Don't be so sure that Pope Francis lost this round of squabbling with the bishops

The pope at the now-concluded Vatican synod on the family.

by Ken

On Friday I poked around the pushback being felt within and without the special synod of bishops gathered in the Vatican to ponder family issues. The synod seems clearly an initiative of Pope Francis to see where the boys in the hierarchi he inherited are standing on his initiatives to imbue Catholic family values with some measure of humanity.

By then the vocal and power-grubbing coterie of scumbag bishops had already begun watering down the draft document circulated on Monday, and the power-grubbers in the hierarchy as well as their power-grubbing movers in the laity were flexing their backward-looking muscles. On Saturday the final document that was released fell a heckuva lot short of that the Holy Father had in mind.

As the Washington Post's Michelle Boorstein reported:

A major meeting Pope Francis convened to help the Catholic Church improve its outreach to diverse modern families ended Saturday with a summary paper that removed earlier, revolutionary language that cited the value of same-sex and divorced families.

Critics of the pope were celebrating Saturday, with conservative Catholics cheering the reaffirmation that God prefers the traditional family.

The two-week meeting in Rome hadn’t been expected to result in changes to traditional doctrine, but the rare sight of cardinals from around the world debating matters such as whether same-sex couples can be called “partners” floored many Catholics. More liberal Catholics said Saturday that it was a victory for the church to even have such conversations, though many expressed disappointment with the paper.

This doesn't sound so bad.

But then we get:

“The language of compromise was eviscerated from Monday’s summary,” said Patrick Hornbeck, chair of theology at Fordham University, a Catholic institution. “The bishops who were more prophetic and progressive have found themselves drowned out by a chorus of hesitation and concern.”

Saturday’s summary reflected deep divisions in the world’s largest Christian church as it tries to reconnect with 21st-century families while sticking to its doctrine. Traditional bishops had spoken publicly and angrily in the past few days against the more open language in Monday’s draft document, saying it was a dangerous betrayal and potentially heretical. Some said the church could eventually be headed for division.

And even this is down-the-middle treatment that's a good deal more generous to the old pope than a lot of the noise being heard from the Catholic right-wing war parties, who seem positively exultant at kneecappping the puling pontiff.

Except that may not be what happened. It was, after all, the pope who pressed the synod to a swift conclusion, denying the bishops the opportunity to stall, obfuscate, and stultify, and it was the pope who insisted that in the interest of transparency, vote totals be released for every section of the proposed document, whether voted up or down -- and bear in mind that a two-thirds vote was required for adoption.

As Michelle Boorstein reports:

The Vatican on Saturday released the vote tallies for each section of the report, and [the international traditionalist conglomeration] Voice of the Family noted that the most contentious sections — encouraging a more welcoming attitude toward families who don’t conform to orthodox norms — weren’t overwhelmingly defeated.

“The voting numbers reveal that most Synod Fathers remain open to proposals contrary to Catholic teaching,” the statement said. “There has been much talk about ‘welcoming’ and ‘accompanying’ people, but this is impossible without the clarity of the truth.”

And of course it's the Inquisitionaries who are in sole possession of "the truth," and the clarity thereof.

Of course individual votes weren't made public, but everyone who participated in the voting is now answerable for his vote. (Isn't it handy that we don't have to worry about inserting gender-inclusive formulations like "his or her vote"?) Now I can't claim to speak for the pope, but a few things seem fairly clear:

• The pope has a lot of power, but he really can't take the Church anywhere it doesn't want to go, and he can hardly be unaware that the hierarchy isn't exactly the most enlightened. After all, for almost 35 unbroken years, his vile predecessors, the fake-saintly autocrat John Paul II and his even more unspeakable henchman, Cardinal Ratguts, later Pope Cardinal Ratguts, exercised total and ruthless control over hierarchical promotions, meaning that the whole shebang is now made up with their dregs -- a combination of reactionary power-grubbers and self-promoting toadies. As our friend John Puma pointed out in a comment on my Friday post, that very day one of the bulwarks of Catholic reaction, Cardinal Raymond Burke, was squealing like a pig about having been forced out of his high-level Vatican post.

• It's going to be some time, though, before Francis can have any significant impact on the overall makeup of the hierachy, and he doesn't know how much time he has. He has to be aware of the example of his great predecessor John XXIII, who was elevated to the papacy with a mandate to die soon but didn't, and caused all manner of trouble. Eventually he did die, though, and while it took the traditionalists decades to move the theological clock back, eventually they managed it. Both Francis and his enemies know that time can be a powerful obstacle to any meaningful reform.

So maybe it's time for the current pope to shake things up, to get people talking, and to make sure those people are aware that other people are listening.


WELL WORTH A LOOK ON THIS SUBJECT --

is the take of the Washington Post's Jonathan Capehart ("Pope Francis and gays will win by losing this round on synod draft"), which begins:

Headlines called it a “setback” for Pope Francis that the initial draft of the synod of bishops released last week that spoke of “welcoming homosexual persons” was silent on them in the final document. But I don’t see it that way at all. The pope let the genie out of the bottle. And, as we all know, it’s difficult to put him back in once released.

And Jonathan concludes:

I’m not saying the church or the pope will become a champion of LGBT rights. And I’m definitely not saying they are going to support marriage equality. What I am saying is that by talking about the humanity of gay and lesbian Catholics and worrying about their place in the church, Pope Francis is openly recognizing them as children of God. After centuries of demonization, that’s a revolutionary act that can’t be undone.

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