Serious synod silence. Reporter acts like a reporter. Official spokesman plays part, handler intercedes to help. The clear-answer problem. Papal forgettingness on same-sex blessing matter.

Spliced together for your reading pleasure.

How to be a on a synod, where silence is golden. Instructions are given in paralyzing detail. Has our Holy Father become our Big Brother? Or den mother?

Synod atttendees must use tablets on offer. Take them out of the seance, I mean prayer gathering, AND THEY WON'T WORK!

Golden silence notwithstanding, at the daily briefing with Dr. Paolo Ruffini, Prefect of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Communication, a reporter asked how the synod attendes will know whether something comes from the Holy Spirit and not from somewhere else.

The exchange?

The reporter Diane Montagna:

A fundamental question about the Synod: Repeatedly, Synod officials, including yourself, have talked about the Holy Spirit as the ‘protagonist’ of the Synod; over and over again we hear about the Holy Spirit.

Traditionally — well not just traditionally — the Catholic Church discerns the presence of the Holy Spirit by determining if something is in accord with Divine Revelation, the unanimous consensus of the Fathers, and Apostolic Tradition.

How is this assembly discerning whether something comes from the Holy Spirit or from another spirit?”

Ah.

Ruffini:

I can respond by citing the Creed, which you know: “I believe in the Holy Spirit.” For the rest, it is the People of God on a journey that is meeting to pray and converse together.

In history, as in prior history [?], moments happen when the People of God gather, pray, God with them and the Holy Spirit acts.”

Ah.

Montagna:

But how do we know that it’s the Holy Spirit?

Christiane Murray, vice-director of the Holy See Press Office, solved the problem:

“Thank you, thank you, Dr Ruffini,” she said. “Are there other questions? No, then tomorrow there’s another meeting here.”

When who knows what else might be revealed, inadvertently if in no other way?

“How he might have answered if he had the question ahead of time?” a Facebook Reader asked, wondering also what a "good" answer might be.

“He dodged it here,” I said. “Would have dodged it ahead of time too, balking at the questioner’s informed suggestion. A good answer would start with long-accepted church teaching as she said, and go from there.

It’s discernment, we have been told — a major Ignatian (Jesuit) process meant as a help in deciding what to do within the law, not about it.

I've been puzzled from the start by Francis' use of the term. Some dialogue of the sort he recommends might permit us to discuss it some day. Probably not.

Finally, in the category of what popes do, consider that it's not easy being one as in this account.

The big news — measured in newspaper headlines — of a very newsy Vatican week was that the Holy Father was in favor of blessings for same-sex couples.

Indeed, that would be news, especially because in 2021 Pope Francis personally approved an official reply by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF, now “Dicastery” or DDF) that said such blessings were impossible.'

From which two paragraphs stand out:

. . . in order to conform with the nature of sacramentals, when a blessing is invoked on particular human relationships, in addition to the right intention of those who participate, it is necessary that what is blessed be objectively and positively ordered to receive and express grace, according to the designs of God inscribed in creation, and fully revealed by Christ the Lord. Therefore, only those realities which are in themselves ordered to serve those ends are congruent with the essence of the blessing imparted by the Church.

For this reason, it is not licit to impart a blessing on relationships, or partnerships, even stable, that involve sexual activity outside of marriage (i.e., outside the indissoluble union of a man and a woman open in itself to the transmission of life), as is the case of the unions between persons of the same sex^[6]. The presence in such relationships of positive elements, which are in themselves to be valued and appreciated, cannot justify these relationships and render them legitimate objects of an ecclesial blessing, since the positive elements exist within the context of a union not ordered to the Creator’s plan.

He signed off on this a few years back, but . . .

So cut him some slack? Lot on his mind these days. This synod, for one thing.