Selective Synods and Similar Strayings By Pope Francis, by Jerry Slevin, Christian Catholicism (December 10, 2014)

Pope Francis seems to want to avoid the fundamental challenge facing the papacy — how to make the Catholic Church’s hierarchy accountable to worldwide Catholics and to the rule of law. This is well indicated by his Synod’s new preparatory outline, or “Lineamenta” (12/9/14), and the pope’s interview with Argentina’s “La Nacion” (12/7/14).

The pope’s Secretariat has issued to the celibate male Catholic hierarchy this outline for the “final” Synod of Bishops, to be held in Rome in less than ten months, on “The vocation and the mission of the family in the Church and in the contemporary world”.

The outline’s seemingly slanted Synod agenda, and the Synod’s expected voting bias of exclusively clerical male participants, disappoint many hopeful Catholics who expect more from Pope Francis. As with this past October’s preliminary Synod, the agenda appears to exclude the major pressing Catholic family issue of curtailing priest child abuse and holding bishops accountable.

The Synod’s voting participants also, it appears so far, exclude woman and married men. Pope Francis, as the ultimate “guarantor” in his words, has the final say on any changes to teachings, et al., regardless of any Synod bishops’ advisory voting.

Pope Francis, in effect, in the last analysis can do whatever he wants to do, which makes one wonder why the big show with the Synods? Are Catholics being “played” again? Please see, via Google translate, the Italian version of the outline, the only now available, here:

The outline certainly covers the issue central to Francis’ all important claim to personal infallibility, contraception (Sections 40-44). Purportedly, to address the Vatican’s perceived “challenge” of the sharp drop (?) in birth rates. the outline emphasizes “Blessed” Paul VI’s 1968 “ban of the pill” and stresses the “intrinsic requirement of the openness to life in conjugal love” (“Vaticanese” for no birth control other than the “natural family planning”). An overwhelming majority of Catholics have already rejected this “teaching”.

Interestingly, the Vatican’s reference to declining birth rates just confirms explicitly that the “ban on the pill” is a geo-politically driven “population policy”. If contraception were immoral and “sinful”. it would be immoral and sinful even if the birth rate was rising, no?

Perhaps Pope Francis can revisit the “drop in birth rates” when he visits the Philippines next month. The pope can observe first hand the sufferings of millions of “street children” often resulting from the local bishops’ lobbying against making effective family planning accessible and affordable for millions of poor couples there. Of course, he also must have noted this for decades in Latin America. Yes, lift up the poor by almost compelling them to have more babies. Please!

Predictably, the new outline still includes the German bishops’ seemingly “pet money issue”, access to communion for divorced and remarried Catholics. This remains a key Synod topic. If disgruntled divorced Germans leave the Catholic Church, they presumably take with them their and their family’s share of the German governmental subsidies to bishops, estimated overall recently to exceed $ 6 billion a year, possibly the largest “guaranteed” revenue stream for the Catholic hierarchy worldwide.

Pope Francis, the Supreme Pontiff, seems at times to spin supremely, but fallibly, it appears. He had given a revealing recent interview to his friendly biographer at Argentina’s LaNacion (12/7/14). For more on the interview and for a picture of Francis in an easy chair comfortably communicating with his interviewer, please see:

In the interview, the pope reportedly stated, “God is good to me, he has bestowed on me a healthy dose of unawareness. I just do what I have to do. …” That seems to say it all: Francis too often seems to be unaware that Catholics include women and children.

This interview interestingly shows that the pope can be the “Supreme Spinner”, as well as the Supreme Pontiff, and likely fallible in both capacities. He recently acknowledged he makes many mistakes.

Predictably by now, in the interview, the pope touted the Vatican Bank’s soundness, closed another door for women, avoided addressing his continuing shortcomings on curtailing child abuse and made it sound almost as if Cardinal Burke wanted to leave his top judge position.

On the Vatican Bank, the subject of a newly revealed potentially $70 million embezzlement scandal discussed in my linked remarks below, Francis volunteered ” … As everybody knows, it’s all public. The IOR … {Vatican Bank} is operating beautifully, we did quite a good job there. …” Let us hope he winked when he said this! He must know better. Please see my related remarks linked below.

As to women, Pope Francis in the interview indicated once again, he is a “man” of the Church. He reportedly stated that the head of the newly reorganized Vatican committee, under consideration, on the laity and the family needs to be headed by a Cardinal (all males), since these committees reportedly ” …are very close the the pope… “. And God forbid, I suppose, that a pope work closely with a woman!

This most likely means that no women need apply to head the one department that will deal with the family and laity. Another missed opportunity, like the Synods, for Pope Francis to have shown meaningful respect for the gender that represents half a billion Catholics and often makes the Church work best at present, it appears

Pope Francis will, however, likely be unable to stray too far for too long from the child abuse scandal. For example, Australian barrister and former seminarian, Kieran Tapsell, is escalating his case about the canon law aspects of the Vatican’s continuing cover-up.

Tapsall persuasively points out that there are really two “cover ups”: the cover up by predatory priests and their facilitating bishops of the abuse itself, and the continuing cover up of the role of canon law and the six Popes since 1922 responsible for it.

The first cover up by now has been admitted “de facto” by the Vatican, but the second, according to Tapsell, was initiated by Pope Benedict XVI’s Pastoral Letter to the people of Ireland in 2010, continued at a recent Australian Parliamentary Inquiry in the State of Victoria, and is still continuing now at the Australian Royal Commission hearings. Please see regarding Tapsell’s important points:

Also, Peter Borre, a Harvard educated Boston based canon-law consultant, has reportedly recently highlighted the escalating pitfalls facing Francis with the Vatican abuse trial of Archbishop Wesolowski. Borre interestingly even raises a possible link between Wesolowski’s trial and Pope Francis’ removal of Cardinal Burke as top judge. Please see;

Borre suggests that Cardinal Burke’s ultimate potential involvement, as presiding judge over proceedings of the Vatican City State’s tribunals, might explain the recent sudden removal of Burke as the tribunals’ top judge.

Borre adds : “To which you might say, “bananas.” But in all fairness, is this explanation of Burke’s removal any less plausible than the one offered just a few days ago by the Pope himself in an interview with Argentina’s La Nacion, where he suggested that Burke wanted the transfer from the highest judicial position in the Holy See to the chaplaincy of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta (Via dei Condotti, right next to the Hermès Boutique)?”

As to Pope Francis’ declining influence on women, please see the recent searing discussion by two Notre Dame and Yale biblical scholars at: