UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism
[FRANCIS CONVENES EXTRAORDINARY SYNOD ON THE FAMILY FOR OCTOBER 2014 – Vatican Information Service]
Jerry Slevin
Pope Francis today announced his biggest “change order” to date. A year from now, he will convene a Synod of Bishops to start on October 5, 2014, a month before the key US Senate elections.
The agenda will be “The Pastoral Challenges of the Family”. The moderator will be Italian Archbishop Baldiserri. He was most recently Secretary of the committees of bishops and of cardinals. For decades before, he was a Vatican diplomat with no significant pastoral experience. No lay Catholics and certainly no women will apparently participate actively, although they may be able to send e-mails, etc.
So after an over-hyped and under-performing Council of 8 Cardinals meeting that failed even to address meaningfully any accountability of bishops for protecting child predator priests, over 300 childless senior celibate males will meet to review the rules on making love, getting married and having children. Is this a bad dream?
Of course, all of the men attending were selected on their pledge to oppose contraception and gay marriage. Is there any doubt how they will likely come out a few weeks before US elections that predictably could determine the composition of the US Supreme Court for many years to come? Francis has now cutely planned to delay for 18 months showing his real hand on change–no change on the issues that really matter to most Catholics. But controlling the US Supreme Court matters to hierarchs worried stiff about bankruptcy and imprisonment
Francis had a choice. He could address now after six months effective changes that would seriously curtail child abuse by making bishops accountable, such as removing criminal Bishop Finn. Or he could try to fight on with the disasterous policies of his two predecessors who never saw a bishop cover-up they didn’t try to hide. He has chosen to fight on, as he did in Argentina in the case of Fr.Grassi, a convicted child abuser.
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