UNITED STATES
Esquire
BY CHARLES P. PIERCE
Now, we’ve got the real thing brewing over at the Vatican. Somewhere in the crypts of Rome, poisoners, stranglers, libertines, students of Machiavelli, and other long-dead clerical errors from the good old days are feeling smiles crack the dessicated bones of their faces. This is old-school Catholic treachery. Grappa for the house, and see what the Borgias in the back room will have!
In the letter, the senior churchmen said that if the reformers succeeded in changing the church’s approach to modern families it could send the Catholic Church down the path of Protestant denominations that abandoned “key elements of Christian belief and practice in the name of pastoral adaptation.”… In recent months, and with growing intensity since the synod opened, conservatives have accused reformers of “rigging” the synod and of engaging in skullduggery and various media “manipulations” to achieve changes—charges the letter from the cardinals seemed to support. “A number of fathers feel the new process seems designed to facilitate predetermined results on important disputed questions,” says the letter, which was reportedly given to Francis on Oct. 5, the second day of the synod, by Australian Cardinal George Pell, a top curial official and vocal opponent of reforms. The letter reprises complaints that many bishops here have made: that the working document that is the basis of the discussions is flawed, that the bishops are trying to debate too many critical issues in too short a time, and that the group of 10 bishops picked by Francis to write a final summary report is skewed to the progressive side and instead should have been elected by the entire group.
Obviously, ‘Fi were in the Chair of Peter, at least the Vatican officials who signed this document would soon find themselves reassigned to various Arctic parishes. This is not that kind of pope and, frankly, as a longtime supporter of collegiality in the governance of the Church, I can’t criticize the pack o’ scoundrels who signed this thing too critically on principle. But it is lovely to watch the people scream who’ve rigged every synod since John Paul II was elected. And they are an interesting bunch. To the surprise of absolutely nobody, many of them have track records on the worldwide scandal of clergy sexual abuse that are less than stellar. The apparent ringleader, Pell from Australia, has the stench of the scandal clinging to him to this day.
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