It appears that the Holy Father has intervened at the Synod, largely to address (see edit below), not especially favorably, Cardinal Erdo’s superb relatio ante disceptationem. It is, of course, the Holy Father’s right to do just that. It is, after all, his party.

However, the Holy Father’s criticism of a “hermeneutic of conspiracy” is, perhaps, a little unnecessary. Edward Pentin’s reporting shows, fairly convincingly, we think, that figures in the Synod secretariat are carrying a brief for certain changes in Church doctrine. One suspects that they may even be supported by figures in the Curia outside the secretariat. It is beyond doubt that there are quite a few bishops and priests who, for whatever reason, support these doctrinal changes. (Though they are, to a man, careful to avoid calling them doctrinal changes. We would be, too.)

These bishops and priests are well organized—as the convenient confab at the Gregorian a while back shows—and well prepared to make doctrinal changes that will help the Church become every bit as vibrant as, say, the Anglicans or the liberal Lutherans or any other mainstream protestant church, all of which are characterized, apparently, by pews full of young families who never stop paying the Kirchensteuer. One needn’t adopt—we don’t think, at any rate—a hermeneutic of conspiracy to come to this conclusion.

Of course, there are antecedents for all of this, and within living memory.

Edited to add: Out of charity, we should note that John Paul Shimek, writing at the National Catholic Register, adds a little more to what we will call the “three official texts” statement. One, he states that Cardinal Baldisseri made a similar statement at the third general congregation. (The Catholic Herald piece suggests that Father Lombardi reported on the Holy Father’s intervention. The two possibilities are not, to our mind, mutually exclusive.) Two, he notes that, under the “three official texts” position, the calamitous Relatio post disceptationem is, therefore, not an “official text” of the Synod. We suppose, carrying the reasoning forward a piece, that the problematic Instrumentum Laboris is likewise not an “official text,” except to the extent that it reproduces the Relatio Synodi. The problem with a hermeneutic of conspiracy—or, for that matter, a real conspiracy—is that it is only supported by confusion.

Elliot Milco at The Paraphasic has a second really good post today: a personal reflection by the author on the question “Why Stay Catholic?” The impetus for the mediation being a question by an Orthodox acquaintance of the blogger’s, “I would be curious to know, given the Synod and the current pontificate, what keeps more faithful Catholics from becoming Eastern Orthodox.” Rod Dreher has implicitly asked the same question in the context of Michael B. Dougherty’s overheated piece in The Week. (Which we will not link to.) We encourage you to read the piece in full at The Paraphasic. It concludes on a hopeful—maybe even inspirational—note, and it is well worth your time.

As for us, we cannot help—as we said in a previous post—but think of Cardinal Ottaviani in all of this. It is no secret, though perhaps not as widely known as it ought to be, that he was humiliated time and time again on the floor of the Council. He was shouted down on the floor of the Council while discussing the schema that became Sacrosanctum Concilium (thus hanging ten thousand felt banners in ten thousand churches in the round) and “in Aula fit plausus” when his microphone was eventually cut off. (Acta Synodalia I.2.20.) Likewise, Norman Cardinal Gilroy, archbishop of Sydney, presiding over the Council, went out of his way to undercut Ottaviani’s legal argument regarding the multiple “alternative” schemata offered as replacements to his De Fontibus Revelationis. (Id. at I.3.132; cf. 1917 CIC 222 § 2.)

And the constant battle took its toll. Ottaviani’s introduction to his schema De Ecclesia, delivered on December 1, 1962, at the very end of the first session of the Council, is worth reading in full:

(Acta Synodalia I.4.121 [emphasis supplied].) We see more than a little sadness and even some bitterness in this. As Ottaviani saw it, the questions before the Council were prejudged by an organized clique intent on going through the motions until they got the results they wanted. And Ottaviani had to know that the modernists at the Council were angling at the dismantling of the Church’s doctrine and practice. Ecumenism and pastoral tone were little more than buzzwords intended to obfuscate and conceal this goal. (Sound familiar yet?) Yet, Ottaviani persevered. His episcopal motto was Semper Idem. Always the same. Funny how that works.

As for us, we may be perplexed, concerned, or even disturbed at the developments in Rome. (Though we are not, it seems, as perplexed, concerned, or disturbed as others.) But if Ottaviani endured and stayed not only faithful but also loyal in the face of all that, what else can we do?

As we said a little while ago, our Italian is nonexistent. But our ability to get from Google Translate to something like English is at least average. So, we were able to pick through—gingerly, gingerly—Cardinal Erdo’s relatio ante disceptationem from the Synod this morning. Lots of good stuff in it, near as we can tell, though we thought this was bang-on right:

Riguardo ai divorziati e risposati civilmente è doveroso un accompagnamento pastorale misericordioso il quale però non lascia dubbi circa la verità dell’indissolubilità del matrimonio insegnata da Gesù Cristo stesso. La misericordia di Dio offre al peccatore il perdono, ma richiede la conversione. Il peccato di cui può trattarsi in questo caso non è soprattutto il comportamento che può aver provocato il divorzio nel primo matrimonio. Riguardo a quel fatto è possibile che nel fallimento le parti non siano state ugualmente colpevoli, anche se molto spesso entrambe sono in una certa misura responsabili. Non è quindi il naufragio del primo matrimonio, ma la convivenza nel secondo rapporto che impedisce l’accesso all’Eucarestia.

(Emphasis supplied.) Good medicine, we think, and cheering to a certain extent to hear no less a personage than the general relator of the Synod dispense it so liberally. But, of course, we recall—thanks to New Liturgical Movement’s publication of the Vatican II Acta Synodalia—some of Cardinal Ottaviani’s relationes (and interventions) at the Council. We have in mind especially Cardinal Ottaviani’s relatio in support of schema De Fontibus Revelationis (“Revelatio“), delivered—though by Fr. Salvatore Garofalo—on November 14, 1962. Deeply orthodox, clear-eyed, precise, but doomed all the same.

One wonders, however, if the modernists at the Council would have been able to run rings around Cardinal Ottaviani in the age of Twitter.

Our Italian is not good, which is a decorous way of saying it is nonexistent. But Google Translate was made, apparently, for people like us, who never quite got around to studying a modern language. At any rate, the Holy Father, as expected, gave an address to the Synod fathers today in Rome. We suspect that those who enjoy—or cannot help themselves from—reading the tea leaves, so to speak, will find much grist for their speculative mills in the Holy Father’s address.

Cari fratelli, come ho detto, il Sinodo non è un parlamento, dove per raggiungere un consenso o un accordo comune si occorre al negoziato, al patteggiamento o ai compromessi, ma l’unico metodo del Sinodo è quello di aprirsi allo Spirito Santo, con coraggio apostolico, con umiltà evangelica e con orazione fiduciosa; affinché sia Lui a guidarci, a illuminarci e a farci mettere davanti agli occhi non i nostri pareri personali, ma la fede in Dio, la fedeltà al magistero, il bene della Chiesa e la salus animarum.

We have already seen, elsewhere, positive responses to the Holy Father’s homily at the opening of the Synod. We have also seen negative responses, most notably from those who expect—based, no doubt, on what they have been told by the media—that the Church is going to abandon millennia-old doctrines in favor of a I’m-okay-you’re-okay approach to everything. As for us, we think that the Holy Father frames the basic debate—the real debate—admirably well:

In this extremely difficult social and marital context, the Church is called to carry out her mission in fidelity, truth and love.

To carry out her mission in fidelity to her Master as a voice crying out in the desert, in defending faithful love and encouraging the many families which live married life as an experience which reveals of God’s love; in defending the sacredness of life, of every life; in defending the unity and indissolubility of the conjugal bond as a sign of God’s grace and of the human person’s ability to love seriously.

The Church is called to carry out her mission in truth, which is not changed by passing fads or popular opinions. The truth which protects individuals and humanity as a whole from the temptation of self-centredness and from turning fruitful love into sterile selfishness, faithful union into temporary bonds. “Without truth, charity degenerates into sentimentality. Love becomes an empty shell, to be filled in an arbitrary way. In a culture without truth, this is the fatal risk facing love” (Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate, 3).

And the Church is called to carry out her mission in charity, not pointing a finger in judgment of others, but – faithful to her nature as a mother – conscious of her duty to seek out and care for hurting couples with the balm of acceptance and mercy; to be a “field hospital” with doors wide open to whoever knocks in search of help and support; even more, to reach out to others with true love, to walk with our fellow men and women who suffer, to include them and guide them to the wellspring of salvation.

A Church which teaches and defends fundamental values, while not forgetting that “the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath” (Mk 2:27); and that Jesus also said: “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I came not to call the righteous, but sinners” (Mk 2:17). A Church which teaches authentic love, which is capable of taking loneliness away, without neglecting her mission to be a good Samaritan to wounded humanity.

I remember when Saint John Paul II said: “Error and evil must always be condemned and opposed; but the man who falls or who errs must be understood and loved… we must love our time and help the man of our time” (John Paul II, Address to the Members of Italian Catholic Action, 30 December 1978). The Church must search out these persons, welcome and accompany them, for a Church with closed doors betrays herself and her mission, and, instead of being a bridge, becomes a roadblock: “For he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified have all one origin. That is why he is not ashamed to call them brethren” (Heb 2:11).

(Translation by http://www.vatican.va.)

Over at Vultus Christi, the monks of Silverstream Priory have perhaps the best antidote to Synod-mania that we have read:

I have never been led astray by relying on this liturgical providence of God. The sacred liturgy is always this: God Himself giving us the very prayers and petitions that, in His ineffable wisdom, He already wills to grant. The simple fact that we were given this Magnificat Antiphon and not another on the eve of the Synod, reveals, I think, much of what God intends for His Church.

In case you can’t bear the suspense, the antiphon for the Magnificat in the Extraordinary Form for the First Sunday of October is Adaperiat Dominus cor vestrum in lege sua et in praeceptis suis et faciat pacem Dominus, Deus noster.

Check it out there.