Confirmation the Synod is Rigged

Pope Francis waves as he is welcomed by Cardinal Lorenzo Baldisseri, left, General Secretary of the Synod of Bishops as he arrives at the Synod Hall for a morning session of the Synod of bishops at the Vatican, Thursday, Oct. 11, 2018. The meeting of bishops on young people runs from Oct. 3-28. (Credit: AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino.)

Crux has learned that a preliminary version of that final document has been prepared and given to members of a drafting committee selected last week, with five members elected by the synod, two sitting on the body ex ufficio, and three appointed by the pope. Though it’s not clear who wrote the preliminary version, it was presented to the drafting committee by the synod office headed by Italian Cardinal Lorenzo Baldisseri (aka "the book thief", you know, the Cardinal who lied about young people wanting LGBT in the instrumentum laboris).

When Crux -- who tend to be largely ambivalent to the shock waves caused by this papacy -- start suggesting the synod is a fix, you can be sure that there is a serious problem.

This is all the more worrying given the Pope's new apostolic constitution, which gives the body new powers, including applying magisterial authority to a synod’s final document. This was set out in a new apostolic constitution entitled Episcopalis Communio (Episcopal Communion), signed as recently as Sept. 15th this year (see this report for more details).

These facts make the stakes quite high all of sudden: how can bishops participating in this synod consider that the final version (now revealed to have been already written) genuinely reflect their input? What is the point of all the meetings? How can they be anymore than a talking point?

Crux reports several explanations for this, including that "the idea of ten exhausted and frazzled prelates drafting not just a set of recommendations but an entire, cohesive teaching document in just three weeks, ex nihilio, was a fantasy."

But the article also remarks:

problem is that however logical that explanation may be, it wasn’t made public before the fact. Certainly, synod officials understand by now that there’s a certain constituency, including a bloc of bishops, inclined to see the entire exercise through a hermeneutic of suspicion, and the idea that a pre-fabricated text was waiting for the drafting committee immediately after the body was assembled is unlikely to help.

This is a rather off-hand dismissal of genuine concerns about the direction of the synod and the agenda the pope is clearly pushing through. I think should the final document contain revolutionary attitudes towards homosexuality, we may see some proper fireworks!