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The Author Edward Pentin's
interview is here:
And here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mi1oV2f2grg.
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“Pay attention, as this is something one really should know. The pope is the president of the synod of bishops. I am the secretary general, but I don’t have anyone else above me, such as a prefect of a congregation or a president of a council. I don’t have anyone else above me, only the pope. The pope presided over all of the council meetings of the secretariat. He presides. I am the secretary. And so the documents were all seen and approved by the pope, with the approval of his presence. Even the documents during the synod, such as the Relatio ante disceptationem, the Relatio post disceptationem, and the Relatio synodi were seen by him before they were published.” --Cardinal
About a month ago, Voice of the Family drew attention to the errors
inherent in instrumentum laboris, a document released by the General
Secretariat of the Synod of Bishops on 23 June 2015, which is intended to act
as the basis for discussions at the XIV Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod
of Bishops to be held in Rome from 4-25 October 2015. The theme of the Synod is
“The Vocation and Mission of the Family in the Church and the Contemporary
World.” The document, asserts Voice
of the Family, “threatens the entire structure of Catholic teaching on
marriage, the family and human sexuality.”
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Here again, it has published a review of a new book, The Rigging of a Vatican Synod?: An Investigation into
Alleged Manipulation at the Extraordinary Synod on the Family.
The book will shed much light on allegations that the Extraordinary Synod held
in Rome last October was subject to manipulation. Written by a highly respected
Vatican journalist Edward Pentin, the book carries the endorsement
of Wilfrid Fox Cardinal Napier, Archbishop of Durban. Cardinal Napier is one of
the fifteen members of the permanent council of cardinals and bishops
overseeing the Synod of Bishops. He attended the Extraordinary Synod and was a
member of the committee that drafted the final relatio synodi of that Synod. Readers are encouraged to consult the book itself to
make themselves aware of the full extent of the concerns raised and of the
serious questions that now need to be asked in light of the upcoming Ordinary
Synod on the Family.
Cardinal Napier told Edward
Pentin that a few months before the Extraordinary Synod an official at the
Synod Secretariat had come to see him to share serious concerns. The
official told Napier that he was “very disturbed” by what he had witnessed and
commented that “this thing is being manipulated, it’s being engineered. [They]
want a certain result.”
The Synod Secretariat is
managed by the General Secretary of the Synod, Lorenzo Cardinal
Baldisseri. The organisation of the both Synods on the Family has been the
responsibility of Cardinal Baldisseri, though the cardinal has stressed the
close involvement of Francis I at every stage of the process. In an interview
given in January 2015 he said:
“Pay attention, as this is
something one really should know. The pope is the president of the synod of
bishops. I am the secretary general, but I don’t have anyone else above me,
such as a prefect of a congregation or a president of a council. I don’t have
anyone else above me, only the pope. The pope presided over all of the council
meetings of the secretariat. He presides. I am the secretary. And so the documents
were all seen and approved by the pope, with the approval of his presence. Even
the documents during the synod, such as the Relatio ante disceptationem, the
Relatio post disceptationem, and the Relatio synodi were seen by him before
they were published.”
Cardinal Baldisseri was
publicly implicated in the manipulation of the synod on September 20, 2014, in
accusations made by Vaticanist Marco Tossati in La Stampa, which alleged that a
cardinal had been heard explaining how he would manipulate the synod fathers. Pentin’s book identifies
that cardinal as Baldisseri.
The manipulation seems
already to have been well advanced by this date. Pentin recounts that some
months before the Extraordinary Synod the Synod Secretariat had contacted the
so-called Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and the
Family, known for its “fidelity to Catholic moral
teaching”, to recommend experts to participate in the Synod.
The Secretariat had made the same request to certain institutes of the Roman
Curia. In the event none of the experts recommended by these institutes was
invited to participate in the Synod. A high-level Vatican source has stated
that the opinion of these institutes was sought in order that the Secretariat
could ensure that “orthodox” experts could be excluded from participating in
the synod. It is also alleged that an official of the Synod Secretariat was
told to go through a list of potential experts and exclude all those who were
“conservative” and retain all those who were “progressive”.
The manipulation of the synod came to public attention following the release on 13th October 2014 of the interim relatio post disceptationem. This document, which purported to represent the contributions of the synod fathers, is alleged to have seriously misrepresented the views of the assembly. Cardinal Pell called it “tendentious, skewed” and said that “it didn’t represent accurately the feelings of the synod fathers”. Cardinal Napier alleges that the document contained opinions that were never expressed by any of the synod fathers. Pentin writes:
Cardinal Napier remembers a
synod father saying he had put his name to the document, but it was not what he
had written. “Others asked: How then could this be stated as coming from the
synod when the synod hasn’t even discussed it yet?”
Another synod participant
added his voice of concern, saying, “there are things said there about the
synod saying this, that, and the other, but nobody ever said them. So that’s
when it became plain that there was some engineering going on”, the South
African cardinal recalled.
The document caused great
controversy because it undermined Catholic teaching on key points of doctrine,
including the indissolubility of marriage, cohabitation and homosexual
unions. The manipulation surrounding the creation of this interim report
is discussed at length in the book. More surprising, because previously
unreported, is the manipulation involved in the drafting of the final report.
Pentin sheds light on other
controversial events that took place during the synod, giving a detailed narrative
of events surrounding the removal of a book co-authored by, among others, five
Cardinals, from the mail boxes of the synod fathers in the synod
hall. Pentin reports that Cardinal Baldisseri said that the sending of the
books was not “opportune”. Many readers will ask: how could the mailing of
books upholding Catholic teaching on the very point of doctrine under
discussion not be considered “opportune”? Only, it would seem, if anything
which would derail the previously laid plan for the synod was considered
inopportune.
The Rigging of a Vatican Synod? provides a great deal of
insight into the theological views of Cardinal Baldisseri. Pentin writes that:
“a sense of alarm was
experienced among many holders of traditional Church doctrine and practice in
May 2014, when, in an interview with Belgian Church newspaper Tertio, Cardinal
Baldisseri said it was time to update the Church’s doctrine on marriage—for
example, in connection with divorce and the situation of divorced persons and
those who are in civil partnerships. ‘The Church is not timeless, she lives
amid the vicissitudes of history, and the Gospel must be known and experienced
by people today’, Cardinal Baldisseri said. ‘The message should be in the
present, with all respect for the integrity of the one who receives that
message. We now have two synods to treat this complex theme of the family, and
I believe that these dynamics in two movements will allow a more adequate
response to the expectations of the people.'”
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| Cardinal Baldisseri |
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| Cardinal Kasper |
In January Cardinal
Baldisseri told a conference organised by Pontifical Council for the Family
that “there’s no reason to be scandalized that there is a cardinal or a
theologian saying something that’s different from the so-called ‘common
doctrine'”. “This doesn’t imply a going against” he said, rather “it means
reflecting, because dogma has its own evolution; that is a development, not a
change.” He added: “Everything that we know today is a mystery, and since we
are standing before a mystery and a mystery is not immediately known, we
advance in our understanding. We need to keep this in mind. And so [Kasper’s
proposal] should be welcomed as a contribution.” These comments were made
despite the fact that Cardinal Kasper’s proposal directly contradicts the
teaching of the Catholic Church even as partially expressed most recently by
John Paul II in Familiaris Consortio in 1981 and in
official documents of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in 1994 and 1998.
There is good reason to
believe that Cardinal Baldisseri’s theological views have had a very great
influence on the synodal texts. One of the most shocking passages in Pentin’s
book is an account of Baldisseri’s attempts to alter the content of the pre-synod
report, by placing pressure on Cardinal Erdö. These revelations alone would be
enough to make the book one of the most important contributions in the lead-up
to the next Synod.
Voice of the Family has drawn attention to the “many
problematic texts on the subject of the natural law” in the instrumentum laboris of the Extraordinary Synod
and the omission of any reference to natural law in the relatio synodi of that Synod. It would
seem, in the light of information presented by Pentin in the book, that this
may be another example of Cardinal Baldisseri’s damaging influence.
The Extraordinary Synod on
the Family, under Cardinal Baldisseri’s leadership, produced documents that
undermined Catholic teaching on a whole range of issues relating to human
sexuality, marriage and the family. The instrumentum laboris of the Ordinary Synod
extends the assault on Catholic doctrine to an even wider number of areas. The
Synod Secretariat’s grave failures have real implications for real families,
struggling as they are in a society ever more hostile to authentic moral
principles and the teachings of the Catholic Church.
Catholics at all levels of
the Church should be extremely concerned both by Cardinal Baldisseri’s
theological opinions and by the well-grounded accusations of manipulation
contained in this book. It is difficult to see how Catholics can have any
confidence in the synodal process while he remains General Secretary of the
Synod.
Source: Voice of the Family.
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