In his book The Rigging of a Vatican Synod, Edward Pentin does his best to provide an account of the books’ movements. Details proved to be elusive, but two facts emerged. First, when the flood of books arrived, the Vatican post office delivered many—perhaps all—of them without having affixed an official postmark. Second, the secretary general of the Synod office, Cardinal Baldisseri, learned what the envelopes contained and was reportedly furious. The packages seem to have been returned to the Vatican post office to be stamped properly, and some of them may have found their way back into the bishops’ Vatican mailboxes more than a week later, when the Synod discussions were already advanced. Many bishops, however, reported that they never received a copy. Suspicious souls theorized that if the books had finally been delivered, they had then been removed from the bishops’ mailboxes.
Father Federico Lombardi rejected such conspiracy theories. The books had been delivered, he told reporters; indeed some bishops reported having received more than one copy. (That was undoubtedly true. In their zeal to ensure that the books reached the Synod participants, the publisher’s team had used all available addresses and in some cases had more than one address for a particular bishop.) Cardinal Baldisseri, while complaining that the distribution of the book was an attempt to influence the Synod discussions, denied that his office had made any attempt to intercept the books. To be sure, Remaining in the Truth of Christ was published with the goal of advancing the debate. But the editor and publisher hoped to influence the debate by presenting persuasive arguments, not by limiting the flow of information to the Synod fathers.
Complaints that the organizers of the Synod were involved in their own attempts to influence the outcome became more frequent as the days passed. During one particularly contentious discussion, the imposing Cardinal George Pell reportedly slammed his hand down on a table and exclaimed, “You must stop manipulating this Synod!”
Interim Report Sparks Angry Reactions
Controversy at the Synod intensified on October 13 with the release of an interim report—the relatio post disceptationem—which was supposed to summarize the first week’s discussions and serve as the basis for the second week’s deliberations. Many participants, however, thought the relatio misrepresented their views. The next day the Vatican press office announced defensively that “a value has been attributed to the document that does not correspond to its nature,” emphasizing that it was merely “a working document.”
At the news conference introducing the relatio, reporters were openly skeptical about some of the more controversial passages of the document. When questioned about the statement that homosexuals “have gifts and qualities to offer to the Christian community,” Archbishop Bruno Forte, who drafted that section, gave an answer that “played to decidedly mixed reviews both inside and outside the Synod hall,” reported John Allen of Crux.
Cardinal Burke charged that the relatio “advances positions which many Synod Fathers do not accept and, I would say, as faithful shepherds of the flock cannot accept,” and Cardinal Pell described it as a “tendentious, skewed” account. Among the bishops with whom Pell had discussed the relatio, he said, fully three-quarters were unsatisfied with it.
When the South African cardinal Wilfrid Napier was asked whether the bishops approved of the relatio, he remarked that they had no opportunity to do so. The document had been released to the press before it was presented to the Synod fathers. This was an important tactical point, because first impressions are lasting. The reporters covering the Synod, anxious for solid news about the deliberations, would pounce on this first document and broadcast it worldwide. Any subsequent statements from the Synod would be read in the light of this interim report. So the staff of the Synod had succeeded in setting the terms of the public debate, if not the bishops’ discussions.
Cardinal Péter Erdő of Hungary, who as relator general was responsible, on paper, for the preparation of the relatio, made no special effort to conceal that substantial portions of the document had been prepared without his involvement. Pope Francis himself, who had frequently spoken about the importance of synodal government in the Church, was a party to this subversion of the assembly’s procedures, having appointed the officials running the Synod office and having approved their decision to release the interim report to the press before presenting it to the Synod fathers.
Archbishop Stanisław Gadecki, the president of the Polish bishops’ conference, told Vatican Radio that the relatio failed to provide solid support for “good, normal, ordinary families” striving to fulfill the Christian ideal of marriage. “It is not so much what the document says but what it does not say that has been noticed,” the archbishop lamented. “It focuses on exceptions, but what is needed is the proclamation of truth.”
Many prelates observed that the early release of the relatio had triggered an enormous volume of media coverage, much of it inaccurate, conveying the impression that the Church would change her teachings. The BBC, for example, announced that Francis had “scored a first quiet victory,” convincing “many Catholic Church leaders to moderate their formerly strongly critical language about gay unions.”
A “Virtually Irredeemable” Position
“We’re now working from a position that’s virtually irredeemable,” said Cardinal Napier, referring to the media coverage. “The message has gone out that this is what the Synod is saying, that this is what the Catholic Church is saying,” he said. “Whatever we say hereafter will seem like we’re doing damage control.”
Among their many objections to the relatio, critics frequently cited the document’s failure to incorporate the thought of St. John Paul II, whose “theology of the body” was one of the most important magisterial developments since the Second Vatican Council. It would have seemed appropriate, then, for a new statement by the Synod to build on that foundation. Instead the document largely ignored John Paul’s work.
The Kasper proposal, in particular, directly contradicted the teaching of John Paul II. In section 84 of his own apostolic exhortation on marriage and family life, Familiaris Consortio, issued in 1981, John Paul had written that
the Church reaffirms her practice, which is based upon Sacred Scripture, of not admitting to Eucharistic Communion divorced persons who have remarried. They are unable to be admitted thereto from the fact that their state and condition of life objectively contradict that union of love between Christ and the Church which is signified and effected by the Eucharist. Besides this, there is another special pastoral reason: if these people were admitted to the Eucharist, the faithful would be led into error and confusion regarding the Church’s teaching about the indissolubility of marriage.
Reconciliation in the sacrament of Penance, which would open the way to the Eucharist, can only be granted to those who, repenting of having broken the sign of the Covenant and of fidelity to Christ, are sincerely ready to undertake a way of life that is no longer in contradiction to the indissolubility of marriage.
With a week remaining in the session, the critics of the relatio organized a strong campaign to ensure that the Synod’s final document would be very different from the interim report. After an opening week in which every bishop had the opportunity to address the whole assembly, the participants were divided into ten working groups, organized by language, for the remainder of the assembly. Cardinal Baldisseri originally announced that the reports of the working groups would not be made public. According to Marco Tosatti of La Stampa, that announcement provoked a vigorous protest by Cardinal Erdő. When other prelates joined him, the decision was reversed.
The working groups expressed surprise that the preliminary report had been made public, and most of them registered serious reservations about its contents. Speaking for one of the French-language groups, Cardinal Robert Sarah said that he felt obliged to give voice to the “emotion and confusion provoked by the publication of a document that we considered as a simple (although quite useful) working document, and thus provisional.” Cardinal George Pel
l told the British Catholic journal The Tablet that about three-quarters of the Synod fathers had criticized the relatio, which he himself described as “tendentious and incomplete.” As did many of his brother bishops, he found it “strange that there was so little in the document on scriptural teaching and magisterial teaching on marriage, sexuality, family.” Cardinal Müller declared the document “completely wrong” in its portrayal of the Synod fathers’ discussion and found it “shameful” that the report had suppressed some points of view while promoting others.
In particular, the working groups complained that the relatio had failed to express a positive vision of the Christian understanding of marriage and family life and called for a stronger affirmation of the Church’s teaching on marriage and sexuality. The relatio, they observed, focused on problematical situations, such as cohabitation, same-sex unions, and divorce. Without ignoring those problems, the reports suggested that the Synod’s final statement should “contain a strong message of encouragement and support for the Church and for faithful married couples.”
The groups applauded the effort in the relatio to depict the Church as a place of welcome for all people, regardless of their difficulties. But the Synod fathers, the Vatican press office reported, feared the document “could give the impression of a willingness on the part of the Church to legitimize irregular family situations,” and most of the groups questioned the wisdom of “gradualism” as a pastoral approach to people in irregular unions. An Italian-language group, led by Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, the archbishop of Genoa, was more sharply critical, saying that the preliminary report “seems to be afraid to express an opinion on several issues that have now become the dominant cultural expressions.”
The working groups’ reports did not reveal a consensus in favor of allowing divorced and remarried Catholics to receive Communion. Most groups, however, did find broad agreement that if possible, the procedures for obtaining a decree of nullity should be streamlined.
As far as outsiders could tell, the first ten days of the Synod’s meeting were focused divorce and remarriage. Much less had been heard about healthy families and still less about the need to promote the teachings of the Catholic Church on the sanctity and indissolubility of marriage. To be fair, the relatio post disceptationem did devote some attention to the challenge of evangelizing persons whose lives are at odds with the Christian vision of marriage and family life—gradually drawing them along, helping them to perceive the truth. But that interim document still focused on problems rather than solutions.
Equally important, the relatio conveyed the impression to the general public that the Catholic Church was preparing to accept irregular living arrangements that had hitherto been regarded as sinful. As that message spread, it would become increasingly difficult to proclaim the truth about human sexuality. The first words out of the Synod, therefore, were a setback for evangelization.
The Heavy Influence of a Declining German Church
The two previous popes, John Paul II and Benedict XVI, spoke frequently about the “new evangelization”—the effort to revive the Faith in those societies where Christianity was once dominant but has now faded. For the most part, that means Europe and North America, where the Church has suffered sharp declines in Mass attendance, in vocations to the priesthood and religious life, in church weddings, in baptisms.
But if you had to identify the one country in the West where the decline of the Catholic Church is most pronounced, you would probably point to Germany, where a massive exodus testifies to the German Church’s evangelical slumber. Each year more than one hundred thousand Germans formally drop their registration in the Catholic Church—to say nothing of the many others who simply stop attending Mass. More than three thousand parishes have been closed in the past decade, while the number of annual baptisms has fallen by roughly one hundred thousand.
Why, then, was the agenda of the extraordinary session of the Synod of Bishops—the theme of which was the family in the context of evangelization—dominated by Germans? Cardinal Kasper had introduced the proposal to allow divorced and remarried Catholics to receive Communion. Cardinal Marx, the president of the German bishops’ conference, had testified that the Kasper proposal had the full support of the other German bishops. The American Catholic commentator Amy Welborn asked the right question:
Well, first you should be wondering why the head of a national church that is dying should have this constantly turned-on microphone on this issue. Why are we even listening to him? Aren’t we supposed to be listening to the Church from places where it is actually alive and growing?
Where is the Church growing? Most conspicuously in Africa. One might even say that in the early twenty-first century, Africa itself is “the context of evangelization.” So a Synod dedicated to the family might profitably discuss the difficulties facing Christian families in Africa. And there are many: the lingering influence of pagan customs, polygamy, staged and arranged marriages, poverty, lack of access to health care and education, civil wars, foreign aid that comes tied to anti-family ideology, and, last but not least, Islamic extremism and religious persecution. These are real problems, touching the lives of millions of people. But they were scarcely mentioned in public discussions of the Synod’s agenda. Instead, the Western world concentrated on its own favorite problem: the discomfort of those relatively few Catholics who, having divorced and remarried, now wish to receive Communion. At a time when hundreds of thousands of parents are struggling to save their children from starvation or to find new homes where they will be safe from violence, how does one justify putting the Kasper proposal at the top of the agenda? And a more difficult question is how would resolving the situation of these divorced and remarried Catholics ignite a new burst of evangelization?
Ironically enough, the African Church did become the focus of public attention during the second week of the Synod meeting, but not because the bishops were discussing the troubles of African families. Cardinal Kasper was caught disparaging the African bishops, who were resisting his proposal. “They should not tell us too much what we have to do,” he complained to a group of journalists. He added that the Africans also blocked a discussion of how the Church might reach out to same-sex couples. Homosexuality is not even mentioned in African societies, the enlightened German observed. “It’s a taboo.”
At first Kasper denied making these dismissive remarks, whose patronizing tone hinted at racial bias. Then the English journalist who had revealed his comments, Edward Pentin, produced a recording of his exchange with the cardinal. Kasper responded that the interview was unauthorized, but in the recording Pentin clearly identifies himself as a reporter before asking questions. Finally Kasper complained that he had been speaking off the record. That last line of defense soon crumbled as well. He had been speaking with three reporters, and he never said that his remarks were off the record. Kasper was not new to this game; he had dealt with the media, quite skillfully, for years. He certainly knew that comments made to reporters are presumed to be on the record unless the speaker indicates otherwise.
So why would the cardinal have made such remarkably impolitic comments? And why did he imagine that they would not come to light? It seems that he was acquainted with the other two reporters, but not with Pentin. Apparently he was confident (rightly, as it turned out) that the two reporters he knew shared his views and would not publicize his disparaging comments about the African bishops. In other words he thought he was talking with allies rather than with neutral observers.
Adept politicians know how to court the media, offering reporters an exclusive interview here, a bit of inside information there, a background briefing now and then. Kasper had been making the rounds for months, shoring support for his initiative. He had worked the press well; it was not by chance that the media coverage for his proposal was overwhelmingly favorable. But now he was the victim of his own success. He had been profoundly embarrassed because he made the assumption that Pentin, like so many other reporters, was playi
ng for his team.
Finally, even if the cardinal had said that he was speaking off the record (which he did not), and even if Pentin had been acting unethically when he recorded the conversation (which he was not), the fact remained that Kasper did make those dismissive comments about the concerns of some fellow bishops. He left no doubt that he viewed the Synod as an opportunity to address First World problems and saw the African bishops as a hindrance.
An Early Bid for Acceptance of Homosexuality
In those unguarded comments, Cardinal Kasper brought up homosexuality, expressing his dissatisfaction that the Synod had not spent more time on that topic. By all accounts, in fact, very little had been said about homosexuality during the bishops’ deliberations. Father Lombardi told reporters that of the 250 or so talks during the plenary sessions, only one address focused on homosexuality.
Nevertheless, no fewer than four paragraphs on pastoral care for homosexuals appeared in the interim report. The Associated Press reported that these paragraphs had been drafted by Archbishop Bruno Forte, the secretary of the committee appointed by the pope to draft the relatio, and at the press conference introducing the relatio, Cardinal Erdő seemed to confirm Forte’s authorship of those paragraphs by referring all questions about homosexuality to him.
Forte evidently introduced his own thoughts into a report that was intended to summarize the ideas expressed by Synod fathers. When the relatio was read aloud, Forte and the Italian Jesuit Antonio Spadaro exchanged a very visible thumbs-up sign. Robert Royal observed, “This seems to suggest that not even they were certain … that those passages would survive into the interim document.”
A few insiders, then, were able to slip their personal ideas into a document that was intended to summarize the thoughts of the Synod fathers. The gratuitous reference to homosexuality was one more piece of evidence that the Synod’s organizers were doing their utmost to control the gathering and its message.
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