Posted on 10/17/2014 6:22:53 AM PDT by marshmallow
There has been a lot of talk – in dozens of languages – about the Extraordinary Synod since the Relatio post disceptationem (the interim report) was published to great controversy this past Monday. Much of what people who are not here in Rome are saying is worthy of some attention. But since we are awash in so many words, perhaps the best way to analyze Thursday’s news is via some hard numbers.
Yesterday morning, the 10 small language groups delivered their formal reports (Lat. relationes – don’t confuse these with the earlier document). Every one of them is basically solid and sets out a very different vision than the interim report did. (You can read them, if you can manage the languages, here.)
In addition, though there has been no little effort on the part of spokesmen to characterize everything as just business as usual in a process of this sort, there were roughly 700 requested modifications to the text. So many, in fact, that Fr. Federico Lombardi, Director of the Vatican Press Office, expressed some doubt whether the work on the final report will be done by the end of the Synod Saturday evening.
A reporter asked: so how do the participants vote on the final text then? A good questions without a good answer, and even Fr. Lombardi had to laugh about it.
But let’s do a little math. There were 58 paragraphs in the Relatio post disceptationem. You haven’t seen most of them discussed because they’re the kinds of generalities about families and the Christian life that wouldn’t raise much controversy – or even interest. Such as this:
25. Proclaiming the Gospel of the Family is urgently needed in the work of evangelization. The Church has to carry this out with the tenderness of....
(Excerpt) Read more at thecatholicthing.org ...
From that article:
** While we’re talking about such numbers, by the way, it’s just come out, from reliable sources, that only two of the Synod’s bishops pushed the outreach to gays, which took up four whole sections of the Relatio — and which, therefore, gave a vey different impression of the place such ideas occupied in the overall work of the Synod. **
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