UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism

Jerry Slevin

Cardinal George Pell has indicated recently he expects that the upcoming Final Family Synod in less than five months will “massively endorse” the Catholic Church’s traditional teachings. Contraception, abortion and homosexual love would then remain “mortal sins”; women would remain second class Catholics; the Church would remain a clerical dictatorship; and children would continue at unsafe risks of priest sexual abuse, it appears, despite the pope’s carefully staged spin to the contrary. Unless Pope Francis convenes a full ecumenical council before retiring, which seems unlikely, Catholics will have to look to their democratically responsive national governments to press the Vatican to reform, see my “Two Years In, Pope Must Call Council As John XXIII Did“.

Elements of this dismal and disappointing forecast are echoed in well regarded veteran Vatican journalists’ recent reporting, including by Sandro Magister in “The Closed Door of Pope…