The Wanderer interviews Cardinal Burke on Synod on the Family

Q. Several weeks have passed since the Synod on the Family, and I presume you have now had time to study carefully the final report. In your view, what are the main fruits of the Synod, and how best can the Church take advantage of them?

A. The final report is a complex document and is written in a way in which it is not always easy to understand the exact import of what is being affirmed. For example, three paragraphs (nn. 84-86) suggest that the last session of the Synod found a way whereby people who are in irregular matrimonial unions can still receive the sacraments. To address the lack of clarity in the document, I have written a brief commentary on those paragraphs to clarify what the Church actually teaches.

Since the close of the Synod, Fr. Antonio Spadaro, a Jesuit who was one of the Synod Fathers and on the drafting committee of the Synod, has published an article in which he gives as a central highlight of this Synod something the prior one was unable to accomplish, namely, to open up a way for reception of Holy Communion and Penance by those who are divorced and civilly remarried. In conscience, I felt I had to publish a clarification about what he wrote.

There are many good things in the final report, but there are many other things that I intend to write about, in order to make clear the Church’s teaching. For example, I do not think the statement about parental responsibility for education is adequately stated. It could give the impression that parents are not the first ones who are responsible for the education of their children.

full interview at The Wanderer

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Cdl Burke Op-Ed in NCReg: The Truth About the 14th Ordinary Assembly of the Synod of Bishops?

In the Nov. 28 issue of La Civiltà Cattolica, Jesuit Father Antonio Spadaro, director of the journal and a Synod Father, presents a summary of the work of the 14th Ordinary Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, dedicated to the vocation and mission of the family (pp. 372-391).

Although the author makes various affirmations about the nature and work of the Synod of Bishops, which demand critical comment in a longer study, one affirmation which necessitates immediate comment is summarized thus by the author:

The Synod has also desired to touch wounded persons and couples to accompany them and heal them in a process of integration and reconciliation without barriers. Concerning access to the sacraments for those divorced and remarried civilly, the Synod has formulated the way of discernment and of the “internal forum”, laying the foundations and opening a door which, on the contrary, had remained closed in the preceding Synod.

Read more: http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/the-truth-about-the-14th-ordinary-assembly-of-the-synod-of-bishops/#ixzz3t5aLvlsp

Thoughts during the Synod on 'Thoughts after Lambeth'

Bradley J. Birzer posted an edited version of T.S. Eliot's 1931 essay 'Thoughts after Lambeth' at The Imaginative Conservative. As you probably know, Lambeth Conferences are, or perhaps now were, the periodic meetings of the bishops of the Anglican Communion at which they would attempt to reach agreement on various topics of concern and express such agreement in resolutions. In the essay, Eliot reviews the Report of the Lambeth Conference of 1930.

The 1930 Conference is most-remembered for Resolution 15 on marriage and birth control. Eliot says,

"The Resolution shows pretty clearly both the strength and the weakness of the Report, and the strength and weakness of the Anglican Church. The recognition of contraception is, I feel sure, something quite different from a concession to 'modern' opinion. It was a courageous facing of facts of life; and was the only way of dealing with the question possible within the Anglican organization."

Guess the next word.

"But before asserting the distinct character of the Anglican Church in this way, the bishops must have taken a good deal of thought about it; all the more astonishing that they did not take a little more thought, and not proceed to a statement which seems to me almost suicidal. For to allow that 'each couple' should take counsel only if perplexed in mind is almost to surrender the whole citadel of the Church. It is ten to one, considering the extreme disingenuity of humanity, which ought to be patent to all after so many thousand years, that only a very small minority will be 'perplexed'... ."

Or, as he had put it in the previous paragraph,

"Certainly, any one who is wholly sincere and pure in heart may seek for guidance from the Holy Spirit; but who of us is always wholly sincere, especially where the most imperative of instincts may be strong enough to simulate to perfection the voice of the Holy Spirit?"

To help guard against this, he suggested that married couples dealing with this issue take it to their pastors.

"the Church ought to be able to enjoin upon all its communicants that they should take spiritual advice upon specified problems of life; and both clergy and parishioners should recognize the full seriousness and responsibility of such consultation."

This wouldn't have been a perfect solution.

"I am not unaware that as opinions and theories vary at present, those seeking direction can always find the direction they seek, if they know where to apply; but that is inevitable. But here, if anywhere, is definitely a matter upon which the Individual Conscience is no reliable guide; spiritual guidance should be imperative... ."

And such opinion-shopping would entail a second level of rationalization, which might have given some couples pause about a first.

"Even, however, if the Anglican Church affirmed, as I think it should affirm, the necessity for spiritual direction in admitting the exceptions, the Episcopate still has the responsibility of giving direction to the directors."

That is, it would involve more responsibility not only for Anglican priests but also for Anglican bishops.

Fr. Rosica: Synod is the same as Vatican II minus social media

I don't have time to cover the Synod at any length, but my jaw dropped at this public quote on Twitter from one of the Vatican spokesmen.

Difference between what happened during Vatican II & during #Synod15: there were no Social Media from 1962-65. The rest is all the same!

— Thomas Rosica (@FatherRosica) October 13, 2015

juxtapose

I would now like to add yet a third point: there was the Council of the Fathers – the real Council – but there was also the Council of the media. It was almost a Council apart, and the world perceived the Council through the latter, through the media. Thus, the Council that reached the people with immediate effect was that of the media, not that of the Fathers. And while the Council of the Fathers was conducted within the faith – it was a Council of faith seeking intellectus, seeking to understand itself and seeking to understand the signs of God at that time, seeking to respond to the challenge of God at that time and to find in the word of God a word for today and tomorrow – while all the Council, as I said, moved within the faith, as fides quaerens intellectum, the Council of the journalists, naturally, was not conducted within the faith, but within the categories of today's media, namely apart from faith, with a different hermeneutic. It was a political hermeneutic: for the media, the Council was a political struggle, a power struggle between different trends in the Church. It was obvious that the media would take the side of those who seemed to them more closely allied with their world. There were those who sought the decentralization of the Church, power for the bishops and then, through the expression "People of God", power for the people, the laity.

- Pope Benedict in 2013

Social media  destabilizes the power structures of the Council of the Media.  It is this reason that severe restrictions were placed upon the Synod's transparency, as the message cannot be construed to meet some end.

Voice of the Family: Press Conference with Cardinal Burke in Rome, Oct 15th

The topic says "parents as primary educators" which is hopefully a topic being discussed at the Synod, perhaps commentary on the Synod if there is a Q/A.

Voice of the Family