Our Man in the Vatican spells out some of the more obvious reasons the Final Document (angel chorus) is an irrelevant MacGuffin…HJMW

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The Synod Fathers are set to vote on Saturday on a document they haven’t seen.

Rumoured to be about 100 paragraphs long, the document is the work of a 10 member drafting committee – although as it has been revealed, the actual writing was done by a staff of “experts,” and not by the committee Bishops themselves. Beginning from the Instrumentum Laboris, “working document” (which was severely criticized), the drafting committee, with their experts, evaluated over 1300 proposed amendments. Hundreds of those amendments pertaining to the controversial third chapter were analyzed in just a few hours.

Finally, having incorporated into the text those suggestions they found worthy, the document was presented to the Bishops of the Synod. The document was not read out or explained at any length; the Bishops were simply handed a text and given a perfunctory explanation.

After studying the text overnight, the Bishops were expected to come back to the Synod Hall to discuss the document. A few hours were set aside to discuss this penultimate version. Final suggestions or amendments were accepted, and, in the course of less than twenty-four hours, the drafting committee produced a final document which will be the basis of the final vote.

That final document is what the Synod Fathers will be voting on this morning. The bishops will be allowed to vote paragraph by paragraph, and then a second vote will be taken on the whole document… unless these rules have been changed at the last minute. The bishops, moreover, have been told to keep these documents ultra-top-secret. (They were at first told they were “not allowed” to take the document home with them, but this resulting in “rumblings” so that “rule” was also changed.)

Curiously – or not – the document will only be available to the Bishops in Italian. Now, remember, only three of the small working groups (circoli minores) at the Synod were Italian. Something like two-thirds, possibly more, of the Fathers did not feel comfortable working in Italian. They’ll be asked to vote on a document written in a language they don’t understand well (or at all!) on the basis of an on-the-spot, verbal translation. That is, the final document, on which the Fathers will be voting, will be read out to them once, in Italian, while they listen to a simultaneous verbal translation.

Can they reasonably be expected to be able to give an informed vote?

Remember, too, that there will be great pressure to go along, to pass the document, to show the great “unity” of the Bishops in the the Synod.

Will they really be able to make their voices heard?

Will the final document really reflect the views of the Bishops of the world?

The Synod is a farce.

Sing a NuChurch into being!

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