Unfortunately our separated Latin brethren seem to be almost as much in horror of their church becoming conciliar, rather than monarchical — which *would* be a move toward Orthodoxy — as they are of Francis following the lead of their revisionist bishops on matters of remarriage and Eucharistic discipline.
You may be right that Francis wants to follow the Anglicans into total apostasy, rather than just trying to make the papacy into a normal patriarchate that acts on the basis of the advice of its Holy Synod, and what this synod of theirs recommends and how he acts on whatever recommendation is made will probably provide enough evidence to tell the difference.
I agree with TRD, NRx. He hit the nail on the head when he spoke of the monarchical system in the Latin Church. No matter what the Latins think, the danger isn’t so much who is sitting in this ad hoc synod or even what it wants to talk about. The danger is that there is no system to restore orthodoxy in theology or praxis if that synodal train goes off the rails. The Latin laity are NOT the guardians of orthodoxy the way we are. They have no “Great Axios” to give or withhold. I suspect they don’t want that system either.
NRx, suppose the upcoming Great and Holy Synod were to announce that henceforth same sex marriages would be sanctioned and that the Latin notion of the Immaculate Conception was now dogma for us. How long do you think it would take for the Laos tou Theou to give their Great “OXI” and that would quite literally be the end of those marriages and that “dogma”?
Big, big difference.