The Pope's Theologian

The Catholic Herald reports that Pope Francis and members of the council of the Synod of Bishops met earlier this week to review input from around the world for October’s synod on the family and made their final suggestions for the synod’s working document.

The office of the synod’s general secretary will incorporate the suggestions and have the document translated, said a statement issued after the meeting.

“The publication will take place in a few weeks,” it said.

The Vatican sent every bishops’ conference the conclusions of the extraordinary synod, along with 46 questions related to how well the Church supports families and how Catholics understand Church teaching on marriage, sexuality and family life. Bishops were to solicit responses to the questions, compile them at the national level and return them to the synod office.

The Herald notes that, as the council was meeting with the Pope on Monday and Tuesday, the presidents of the bishops’ conferences of Germany, France and Switzerland organised a study day in Rome.

According to a press release from the German bishops’ conference, the meeting on May 25 brought together about 50 bishops, theologians, Curia officials and a few journalists to discuss issues likely to be raised at the synod.

The National Catholic Register goes further with the importance of this, suggesting the confidential meeting seeks to sway the Synod to accept same-sex unions. The respected reporter Edward Pentin reports that the aim of the meeting was to urge “pastoral innovations” at the upcoming Synod of Bishops on the Family in October.

The tension and concern surrounding this synod are tangible and the Catholic media is watching the Vatican as never before. It really does appear that there is a concerted effort underway to "break" the Magisterium and head off in a direction which is more in-line with "the times" as it were. Such a betrayal of the systematic logic and careful consideration of centuries of theologians would inevitably bring about a real schism. 

It is unthinkable to me that such a reality is even possible, but the fact that Cardinal Pell has felt it necessary to state that he expects the Synod to massively endorse Church teaching shows that not endorsing Church teaching is an idea that is floating around out there! 

The relativism/ liberalisation of the Church is a project run since before Vatican II and has wrought disaster in the Church; if we don't stand for anything, we stand for nothing at all, and young people and old feel that there is no point belonging to an organisation which is largely irrelevant or based on feelings rather than a reality. A "theology of love" being mooted by the German Bishops' secret meeting merely panders further to this decay.

Cardinal Walter Kasper has been the progenitor of this kind of thinking and started the whole mess off at the first speech of the last Synod session. Lots of people in the media have said that Cardinal Kasper is the Pope’s theologian.

But is there any reality behind this claim?

In fact, the post of Papal Theologian is already held by Fr Wojciech Giertych OP who went to St Ignatius College, Stamford Hill (which then moved to Enfield while he was still at St Ignatius’).

So what does this Pope's real theologian think on these issues? I think you might find this very illuminating and very encouraging:

So Fr Wojciech is not only the Pope’s personal theologian, he is also a Moral Theologian. That’s right a Moral Theologian – not an Immoral Theologian.

Just a few weeks ago, the English & Welsh bishops went to Palazzola for their Low Week meeting. You may think: wouldn’t it be wonderful if they had received some input from Fr Wojciech?

I have heard that they did.