELPFUL TO ORTHODOX CATHOLICS!

Stealthy Pope Francis doesn't have to wear the trappings of monarchy to include the mozzetta in order to be a monarchical pope. And yes my clairvoyance tells me that His Holiness, the Supreme Pontiff will issue an exhortation at the end of the synod, sometime in the winter, upholding Catholic dogma, doctrine and discipline concerning marriage and sex.   Mercy and forgiveness will be linked to a traditional examination of conscience that leads to repentance, confession, firm resolution to not sin again, penance and absolution. It doesn't get any better than this!

The wonderful John Allen of Crux has a wonderful, positive analysis of the first week of the glorious Synod on the Family which will eventually allow Pope Francis, who sees the synod as a way to dialogue and hash out things for him, giving voice to diverse perspectives, even heterodox ones, but in no way a kind of politicized parliament used by other Christian denominations to deconstruct dogma and doctrine, not to mention discipline,  in order that His Holiness and His Holiness alone can write the final solution from this gathering from the college of bishops in union with Rome. That's pretty darn supremely monarchical papal in my estimation!

But here is John Allen's glorious, positive assessment, based upon written testimony from the glorious synod on what we can expect eventually from the Supreme Pontiff:

Catholic families are doing pretty well, bishops insist


ROME — In the first major reveal of what’s on the minds of the majority of bishops taking part in the Oct. 4-25 Synod of Bishops on the family, the Vatican on Friday released summaries of the first week of conversations in 13 small working groups organized by language that met on Wednesday and Thursday.

Several themes emerged from those reports:
  • Many bishops seem to feel that the diagnosis of the contemporary situation facing the family offered in the working document of the synod, technically called the Instrumentum Laboris, is excessively negative. They’re calling for a clearer recognition that living the traditional Christian vision of the family isn’t just difficult or rare, but actually happens in a fairly widespread fashion.
  • There’s a sense that the way the conversation has been framed at the synod is excessively based on a European or North American perspective, and doesn’t adequately bring into focus the challenges facing the rest of the world.
  • Many bishops seem to want to include the Church in the list of problems facing the family, acknowledging the “inadequacy of pastoral support” and failures in “Christian formation.
  • Several groups also want the synod to take on some specific challenges they see on the horizon, including “gender theory,” meaning the idea that one’s gender is changeable, and the tendency of some international organizations to tie development assistance for poor nations to liberalizing policies on sexual ethics.
The desire for a more positive tone, one that treats the realization of Catholic teaching on marriage and the family as something within the reach of ordinary people, ran through several of the reports.

The synod’s final report “should begin with hope rather than failures, because a great many people already do successfully live the Gospel’s good news about marriage,” said the English-language group headed by Cardinal Thomas Collins of Toronto, warning against breeding a sense of “pastoral despair.”

“If marriage is a vocation, which we believe it is, we can’t promote vocations by talking first about its problems,” the group said.

“Practically all the groups said, ‘Let us celebrate the goodness of the family, the efforts of so many people to preserve the family,” said Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle of Manila in the Philippines during a
“There’s a positive, hopeful, celebratory tone,” he said.

An Italian group led by Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco of Genoa, president of the powerful Italian bishops’ conference CEI, flagged the concern with an overly Western perspective.

The working document, the group said, is “strongly conditioned by a Western (European and North American) perspective,” it said, “above all in its description of the challenges opened by secularization and individualism that characterize consumer societies.”

The Spanish group led by Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga, the coordinator of Pope Francis’ council of cardinal advisors, underlined the need for the Church to acknowledge its own role in family struggles.

“It’s true that external factors affect us and are strong, but how have we answered as a Church?” the group asked.

“We’ve failed in ‘Christian formation’ and in the education in the faith, so [people] arrive to marriage with many loopholes,” the group said.


One of the groups that raised the question of international pressure on developing nations to abandon traditional family values was an Italian one led by Cardinal Edoardo Menichelli of Ancona, who was named a cardinal by Pope Francis.

“We hope for a change in the practice of international organizations that link their assistance for the development of the poorest nations to demographic policies,” it said.

The 2015 synod heard the small group reports on Friday and will hold another general session on Saturday. In the end, the 270 bishops gathered in Rome will present their recommendations to Pope Francis, who will ultimately decide what changes, if any, to make.

14 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well I am certainly glad to know that everything is just hunky-dory in the Church and at the Synod.

Fr. Allan J. McDonald said...

There is no way you read this post and commented so quickly as I just now posted it!!! CAUGHT!

Anonymous said...

Seriously? It wasn't too hard to skim the article and glean the hunky-doryness. I'm sure it will soon be raining gumdrops and honey at the Synod. I am so comforted.

Marc said...

My clairvoyance tells me that the pope will make allowance for the divorced and "remarried" to receive Holy Communion, but in doing so, he will give some nod to the national bishops' conferences to determine the way the "penitential" period proceeding the allowance of Holy Communion will proceed.

In doing so, the pope will promulgate a practice that is at odds with the doctrine. In an attempt to fool the masses, many bishops will say that the doctrine remains in force. People will see through that, and the pope will be deposed because he will have attempted to separate the practice from the doctrine established by Christ.

This will result in chaos among the Catholics who still care about doctrine, while the majority of the people in the Church will continue to go along with whatever and write blogs like this one saying that everything is fine. In reality, the see of Rome will be vacant and people will be very troubled.

Whatever happens, some amount of irreparable damage has already been done.

Marc said...

My clairvoyance also tells me that a document will issue that will begin to soften the Church's teaching on the intrinsically disordered nature of homosexuality and its acts. There will be no change in this doctrine at this synod, but the table will be set for a later synod to change the doctrine and the God of Surprises will develop the doctrine at some future time to let everyone know that homosexuality is fine since people are born that way.

Fr. Allan J. McDonald said...

Marc all this sounds like the very "relativism" that Pope Francis preaches on at his daily Mass just this morning, Rome time. He links what you say about him to the devil. I suspect you are misreading the synod and this pope! (please see my newest post on the Devil and Pope Francis).

Marc said...

Father, I certainly hope that I am misreading the pope. However, as a fellow clairvoyant, you must know that one cannot choose how the visions of the future are presented.

I think that you are misreading the pope when he talks about things like relativism. I think that the pope sees the devil manifesting himself in doctrinal rigidity. He sees "legalism" as a satanic thing. With that in mind, his sermon today more than supports my clairvoyant vision of this synod -- he wants to destroy any vestiges of "rigidity" in the doctrine and practice.

Anonymous said...

Enough of Pope Francis already good grief, let's wait it out and pray for Burke, Ranjith or Sarah to restore The Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church and TLM!! Father, you are way to obsessed with this Jesuit from Argentina kinda weird, you defend him at every corner and spin and spin and spin, and what's up with the tiara? Never gonna happen with this guy!!

Anonymous said...

Ya right. Okay. I'm sure that the ones on the committee (who have already written the final document, probably 5 months ago) Daneels, Forte, Baldassari and the head Jesuit are just the ones to uphold orthodoxy. You do realize Father that your statements are making you seem naïve beyond belief.

John Nolan said...

Jorge Bergoglio was happy to wear the mozzetta as bishop, archbishop and cardinal. It is not 'monarchical'; it is simply part of prelatial choir dress. To discard it on his election to the papacy is wilful and indeed monarchical, and puts him out of step with every other bishop.

Anonymous said...

Your really kidding me! Clairvoyance - all will turn out right. You have no basis to believe this. We are all seeing the same reports, lack of reports and distortions coming from Fr. Rosica. All of this is happening under the "merciful," "non-judgmental" eyes of Francis. He is ether ignorant, or a clever fox waiting to rob the hen house. We may soon have three popes, or three men in white. One claiming to have resigned and two claiming the throne. If St. Catherine were alive, she would give Francis a good piece of her mind.

Anonymous said...

I think Ross Douthat of the New York Times has the best predictions of the synod outcome of all:


"... At the same time, I also find it hard to believe that having encouraged the debate to go this far, having given the liberal position a newfound prominence, and having not once but now twice placed the synod’s leadership in the hands of churchmen whose views place them either firmly or ambiguously in Cardinal Kasper’s camp, Pope Francis would simply play Paul VI and issue a statement on marriage and communion that mirrors Humanae Vitae in disappointing every liberal hope.

That scenario is dear to some Francis-admiring conservative Catholics, a few of whom have constructed elaborate narratives in which the pope has been merely giving Kasper et. al. the theological rope to hang themselves. But it strikes me as as deeply unrealistic and implausible and evidence-free. Again and again, Francis has shown effective favoritism toward the liberal view; again and again he has tried to position himself as a mediator between upholders of doctrine and would-be modernizers. On other questions — women as priests, for instance — he has been quick to say “John Paul II settled this,” but not on remarriage and communion; here, to the contrary, he has spoken favorably of new possibilities from the very beginning of his pontificate. The Holy Spirit might persuade him to reverse course, but the evidence we have suggests that a simple reaffirmation of church teaching is not what he intends.

So if the full Kasper and the full Humanae Vitae are both out, what remains? The most plausible answer, or at least my own prediction, is simple ambiguity.

...
Which means, I suppose, that I’m predicting that these fraught three weeks actually won’t be the most fraught period for the church in my lifetime going forward, and that what we’ve come to this week isn’t really an endpoint or a climax: It’s a doorway, with far more uncertainty, disputation and civil war waiting for Catholics on the other side." http://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/10/05/predicting-the-synod/?_r=0

So simple ambiguity is likely to continue until the end of this pontificate and civil war will rage on.

Jan


http://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/10/05/predicting-the-synod/?_r=0

rcg said...

John has a good point. I wonder if his decision to be out of step with the other bishops in such a. Isi me way May to send a signal that he is not to be controlled or manipulated. I wonder if they are as perplexed as everyone else and if that not the intent.

Ed Lambert said...

Nice photoshopped pic of Pope Francis wearing a triregnum. No pope has worn one since Paul VI gave his away early in his pontificate.