Yes, another Roundup… because quite frankly, I just can’t keep up.  I’m just one person, right?

I just noted on Facebook what a deep feeling of relief and satisfaction I have been experiencing whenever I’ve been able to close a tab. Every morning there is a new set of utterly outrageous novelties, heresies and horrors coming out of that Aula in Rome, and ten or fifteen more tabs to add to the ones that I wasn’t able to get around to yesterday.

And every morning I sit watching hell spewing its poisonous guts out of the mouths of these bishops and priests, blatantly lying to us right in front of the cameras with a smug smile, and I wonder…

where’s my cave?

Sigh.

I guess I did come out of retirement voluntarily.

Anyway, this was supposed to be my Friday Roundup of “Stuff I don’t have time to keep up with”. (You’ll note it’s Saturday.) I’m doing it now, while most of y’all are still in bed, so we can face the rest of the weekend with at least something like a clear desk.

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Damien Thompson, doggedly blogging over there at the UK Spectator, to an audience of English heathens who don’t really care all that much… echoes (wait for it!) Cardinal Marx:

“Once the meeting is over, power will rest entirely in the hands of the Pope.”

The liberal synod organisers — Cardinal Lorenzo Baldisseri, secretary general of the synod, and Archbishop Bruno Forte, its ‘special secretary’ — were forced to drop their claims. The whole thing was a car crash and obviously their fault.

Yet Francis stuck by them. As a result, once again the synod working papers are stuffed with sociological waffle. Worse, Baldisseri and Forte are sitting on the commission that will draft the final report that goes to the Pope.

And it’s funny he should mention the “liberals” at the Synod, because one of their leaders, the head of the German Bishops’ conference and sitter on the Pope’s “privy council,” Reinhard Marx said almost exactly the same thing the other day:

As our good buddy Pat Archbold said at Creative Minority report the other day, “Be afraid; be very afraid” because Cardinal Marx, who has clearly never felt no need to take seriously anything Cardinal Muller ever said about the duty of a bishop to defend and uphold the Faith, has suddenly come over all papalist:

**“We must try to remain together,” he said. “The Church is the only institution in the world that can reach unanimous agreement. Thank God we have the pope. We bishops do not have to decide. Church unity is not in danger. And once the pope has decided, we will abide by his decision.”**

That’s funny, isn’t it? Coming from the guy who, just a few short months ago told the Vatican in a public statement that, with regards to whatever list of unholy abominations they want to institute officially in the Church in Germany,

“We are not a branch of Rome. Each conference of bishops is responsible for pastoral care in its cultural context and must preach the Gospel in its own, original way. We cannot wait for a synod to tell us how we have to shape pastoral care for marriage and family here.”

As our good buddy Jeff says, with perfectly straightforward logic, “Either the Holy Spirit has intervened and changed Cardinal Marx’s heart or he knows what the outcome of the Synod is going to be.” He doubts the first possibility of course, as does does anyone sensible, if only because such a turnaround, from heresy and functional apostasy would have at least generated a public retraction and apology to the Pope and the Faithful, not to mention Our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, all of whom he deftly insults with nearly every breath.

We’ll give Pat the last word on this, (in hopes that it will induce him to come over to our house to play some more…)

“So this guy who threatened as above is now basically saying “Oh we are unified with the Pope and whatever the Pope decides, everybody must go along with. You know, for unity’s sake.”

[There, that’s three tabs closed!]

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Pope resists Erdo to his face

Following the opening salvo on Monday, observers were observing that “the conservatives” had started strong.

“God’s mercy offers forgiveness to sinners but requires conversion,” and, in this case, “a couple’s sin does not lie first and foremost in whatever behavior may have led to the breakup of the first marriage.” The reason they cannot receive the Eucharist “is not because of the failure of their first marriage, but because of the cohabitation in their second relationship,” he said.

Cardinal Erdo was no doubt stung by the comment quoted in Edward’s book about being personally doctrinally orthodox (whatever that means these days) but a weak-kneed pushover. I’m sure we’ve all read it by now:

“…the Hungarian cardinal was “ashen faced”. He had just come from Cardinal Baldisseri. Erdö had read to Baldisseri the Relatio that he had written, and the synod secretary general had picked it apart. “He’d just brow-beaten him into submission”, the scholar said.

Cardinal Erdö had, it seems, drafted the document with the opening line beginning with “Jesus Christ is our Master before all others and our only Lord”, and had stated, in an allusion to 2 Timothy, that the faithful owe obedience to Him whether it is convenient or not convenient.

“We’re sitting across the table from another, and he says with a tortured expression on his face: ‘Cardinal Baldisseri wants me to change that.’ ”

…And so he did… Good little cardinal… here’s a biscuit… Now run along. We’ll call you when you’re needed…

So, the good cardinal’s stirring defence of the Church’s teaching on Monday must have come as a bit of a shock to the cabal. Fr. Gergoris notes that indeed, it seems to have prompted the first direct papal intervention in the “Synodal process” in two years:

In doing so, Pope Francis made clear two key points: the “continuity” between the work of the Extraordinary Synod and that of the Ordinary Synod; that thus far the only official Synod documents which enjoy full ecclesiastical approval are the two discourses he himself delivered at the opening and closing of the Extraordinary Synod last October, as well as the “Relatio Synodi” or final document of the Extraordinary Synod which he approved.

In other words, the pope shot back the next day, “No, actually that stuff you’re denouncing as heresy is pretty much what we meant to say last year, and what we intend to say this year.

“Also, I’m the damn pope, so shut the hell up.”

Voice of the Family responded to the papal intervention (again, the first in public since this whole incredible fiasco started) by “asking” (saying) that the pope has used his authority to steer the synod back onto its original heterodox course towards the destruction of the Church’s teaching through changes in “pastoral practice”.

The hopes of faithful Catholics were raised on Monday by the reassertions of Catholic orthodoxy made in the relazione introduttiva of the General Relator of the Synod, Péter Cardinal Erdő…

Only to be viciously stomped to death by the pope…

Erdő’s report and position were seriously undermined after an intervention of Pope Francis indicated to the synod fathers that the question of Holy Communion for the “divorced and remarried” was still open. Cardinal Erdő was also undermined by remarks made by synod fathers invited to a press conference organised by Holy See press spokesman Fr Lombardi S.J.

But hey, everybody keep on clapping… everything’s awesome! Right? RIGHT?!

Pope Francis delivered an unscheduled intervention in the synod yesterday morning. He instructed synod fathers that they should consider the Ordinary Synod to be in perfect continuity with the Extraordinary Synod. He told them that they were to consider only three synodal documents as formal documents of the synod; these were his own opening address at the Extraordinary Synod, the Relatio Synodi of the Extraordinary Synod, and his own closing address of that synod. The heterodox nature of the Relatio Synodi, which received the Holy Father’s personal approval, was discussed by Voice of the Family in our _Analysis of the Final Report of the Extraordinary Synod. _

There’s nothing going on here at all.

No “hermeneutic of conspiracy” to see here…

Move along…

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