Synod rundown so far

The real story is not news to Catholics paying attention for the past 50 years: there are ignorant bishops and heretical bishops. The Anglo-American Protestant media spin that as the church being just like one of their denominations: they meet at the Vatican and can change doctrine. So somebody foolishly or maliciously publishes online their working notes (the relatio) showing the wide range of opinion among them, and the TV talking heads think it's a new doctrine, because that's what "the Vatican" (as opposed to bishops debating at the Vatican) does, right? Cue pictures of rainbow flags over St. Peter's and artwork of Pope Francis officiating at a homosexual pseudo-wedding. Also, the other issue, divorce and remarriage, is of far more interest and one of the only doctrinal things secular people still care about, because there are a lot more normal people than homosexuals (< 3%) so of course lots of Catholics are in invalid second marriages, particularly in the leading empire, Protestant America. But if it's all hogwash, why do you care who we give our "magic cookie" to, secularists? Might you ... actually know we're telling the truth? Well, the spiritual princes fighting this war (the fallen angels, not the bishops) DO know it's the truth, and they, the Protestants, and the secularists again want you to think we're the Episcopalians: one good media push on the bishops and they can send the whole supposedly infallible church crashing down, as they've wanted since, well, Jesus' time, and markedly since the "Reformation." The gates of hell will not prevail. The church will always be on earth, but it will be smaller. No guarantee it will still be in your city, and worse comes to worst, ISIS or some radicalized millennials (at heart a Lord of the Flies mob; all they need is a Hitler or Stalin) come a-knocking.

The flashpoint of rebellion against God is where two of his creations, matter and spirit, meet; the disorder when they meet is sin. This war has three fronts: who Jesus is, the Eucharist, and sex.

• Cardinal Müller: "Indegna, vergognosa, completamente sbagliata." "There was some surprise — the cardinal explained — within the circolo minore reading the first reactions of the media to the 'Relatio post disceptationem' published yesterday: and also some perplexities on what was in fact contained in it, as if the Pope had said it, as if the Synod had decided it, and this is not true. It is a working document where we were to say our points of views, to be conveyed to the Synod Secretariat." I love Italian, the gorgeous daughter of a beautiful mother, Latin, the Roman Rite's template and world auxiliary language, useful because it doesn't change.
• Hilary White: 50 years ago, the Second Vatican Council started the Church off in a direction it was never supposed to go. Many, many people followed along in good faith, assuming that the people in charge knew what they were doing. But a smaller number of others sounded a warning, saying that the direction leads to a deadly falls. Well, now we are seeing the roaring falls that we have been hearing, and largely not heeding, for all this time. The dissent among the bishops I described. Also: A.J. MacDonald Jr. sounds like '80s Novus Ordo Catholics, including the putative conservatives: "for you and for all" and soft-selling women's ordination with "Eucharistic ministers," but call them on it and "Why are you leaving the church?" He has a point, though: don't get caught up in the media hype; that's Satan talking. Don't leave the church for a cult with its trappings just because you don't like the local ceremonial, for example. Unless Francis tries to push divorce and remarriage, cohabitation, and/or homosexualism ex cathedra, he is still the Pope.
• The Remnant: The Secret Synod does what we expected: evil.
• I still think Fr. Longenecker's right: this will be much ado about nothing.
• "I felt like I had been somewhere else. Not a Catholic Mass." Exactly how I felt in the '80s, that I'd been swindled, that there was nothing there. So I toddled back to the Episcopal Church whence I came, only this time to the old-fashioned high-church (Anglo-Catholic) version. I've tested Benedict the Great's reform: been to liberal parishes, such as St. Anne's, Wildwood, where I go when I'm on vacation. It's both the reform and my knowing more now: I don't feel that way anymore. It's valid in spite of the liberals. Before, with the English paraphrase, the ONLY ways you could understand the new Mass in English in a Catholic way were IF you knew the old Mass and/or you knew the Novus Ordo in Latin. (I think lots of older Catholics just didn't pay attention to the English, since "liturgy's not really in English," so they just assumed/imagined it was really still the old Mass.) Benedict's "the Great" in my book because he fixed that problem. The English now matches the Latin, and Fr. Liberal has to say it right to keep his job. I look at it the way Anglo-Catholics saw the Book of Common Prayer: not heretical and containing everything necessary but far from ideal.