NEWS ...from and about Synod 2015
Widespread confusion over procedures and process continues to be one of the less attractive hallmarks of Synod-2015. Thus it was perhaps inevitable that, over the weekend, there were several media reports to the effect that another procedural crisis was at hand: that Cardinal Petér Erdő had been denied the opportunity to speak after his introductory intervention last Monday; that a decision had been taken that there would be no final report; etc. In order to clarify the situation, we spoke with a highly knowledgeable and experienced Synod father, who indicated the following: Cardinal Erdő made a deliberate decision to cover the entire Instrumentum Laboris [IL] – the Synod’s working document – in his first intervention on October 4; speculations that he had been “denied the microphone” for presentations of the second and third parts of the IL, because of aggravation in some quarters with his first intervention, seemed rather overwrought. (At the Saturday press briefing, Vatican spokesman Fr Federico Lombardi, SJ, said that Erdő’s comprehensive reflection on the entire IL had been planned all along, as had been briefer introductory remarks to each section of the IL by one or another of the Synod presidents. Readers may draw their own conclusions about what precisely happened here – beyond the usual confusions over process – but the chief point remains: there has been no punitive “silencing” of Cardinal Erdő.) In response to a question from the floor during the Synod general assembly’s first free-discussion period, Synod general secretary Cardinal Lorenzo Baldisseri stated that there will be a Synod final document, that it will be voted on section-by-section, that the decision to publish it or not would be made by the Holy Father, and that any further changes in the procedures to be followed by the language-based Synod discussion group (the circuli minores) would be publicly announced. This is all on the record. Moreover, on Saturday, October 10, Cardinal Baldisseri said that the reason Part Three of the IL (which contains the greater part of the controversial material being debated at Synod-2015) was already being discussed in the general assembly – a point that some weekend commentators found disturbing – is that so many Synod fathers had indicated a desire to speak on it that there would not have been enough time for their interventions under the normal procedures; thus permission had been given for them to speak on Part Three earlier. This explanation, too, is on the record. Finally, those familiar with the leaks so characteristic of Roman ecclesiastical and journalistic life will understand that the final report will, inevitably, get into public circulation. XR2
