At the Start of the Synod: Two Sources

Writing yesterday under the amusing nom de plume, Xavier Rynne II, an editorialist for the UK Catholic Herald has a fairly full report on the pitfalls of the Synod. (Click here to see why the pen name is amusing.) According to “Mr. Rynne,” the procedural deck is stacked completely in favor of progressivist doctrinal and disciplinary novelties:

(Catholic Herald) As Robert Royal wrote in the October 1 issue of Letters from the Synod, questions of dubious process plagued Synod-2014. In the run-up to Synod-2015, serious concerns were expressed that similar manipulations would plague the Synod that commences its work tomorrow.

Those concerns have now been significantly amplified by reports about the procedures the Synod general secretariat has devised for Synod-2015 – without input from the Synod general council – and by the release of the roster of Synod fathers charged with composing Synod-2015’s final report.

More than one Synod father has described both the procedures and the final- report commission as “unacceptable.” Their reasons for making that sharp judgment are not hard to grasp.

Read more…

Below, Michael Voris reports on how the inappropriate subject of homosexuality has come to dominate much of the discussion early on. The subject is inappropriate because it has nothing to do with the Church’s doctrine or pastoral practice regarding the family, which is, after all, the subject of the Synod. Even to discuss the issue in this context implies that homosexual relationships can be conceived of in terms of a family, which is itself a deeply flawed assertion.