“...whenever anything happens of controversy in the Synod Hall among the bishops, Fr. Lombardi and Fr. Rosica say nothing, reveal nothing, talk about none of it. They are masters at their profession of manipulating and orchestrating the flow of information to the media.

Something a little less controversial had occurred last week, and when the press found about it and asked questions about it and why Fr. Lombardi hadn’t told them about it, Lombardi simply answered, “I don’t have to tell you anything I don’t want to.”

Mike continues…

“…the point here is this: You cannot trust what you are hearing from Fr. Lombardi and Fr. Rosica. They either say things that aren’t true or won’t talk about things that are true. The official word that comes out about anything has to be immediately doubted as either not true or incomplete or a misdirection. This is the kind of thing you expect from the White House, not official representatives of the Catholic Church. Why all the secrecy, the deception, the stacking of the deck? These are legitimate questions, and the Vatican has a duty to deal in a straightforward fashion, not play duck and weave when it comes to information.

All of which was pretty much what Cardinal Muller said last year. But who listens to that guy nowadays?

Meanwhile, journalists are reduced to interviewing each other…

Romilda Ferrauto, a Vatican Radio journalist who is assisting the Vatican Press Office with French-language media, said Saturday that the bishops are broadly presenting two schools of thought.

… [No! Really? did you think that up all by yourself?]

…and repeating the official statements from “Vatican spokespersons”…

“According to reports from several Vatican spokespersons at a briefing Saturday…”

[“Several” eh? Now there’s some hot investiative work…]

Ferrauto was one of five spokespersons briefing journalists on the synod discussions Saturday. While the synod has attracted wide attention for its expected deliberations on a host of issues, its sessions are closed to the press.

The Vatican press office is instead offering daily briefings on the proceedings.

Meanwhile, as I predicted, some bishops are getting fed up with the controlling tactics and have gone to the faithful public themselves:

His Excellency Archbishop Tomash Peta, Archbishop of Astana, to publish the text of the intervention he made at the Ordinary Synod on the Family on 10th October 2015.

Blessed Paul VI said in 1972:

“From some crack the smoke of Satan has entered the temple of God.”

I am convinced that these were prophetical words of the holy pope, the author of “Humanae vitae”. During the Synod last year, “the smoke of Satan” was trying to enter the aula of Paul VI.

Namely:

The proposal to admit to Holy Communion those who are divorced and living in new civil unions;

The affirmation that cohabitation is a union which may have in itself some values;

The pleading for homosexuality as something which is allegedly normal.

Some synod fathers have not understood correctly the appeal of Pope Francis for an open discussion and started to bring forward ideas which contradict the bi-millennial Tradition of the Church, rooted in the Eternal Word of God. Unfortunately, one can still perceive the smell of this “infernal smoke” in some items of the “Instrumentum Laboris” and also in the interventions of some synod fathers this year.

To my mind, the main task of a Synod consists in indicating again to the Gospel of the marriage and of the family and that means to the teaching of Our Savior. It is not allowed to destroy the fundament – to destroy the rock.

May the Holy Spirit, who always wins in the Church, illuminate all of us in searching the true good for the families and for the world.

Mary – Mother of the Church, pray for us!

• Tomash Peta

Archbishop of Astana (Kazakhstan)

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