VATICAN CITY
The Daily Beast
Barbie Latza Nadeau
VATICAN CITY— When Pope Francis opened the Extraordinary General Assembly Synod of Bishops to discuss the role of the family in the Catholic context on Sunday, he opened the biggest can of worms in his still-young papacy.
It is expected to pit hard-core Catholic conservatives who prefer to hang on to the Church’s traditional doctrine on family matters against liberal Catholic clergy who would prefer to see a loosening of some of the rules, especially those that keep lapsed Catholics away in droves. The skirmishing here is expected to help define the battles in the even more important Ordinary Synod of Bishops scheduled for October 2015.
Of the 252 participants now gathered in Rome, 191 so-called Synod Fathers are eligible to vote on issues ranging from whether divorced and remarried Catholics should be allowed to take communion to whether annulments should be easier to obtain.
Yes, birth control will be up for debate. Yes, even same-sex marriage will be discussed. In that sense there are no taboos, although virtually no one in the know expects any really dramatic breakthroughs.
The non-voting participants will be invited to weigh in on the various topics — but their thoughts must be expressed in under four minutes. Details of the internal discussions during the two-week meeting will be a closely guarded secret, with daily press briefings expected to be nothing more than a decoy to masque the impassioned debates going on inside.
The synod executive secretary, Cardinal Lorenzo Baldisseri, said that no transcript of the discussions will be released, and that participants’ names and positions on various issues will be kept confidential to avoid “making suspects” out of the participants. The real news will come out of the sidelines, in the Vatican corridors and Rome restaurants where participants will be lobbying the key voters for support.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.