Fr. Z's Blog

The Exhortation following the ghastly Amazon Synod (“walking together with a demonic idol”) is now out.

No married priests and no deaconettes.

More on the Exhortation below.

First, however, something which you should know about.

Sandro Magister doesn’t often put his foot wrong.  He doesn’t usually fall into the obvious disinformation traps set for those who hunger to be first with the juicy stuff.

So, I read what he wrote about Benedict XVI and Card. Sarah today with real sorrow, reflecting on the viciousness of the left, the papalatrous, the New Red Guards.

I see now that it is translated into English on Sandro’s site HERE

Francis’s Silence, Ratzinger’s Tears, and That Never-Published Statement of His

What is most striking in the post-synodal apostolic exhortation “Querida Amazonia,” made public today, February 12 2020, is its total silence on the most anticipated and controversial issue: the ordination of married men.

Not even the word “celibacy” appears in it. Pope Francis desires “to configure ministry in such a way that it is at the service of a more frequent celebration of the Eucharist, even in the remotest and most isolated communities” (no. 86). But he reiterates (no. 88) that only the ordained priest can celebrate the Eucharist, absolve from sins and administer the anointing of the sick (because it too is “intimately linked to the forgiveness of sins,” footnote 129). And it says nothing about the extension of ordination to “viri probati.”

No news on women’s ministries either. “If they were admitted to Holy Orders,” Francis writes in no. 100, “it would lead us to clericalize women” and to “restrict our understanding of the Church to her functional structures.”

The curiosity that arises immediately, from reading “Querida Amazonia,” is therefore to understand to what extent the bombshell book written by pope emeritus Benedict XVI and by Cardinal Robert Sarah in defense of the celibacy of the clergy, published in mid-January, influenced the exhortation and in particular its silence on the ordination of married men.

[…]

Sandro goes on with a postscript. He says he has this from independent sources. He relates four point. Here is the first, and the one that made me so sad. Keep in mind the vicious explosion against both Sarah and Benedict by people like Ivereigh and Beans:

[…]

The first occurred on the morning of Wednesday January 15.

All throughout the day of Tuesday the 14th the attack carried out by the radical movements against Ratzinger and Sarah had built up to a devastating crescendo, fueled in fact by the repeated denials of the prefect of the pontifical household, Georg Gänswein, of a co-responsibility of the pope emeritus in the composition and publication of the book, to the point of requesting the withdrawal of his signature, and contrasted to no avail by the precise and documented reconstruction, made public by Sarah, of the genesis of the book itself by the united efforts of its two coauthors.

So then, on the morning of Wednesday January 15, while Pope Francis was holding his weekly general audience with Gänswein sitting as usual at his side in the Paul VI hall, and therefore far from the Mater Ecclesiae monastery which is the residence of the pope emeritus whose secretary he is, Benedict XVI picked up the phone himself and called Sarah first at home, where he did not find him, and then at the office, where the cardinal answered.

Benedict XVI expressed his heartfelt solidarity with Sarah. He confided that he could not understand the reasons for such violent and unjust aggression. And he wept. Sarah wept too. The call ended with both of them in tears.

[…]

There are three other issues after this, but this is the one that left my heart heavy.

One of them concerns the sidelining of Archbp. Gänswein, and it is tied to #Bookgate.

Folks, it is hard to know exactly what influence Sarah and Benedict’s book had on the final text of the Post-Synodal Exhortation. Was there material in the document opening up the way to married priests, etc? Was there a campaign of disinformation designed to target certain writers and also to uncover internal leaks? Or, on the other hand, was the leaked information correct? In that case did the book force a revision?

We don’t know these things for certain. Magister has his view. He is pretty well informed. Eventually we will learn more. Why? Because, as the old proverb goes: “Il diavolo fa le pentole, ma non i coperchi”. The Enemy always shows you what he’s cooking.

What have we seen?

We see that the Germans have reacted with dismay about the lack of their pets in the new Amazon document.  HERE  “Unfortunately, [Francis] does not find the courage to implement real reforms in the questions of the ordination of married men and the liturgical skills of women, which have been discussed for 50 years.”

Of course at the German Synod (“Stechschrite miteinander”) girls distribute Communion in the hand to the Bishops.  No, really.  HERE

We see that Beans, one of the most vicious of the bombthrowers, is backing off from his agitprop. Quoted by CNN: “People are starting to adjust their expectations,” said Massimo Faggioli, a church historian at Villanova University in Pennsylvania. “The major reforms they were expecting of him may never come.”

And this bitter fruit…

We had – for centuries – councils on the papacy and on the episcopacy.
We need a Synod on synodality (seriously)

— Massimo Faggioli (@MassimoFaggioli) February 12, 2020

Yeah… that’s what we need.  More synods (“walking together”).  Let’s talk about walking together while we are walking together.  And then we’ll talk about the fact that we talked and walked.  And then we’ll write about talking and walking and talk about the walking and the writing about the talking, until we’ve written something that we can talk and write about some more!

And Pachamama laughs.

Some are saying something like, “Well, maybe this Exhortation is official teaching and all that stuff, but we are really going to hook our hopes on the final document of the Synod rather than this document from Francis.”  Check out CNA on this.    It’s a little amusing, really.  One of the lefty Cardinals involved in the Amazon Synod (“walking together with Pachamana”) was Michael Card. Czerny.  He tried to spin his disappointment: “The final document, consisting of proposals made and voted by the Synod Fathers, has the weight of a synodal final document” On the other hand, the Exhortation “reflect[s] on the whole process and its final document, has the authority of ordinary magisterium of the Successor of Peter.”  See what he’s doing?  However, during the presser, it was made clear that Francis did NOT make his own the final document of the Synod, as some had expected.  Instead he went this route.  Surprisingly from Baldisseri:

“The apostolic exhortation does not speak of approval of the final document. It does not speak [of it]. It speaks of presentation, but not of approval,” Baldisseri continued. “There is not a clear canonical word of approval, as in article 18 of Episcopalis Communio. It speaks of express approval, not indirect, imagined.”

The final document of the Amazon synod “has a certain moral authority, sure,” he added, “but not magisterial.”

Hence the dismay of Beans and Austen.  And of Antonio 2+2=5 Spadaro.  This tweet:

#QueridaAmazonia accompagna e non sostituisce il Documento finale, auspicando che – nella ricerca delle soluzioni – lo Spirito Santo conduca la Chiesa a qualcosa di più grande del previsto. Il processo sinodale prosegue… | La Civiltà Cattolica https://t.co/wGpKp1dLMB

— Antonio Spadaro (@antoniospadaro) February 12, 2020

His babble…

“#QueridaAmazonia accompanies and not not replace the final Document [of the Synod], looking forward that – in searching for solutions – the Holy Spirit will guide the Church to something greater than previously expected.  The synodal process continues… “

Right.  The Holy Spirit.  I think the Holy Spirit moved Paul VI in the matter of Humanae vitae.  Is 2+2=5 saying that Holy Spirit has not yet moved Francis?

Yesterday, Card. Marx said he wasn’t going to stand for headship of the German Bishops Conference again.   Maybe the Holy Spirit moved him.

More puzzle pieces.

Here is something to watch for.

The left is now in a jam.  Their hero, Francis, has shelved the projects they tried to ram through, instrumentalizing the Amazon, using the power of the money of the German bishops and their crazy theologians.  They didn’t get their way.   It seems to me that Francis wanted to go their way, but in the end he backed off.  Why?  Hard to say.  In any event, the papalatrous left now has to decide: back up their hero and hope for the radical overturning of the Church or, stick with him?  How will they navigate this Scylla and Charibdis?  I suspect that, at some point, they will turn even more on Francis, now that they are not getting their way as quickly as they wanted.   They seem to be saying that a future Pope will give them what they want.  But that puts them in a jam too.  They don’t like the fact that there is a “Pope Emeritus”.  But to get the action they want, they need a new Pope.   So, what’s it going to be?

These are puzzle pieces. Slowly a picture might emerge as they fit together. That picture might not be what we would prefer it to be.

This is one of the reasons why, on both the faithful and traditional and conservative side… as well as one the iconoclastic and papalatrous left… we should all be careful about leaks and possible campaigns of disinformation. The risk of getting things wrong isn’t worthy getting to the story FIRST! Truth is more important than clicks.

Lastly, the beginning of that Amazon Synod will forever be tainted by the FACT of veneration of a demonic idol, Pachamama.  Its process and deliberations will forever be tainted by the presence of demonic idols.  Its conclusion will forever be tainted by the placing of a bowl with demonic symbols and purpose on the altar of St. Peter’s Basilica.

It is remarkable, really, that nothing worse came from this.