Synod Day 12 – On the Way to a Decision?

The Catholic Thing ^ | 10/18/14 | Robert Royal

[marshmallow]

Late in life, St. Augustine issued his Retractationes, which may be translated, I believe, as either “retractions” or “re-treatments” of things he had written earlier. I’m going to do one of the latter. Yesterday, I reported that the Synod bishops voted – against the clear attempt by Cardinal Baldisseri, the leader of the Synod, to suppress the reports of the ten small language groups – that they should be published. That was not accurate.

So let me “re-treat” the situation. With fuller information today, it seems to have gone like this: Baldisseri seems to have decided, on the spur of the moment, not to authorize publication. At that announcement, a general (i.e., loud) murmuring began in the Synod hall. Cardinal Pell’s, as I properly reported, was the most prominent voice. But Baldisseri was defeated – and embarrassed as the pope sat silently and watched. The Synod participants didn’t even need a vote because the decision to make the documents public came virtually by acclamation.

It was an imprudent effort to stop them and, really, the widespread dissatisfaction with where things were going wasn’t exactly going to be easy to hide anyway. There are some sharp statements in the reports of the ten languages groups – in all ten of them – but not as much as you would find in a document produced by other public assemblies this large.

The French group “regretted” the language of the Relatio post disceptationem saying it’s style was “turgid, rambling, excessively verbose, and therefore rather generally, boring.” (My translation, and though I’ve translated several whole books from French, I had to look up some of the deliberately cutting terms the French groups chose to make this point.) But the French will be French.

On more substantive matters, other things have emerged as well. We.....