Catholics around the world need to know that the Vatican communications machine is still doing its best to manipulate the results of the Synod on the Family.  

As can be seen from the link here and below to the relevant page on the Vatican website, all the preliminary and more liberal documents of the Synod are up there in multiple languages, while the only one that matters de jure - the final and official relatio which did not even propose - much less approve - Communion for divorced-and remarrieds or "welcome" for homosexuals and their "gifts", is posted only in Italian.

God save the Pope from his enemies, as Cardinal Pell said. May he find a consistent vision to guide him as pastor of the Universal Church. Awake Francis/Peter! Be the man that Christ wants you to be!

(ROME) My good friend and colleague, Chris Ferrara, has rightly indicated that this is no time to mince words. We are reaping all of the final madness that logically had to emerge from the victory of the conscious cabal that took the Roman Catholic Church captive at the time of Second Vatican Council. No one can play semantic games with the horrible reality this has caused.

Sister Cristina Sings 'Like a Virgin'

When I first saw this quaint, old photograph of a Catholic nun, playfully teaching a couple of street urchins how to dance a jig, I was surprised by the tears that suddenly began to burn behind my eyes. It’s certainly nothing profound but it says much about what we have lost. Catholic nuns, the old habits, innocent children playing in the street—it’s all gone now, along with  most everything else good, true and beautiful about the world in which we live.

If you don’t understand why my tears somehow make sense then perhaps you never knew the old Catholic Church of which this photograph is a happy reminder. It wasn’t a system of oppressive rules, abusive nuns and holy fools as we’re constantly told it was. In fact, the reality of it bore little resemblance to the Catholic-bashing fairytale we see depicted in the movies and everywhere else with such intensity that even the history we ourselves lived through is in danger of being transformed in the image and likeness of a Godless modern age.  

If we cannot depend upon the official documents, whether “final” or “working” from our bishops for an accurate iteration of Catholic teaching,  then how are we to proceed at all?

So, those who are watching the incredible debacle the Synod on the Family is turning out to be – with the press office clamping down on the information on who is saying what in the Aula; issuing only vague and subjective “summaries” of the day’s talks; blowing smoke whenever anyone asks a difficult question - should probably not be blamed for being thoroughly un-shocked by the contents of the now-notorious “Relatio”.

Does the Catholic Church Still Believe in Mortal Sin? Hell? Damnation? Sins that Cry to Heaven for Vengeance? The Ten Commandments?

The New York Times, Time and The New Yorker are exuberant about the contents of the mid-Synod document on homosexuality. The Huffington Post calls it a “dramatic shift.” Reuters says the document challenges the Church to “change its attitude” toward those who practice perversion, the sin of Sodom. These times are interesting indeed.

Even most Catholics today do not realize that a number of Fathers of the First Vatican Council actually submitted a papal petition for Columbus’ canonization

Another Columbus Day has passed. The usual suspects in the secular, and now sadly even “Catholic” media have trotted out their yearly calumnies of the man whom America still, to her credit, honors with a National Holiday. There is still no better response to this yearly spectacle of hatred towards Columbus than the following statement of Rev. A. Knight from 1877, “The disapproval of the ‘Infidel Press’ is to Catholics a guarantee of the goodness of a cause second only to an autograph letter of the Holy Father.”

As if we didn’t know it before, today we learned why the Secret Synod was conducted in secret, with the faithful not being permitted to see the texts of the participants’ addresses or even to know which bishop or cardinal was advancing which position. The Secret Synod was conducted in secret because evil advances in shadows.

Many others, and not just traditionalists, have already expressed outrage over the disastrous “Relatio post disceptationem,” which appeared on the Vatican website today, October 13. This is the anniversary of Pope Leo’s vision of Satan’s attack on the Church (leading to his composition of the Leonine prayer suddenly abandoned after Vatican II), the Miracle of the Sun at Fatima, and the derailing of the Second Vatican Council by Cardinal Liénart’s violation of the procedural rules in seizing the microphone in order to demand new drafting committees for the conciliar documents.

There is an old political axiom that has apparently been totally lost on the people in charge of the Synod: how something looks is often more important than what it is. In our times, the question asked most often by smart political advisors is "How does this look?" Optics, and how to avoid other people manipulating it for you, is particularly now in the age of Twitter at the heart of modern political life, but also seems to be one thing the Vatican simply can't grasp.

But what outsiders need to remember is that this is a very common problem in Italian politics in general. For centuries, Italian rulers have just done whatever they wanted, and whoever didn't like it could just go jump. The Italian national characteristic most abhorred by the other races is certainly their arrogance and total disinterest in anyone who does not seem immediately useful. Anyone who has ever taken a walk in Rome and had to stop and specifically ask the Romans crowded around the outside of the coffee bar to please move over the three inches required to pass on the sidewalk - and received the cold, blank Roman stare in response - will be familiar. They will often simply treat other people as though they are not there, and will pretend to be surprised when a person magically appears out of nowhere asking them to get out of the way.