Well, I said months ago this would happen and there were indications over the last few days. Now it is confirmed. The Pope will write a post-synodal exhortation.
Pope Francis will write an apostolic exhortation as a follow up to the Synod on the Family and “it should not take too long [to arrive],” the Cardinal Secretary of State, Pietro Parolin, told the Italian news agency ANSA.
He said the papal document “will be based on the conclusions of the synod, as is the tradition.” He told this to reporters at the Gregorian University today, after delivering a lecture there for the 50th anniversary of “Nostra Aetate,” the Vatican II document on the relation of the Catholic Church to non-Christian religions.
The cardinal recalled that the synod fathers in their final document, which they approved on Oct. 24, had requested that the pope write a document on the family.
Again, what fear (expect?) from this document:
The post synod apostolic letter or statements from the Pope might make a basic statement about the indissolubility of marriage with no specific mention of the divorced and remarried receiving communion, knowing that anything other than this is impossible now. But the documents might also contain the now boilerplate calls for pastoral consideration. In conclusion, either the synod itself or perhaps the Pope himself in a following document may make a request for local Bishops’ conferences to explore ways for the divorced and remarried to be better integrated into parish life.
With those vague statements giving plausible deniability to the hierarchy, several Bishops’ conferences starting with Germany will issue norms allowing the divorced and remarried to receive communion after confession or some such other nonsense, which they are already likely allowing.
And the Church will do nothing. And then the practice will spread like wildfire. Think Communion in the hand. With the barn door left open, the horses are gone.
