Analysis of the Synod by Sandro Magister - the question remains: what would the Pope have done if Baldisseri had strong-armed the bishops into heresy?

The True Story of This Synod. Director, Performers, Assistants

New paradigms of divorce and homosexuality are now at home in the highest levels of the Church. Nothing has been decided, but Pope Francis is patient. An American historian confutes the ideas of “La Civiltà Cattolica”

by Sandro Magister

ROME, October 17, 2014 - “The spirit of the Council is blowing again,” Filipino Cardinal Luis Antonio G. Tagle has said, a rising star of the worldwide episcopate as well as being a historian of Vatican II. And it is true. At the synod that is about to conclude there are many elements in common with what happened at that great event.

The most visible similarity is the distance between the real synod and the virtual synod driven by the media.

But there is an even more substantial resemblance. Both at Vatican Council II and at this synod the changes of paradigm are the product of careful coordination. A protagonist of Vatican II like Fr. Giuseppe Dossetti - the consummate strategist of the four cardinal moderators who were at the controls of the conciliar machine - asserted this with pride. He said that he had “transformed the fate of the Council” thanks to his capacity to pilot the assembly, which he had learned in his previous political experience as the leader of the foremost Italian party.

The same thing has happened at this synod. Both the openness to communion for the civilly divorced and remarried - and therefore the admission of remarriage on the part of the Church - and the startling change of paradigm on the issue of homosexuality that found its way into the “Relatio post disceptationem” would not have been possible without a series of skillfully calculated steps on the part of those who had and have control of the procedures.

In order to understand this, it is enough to review the stages that led to this result, even if the provisory finale of the synod - as will be seen - has not met the expectations of its directors.


The complete article may be read here.