I think I have an idea of your Usual Disputed Questions. Until Francis, those same topics were indisputable: Francis and Kasper have opened a Pandora's box and made them disputable. Why can't Francis put them to rest with one pontifical pronouncement? It's that simple; he's the Pope after all.
Yet, he's holding a second synod, knowing full well of Cardinal Marx's warning and threat of schism if the apostate Germans don't get their way.
Francis has greatly reduced the the primacy of the papacy in favor of “collegiality”.
That's an odd rhetorical strategy on your part, since it would only take one example from you, of a papal statement denying traditional doctrine after the August 2014 synod, to prove me and Magister wrong.
So do it.
You just need one.
"Until Francis, those same topics were indisputable: Francis and Kasper have opened a Pandora's box and made them disputable."
Surely you jest. These things have been continuously disputed over the past 40 - 50 years, beginning even before the German bishops collegially trashed Humanae Vitae with their “Königsteiner Erklärung”--- and the “Mariatroster” declaration by the Austrian bishops, both in 1968. They --- along with many others in the "Catholic" "leadership" (which is often neither leadership nor Catholic) have never STOPPED debating the essentials. Where have you been?
"Why can't Francis put them to rest with one pontifical pronouncement? It's that simple; he's the Pope after all."
This is an utterly naive view of the supposed ability of a Pope to put internal dissent "to rest" with a "Roma locuta est, causa finita est." Popes Paul VI, John Paul II, and Benedict XVI all spoke and wrote authoritatively on this. Did this stop the incessant din of mutinous talk? It certainly did not.
"Yet, he's holding a second synod, knowing full well of Cardinal Marx's warning and threat of schism if the apostate Germans don't get their way."
The first, in August 2014, was an "Extraordinary" Synod, meaning, as I suppose you know, not the "ordinary" one. It was to set the agenda for discussion of the actual, real (in churchytalk, "Ordinary") synod. You don't set an agenda for discussion and then fail to hold the actual Synod!
As for the apostate Germans, they are already, as you correctly note, apostates. They are already giving the Blessed Sacrament to couples in objective, publicly-licensed adultery. They are already in material schism.
Marx, Kasper and the rest know the Synod is not going to go their way. Their agenda is going to be put down hard by a decisive majority of the other bishops.
This may have been Pope Francis' objective all along. I don't know. But my personal opinion is that Pope Francis thinks it will be good to force the debate --- smouldering underground for 47 years -- out in the open where it can be argued down and stomped out by other bishops.
A direct (and very legitimate) order from Pope John Paul II to "SHUT UP, ALREADY, ABOUT WOMEN'S ORDINATION!" was not enough to silence that particular controversy. It looks to me like Pope Francis strategy is, "Let them talk, talk, talk about it. All out in the open. And then --- BAM. The majority of bishops will make it clear to Marx and Kasper that that ain't gonna fly."
That puts Kasper/Marx in a tight spot, since it's actually harder for them to come out against synod "collegiality" than to come out against solo "papal authority."
They're already in their weak fallback position, which you could call "localism." They've been pouting, "Well, we Germans, we will still do what we think best."
They are totally sold out to the Kirchensteuer --- the source of 70% of their income. That is the big, BIG underlying consideration for these "Bling Bishops."
They make me really, really angry. But God will judge with a righteous judgment.