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Synod Day 2 – “Openness,” Leaks, and Fear of Frankness
The mood in Rome is – let’s just speak the truth – tense. According to one quite reliable source on site, it’s not only the “Ratzingerians” like Cardinal Burke who have been feeling an icy wind. It’s...
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Synod Day 3 – In Search of Effective Action – and Language
And so, now the synod settles into the real work. But what is that work? One of the prominent stories to have come out of yesterday’s session (Tuesday) was that Jeff and Alice Heinzen, an American...
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Synod Day 4 – Do We Have Anything Urgent to Say?
At a conference at the North American College (NAC) in Rome yesterday sponsored by Crux, the Boston Globe’s new Catholic website (video here), Australian Cardinal George Pell remarked that he was...
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Synod Day 5 – Openness that Deceives?
The preparatory Synod that completes its first week of work today is something of a paradox. Previous Synods have actually released formal remarks as they were given, day by day. Reporters were able...
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Synod Day 6 – A Day of Practical Conversations
The central difficulty in treating issues that affect the family is that the family itself is so central to human existence that anything related to the family involves virtually everything else. To...
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There will be no Synod Report today (Sunday October 12). Robert Royal will return with more information and insight on Monday.
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Synod Day 7 – A New Phase begins
Please click here for a special message from Robert Royal. ROME, Italy, October 13 During one of the Masses at St. Peter’s on Sunday, a homilist ventured out into contested territory. He went...
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Synod Day 8 – A Bizarre Document and Process
I have been in Rome, by my rough count, 100 times during my adult life. Some visits had to do with secular matters of culture or politics, most with questions related to the Catholic Church. But I...
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Synod Day 9 – Bishops to World: “Never mind”
Senior Editor’s Note: While Bob Royal is reporting from Rome, I’m going to take the conn, as they say in the Navy (or is it just on Star Trek?). As I’m sure you've noticed, we’ve been appealing our...
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Synod Day 10 – A Ton of Vaseline
Please click here for a special message from Robert Royal. After Wednesday’s press briefing, a noted student of the Vatican, whose identity should probably not be revealed, turned and said to me,...
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Synod Day 11: Some Numbers
Editor’s Note: I hope you have all been finding our Synod Reports enlightening and stimulating. To judge by the huge numbers of hits we’re getting (sometimes a normal week’s worth in a single day), a...
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Synod Day 12 – On the Way to a Decision?
Late in life, St. Augustine issued his Retractationes, which may be translated, I believe, as either “retractions” or “re-treatments” of things he had written earlier. I’m going to do one of the...
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Opportunities Lost: A Synod Wrap-up
There’s already been so much reporting on what happened in Rome last week, that let’s try a little Synodal thought-experiment: 1) Suppose that instead of deciding not to report the gist of the...
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