We missed our Friday Roundup because…

Because… uuummmm…because I didn’t feel like it.

So, here’s a few items from around about..

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From our buddy Steve at 1P5: If the Synod Fathers Stay Faithful, will Their Votes be Counted?

“Overwhelming majority against communion for remarried divorces, according to observer in the Synod hall”

The question on my mind is simple: what difference does it make, practically speaking, if the majority of Synod fathers opposes this? The number of votes according to the Synod rules didn’t matter when it came to controversial language the Synod fathers did not muster enough votes to include in the concluding document to last year’s Synod…

Why did the final Relatio published in the Lineamenta include the paragraphs on homosexuality, extra-marital cohabitation and Communion for the divorced-and-remarried that failed to gain the approval of the Synod Fathers in October. (Paragraphs 52,53,55 in the Italian; the English has a slightly different numbering system.)

“It was the Pope’s decision to include the points that did not receive the two-thirds majority,” Cardinal Baldisseri responded. “The Pope said: ‘These three points received an absolute majority. They were therefore not rejected with a ‘no,’ as they received more than 50 percent approval. They are therefore issues that still need to be developed. We as a Church want a consensus. These texts can be modified, that’s clear. Once there has been further reflection, they can be modified.”

 

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From Lizzy Scalia, doyenne of the neo-Cathos: “You people are so unChristlike! Don’t you know that Jesus got exasperated with his rigid, unwelcoming disciples because they were always insisting on those stupid, itty bitty, nit-picky rules? Don’t you know that RULES ARE BAD?! Oh, and St. Paul was a product of his unfortunate times, which is why he said mean things like “eat and drink to his condemnation,” and wasn’t merciful like Francis…I mean like Jesus… so there.”

Go ahead and see if you can make any sense of it. Something about ‘because we are too weak to repent, we have to be allowed to have the Eucharist before repenting because that will help us be more repenty…’ I dunno.

But hey! At least we know how far “conservatives” have sunk under the FrancisChurch, right? I mean, right?

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John Zmirak, who has been having some fun on Twitter, seems to be working his way in the opposite direction:

How we wish that the universe worked Synod-style, that its Creator answered our whims like an obsequious restaurant waiter angling for tips. Wouldn’t it be pleasant if God looked on our sins and saw only the gifts which He gave us, instead of the miserable ways that we use them? Like a child who stuffs his brand new Lego blocks down the throat of the family dog, we’re surprised by praise for our endeavor’s “positive elements.”

Were God like the leading Synod fathers — that is, a senile grandfather in heaven — he would nod and tell us: “That’s quite an obedient dog. And those Lego blocks are shiny. Look how very many of them you have managed to fit inside of Fido. What an energetic boy!”

I am sick at heart, like millions of Catholics, to hear shepherds of our Church fall over themselves to sound like liberal Episcopalians. We know from recent history precisely where this leads…

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Somehow I get the impression that people thought we weren’t serious about the Synod Walkout idea. But we were. We were serious when we said that if the bishops and cardinals stay to the utter end, and then stand around after it all goes to shit smiling for the cameras and telling the news guys that they’re “pleased with the collegial atmosphere” we’re going to hold them all accountable, not just the “bad” ones.

Nicholas Frankovich at the National Review…

Some who are close to the synod, which wraps up this weekend, report that members are more united and orthodox than is being represented in the media, but the daily summaries provided by Father Thomas Rosica, an English-language Vatican spokesman, suggest otherwise. The orthodox are alarmed. Some are circulating a petition asking like-minded synod fathers to walk out, given the indications that an outcome intended to advance a kind of lifestyle libertarianism favored most notably by the German bishops has been predetermined by Team Bergoglio, the northern European and South American churchmen who spent a decade working to get the cardinal from Buenos Aires elected pope.

Pope Francis on Saturday redirected the rumors of schism by hinting at a certain vision of the Catholic Church: less centralized, its Roman identity toned down further than it already has been. Taking that plan to its logical conclusion, one would have to reconstitute the Catholic Church as a federation of national churches and move it into what Jesuit theologian Karl Rahner called its “third age,” which he characterized as cosmopolitan. (The first and second ages were Jerusalem- and Rome-based, respectively.) In other words, where the Catholic Church used to speak clearly with one voice, it no longer does, so let’s welcome the diversity. “Out of one, many,” as Al Gore so aptly put it.

Now the Church may go into schism over the question of whether it should go (gracefully, of course) into schism, with geographical divisions roughly corresponding to doctrinal differences. The deal that may be presented to the Polish, African, and other orthodox bishops is this: If you want traditional Catholic teaching on sexual morality to be “strong and clear,” as Cardinal Robert Sarah of Guinea has forcefully, eloquently argued that it should be, go ahead and preach it — in the name of your national church. But you must accept that the German bishops are free to disavow it. And that the bishop of Rome is free to waffle.

I think there’s more than a few of us who are looking at this distinction between the “good conservative” bishops and the “bad liberal” bishops and are about ready to go down to the piazza in front of the Holy Office, and stake the place out so we can yell at the lot of them as they come out of the Aula for their lunch break, “A PLAGUE ON BOTH YOUR HOUSES!!!”

…and maybe hucking a few things at em.

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