UNITED STATES
Catholic Culture
By Phil Lawler Sep 29, 2015
In the promising new series of Letters from the Synod, edited by the pseudonymous Xaiver Rynne II, George Weigel opens things with an intriguing and encouraging historical comparison.
In the months leading up to Vatican II, according to the standard historical narrative (for now, we need not be concerned whether that narrative is fully accurate or not), Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani was confident that he had things fully in hand. He didn’t. The Council fathers rejected the preliminary documents offered by Cardinal Ottaviani and his curial staff, and went off in entirely new directions.
Today, Weigel observes, Cardinal Lorenzo Baldisseri seems to think that he has the Synod of Bishops under control. (His purposes are very different from those of the late Cardinal Ottaviani; he is pushing for dramatic changes, while Cardinal Ottaviani was resisting them. But again, that need not concern us here.) He, too, may have miscalculated.
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