Synod on Family to end with a text voted on by the Fathers

"The 'Relatio Post Disceptationem' produced at the end of the first week will form the basis for the work that will follow in the second week in the 'circuli minores' and which the Synod Fathers will examine before the concluding 'Relatio Synodi' document is published. This final document will be sent to the Holy Father," the Tuscan cardinal said. The 'Relatio Synodi' differs from the concluding messages usually published at the end of every synodal assembly (this time Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi has been asked to write the message). It replaces the proposals ... the Synod Fathers usually sent the Pope during these assemblies. "There will be no 'propositiones'. The document will be published as one single 'propositio'," Baldisseri explained to journalists. Participants will vote on the text on Saturday 18 October in the afternoon. The vote will be a simple "yes" ... or "no" ... vote, Cardinal Baldisseri explained. Even the reports which single work groups ... will present at the plenary session will be voted on first. The document "will be published at a suitable moment, one or two days after" the vote. The work of the second assembly – the Ordinary Synod on the Family, scheduled for 2015 – will be based on this document. It will be "sent to Bishops' Conferences" around the world, so that they can formulate a response and examine the content of the working document. The final document produced at the Extraordinary Synod will be supplemented by a short questionnaire given that the family is a vast subject and there are other issues regarding it that have not been touched yet." As such, no decisions will be taken at the end of the Extraordinary Synod, which ends on 19 October.

If you take the time to read and understand this, you'll notice several things:

First, Cardinal Baldisseri served as secretary of the 2013 conclave that elected Pope Francis. He was not himself a cardinal at that time. Rather, Baldisseri is the guy Pope Francis indicated he would make a cardinal by putting his own zuchetto on him immediately after being elected pope. He was appointed head of the Congregation of Bishops by Pope Francis last year. So he seems to be Pope Francis' guy, and is indebted to him. It was Baldisseri who asked the world's bishops to spread that questionnaire around to prepare for the synod. If you'll recall, it was clearly biased in the ways the questions were asked and the responses allowed. In May 2014 in an interview with Belgian newspaper De Standaard, Cardinal Baldisseri says it is time to update Church marriage doctrine, for example in connection with divorce, the situation of divorcees and people who are in civil partnerships (Wikipedia). Baldisseri appears to be the guy running the synod. This does not bode well.

Baldisseri says that they're going to produce a document after the first week that will serve as the foundation of the work they synod will do in the second week. I don't know about you, but I've seen how these things go when there's an agenda at play. They'll let all the bishops have their say the first week, and then they'll produce a document that says what they want it to say. And then the following week they'll shut down those who disagree with them, and the final document will be passed overwhelmingly.

I'll bet both documents have already been written and are sitting in someone's desk, ready to be pulled out at the right moment. Just the way Obamacare was pulled out of someone's desk (I forget who it was), and then voted on "so that we can see what's in it."

More and more it appears that the current powers-that-be in the Vatican are using the same strategies and tactics as the Obama administration. And that scares the hell out of me.

They'll let all the bishops have their say the first week, and then they'll produce a document that says what they want it to say. And then the following week they'll shut down those who disagree with them, and the final document will be passed overwhelmingly.

I believe that this is how most things worked at Vatican II. There was actual considerable opposition to many of the proposals of the liberals, but through clever administrative manipulation and last minute maneuvers, the liberals were able to roll right over the other bishops.

Every child, he said, has the right to grow up in a family “with a father and a mother” capable of creating “a suitable environment for the child’s development and emotional maturity.”

And that very true and noble principle will be twisted and used to justify watering down the teaching on the indissolubility of marriage. They will say that it is in the children's best interest that they grow up with a step-father rather than no father at all. The question of the adulterous sexual relationship between the mother and step-father will be either ignored or justified. Liberals always do these things "for the children."

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