About That Synod...

Crisis Magazine: An Open Letter to Archbishop Chaput Supporting His Call to Cancel the Youth Synod by JULIA MELONI

Chiesa: Yes, No, I Don’t Know, You Figure It Out. The Fluid Magisterium of Pope Francis

He never says all that he has in mind, he just leaves it to guesswork. He allows everything to be brought up again for discussion. Thus everything becomes a matter of opinion, in a Church where everyone does what he wants

Reminds me of a piece by Carl Olson, the link to which I posted here.

See also: Pope's Forte: Spilling the Beans

Credible?

Lorenzo Cardinal Baldisseri

Rorate Caeli and Pertinacious Papist link to Lifesite News: Pope Francis approved family synod’s controversial mid-term report before publication: synod chief

A Protege of Both Kasper and Martini?

Aude Sapere 006 – Meet Archbishop Bruno Forte (via Pertinacious Papist)

Two Roberts on the Synod Relatio

De Mattei on the Synod Relatio: "The Need to Resist Heretical Tendencies"
The Need to Resist Heretical Tendencies

Robert George

More: “Relatio” causes a stir in the Synod: it is a preparatory text
Cardinal Burke: Synod's mid-term report "lacks a solid foundation in the Sacred Scriptures and the Magisterium"
Synod turns its attention to same-sex couples
Family: The Synod’s new approach
Mgr. Forte: Guaranteeing gay people’s rights is a matter of respect
What an Amazing Coincidence! Abp. Bruno Forte's Personal "Gayspel" and Italian Politics - Plus: Saint Paul the Apostle versus Forte

Post by Zenit News Agency.

Post by Zenit News Agency.

Post by Zenit News Agency.

Synods are messy. The media quarantine isn’t helping.
Vatican Cardinal Calls For More Transparency At Synod Of Bishops

Vatican Diary / The conversion of bishop-theologian Bruno Forte

Forte's joining the fray is significant, and in some ways surprising.

It is significant because he is one of the best-known Italian bishops, including at the international level, and enjoys a substantial following among his brother bishops, who in fact appointed him as their representative at the worldwide synod on the new evangelization that will be held in Rome in October. Of the four selections he is the only one without the scarlet, the other three being all cardinals: Angelo Bagnasco, Giuseppe Betori, and Angelo Scola.

It is surprising because Forte has always been considered a theologian of the progressive camp, the camp that most opposes, and not only in Italy, the passage from "for all" to "for many."

At the memorable ecclesial conference in Loreto in 1985, which marked the ascent in the leadership of the Italian Church of then-auxiliary bishop of Reggio Emilia Camillo Ruini, Forte was fighting for the other and the winning side, together with the president of the episcopal conference at the time, Anastasio Ballestrero, and Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini. And it was he who gave the introductory theological presentation.

This is why he has not rarely ended up in the crosshairs of his more conservative theologian colleagues.

For example, in a 2004 article Fr. Nicola Bux, an adviser – both then and now – to the congregation for the doctrine of the faith, singled out Forte as one of the "promulgators" of a "weak and derivative theology" concerning the resurrection of Jesus, reduced "to an 'etiological legend,' or an artifice in support of the worship that the Judeo-Christians were conducting on the site of Jesus' burial."

But Forte's taking the field is even more surprising because it marks in him a change of judgment with respect to the past.

Archbishop Bruno Forte on Theology

From Part 2 of his interview by Zenit. (Part 1)

How will we respond today to the developments of theology, but also of modern epistemology? I would answer by referring to the great 20th century philosophical and theological conquest, which is the powerful rediscovery of hermeneutics, that is, of the science of interpretation. When many years ago, as dean of the faculty of theology in Naples, I invited Hans Georg Gadamer, the father of contemporary hermeneutics, author of "Truth and Method," to a quaestio quodlibetalis. A first year [student] asked him this question: "What is hermeneutics?" To which Gadamer, without being ruffled, said, after a moment of reflection: "Hermeneutics means that when you and I speak we make an effort to reach the vital world that is behind the other's words, and from which they proceed."

Therefore, epistemology illumined by hermeneutics means not only to understand what is immediately perceptible, the visible, the phenomenalistic, the rational, but to also understand, or at least to try to reach, those vital worlds from which these expressions stem. In this context, one discovers that science is not only that of phenomena, but that there is an ensemble of sciences, which are the sciences of the spirit, which make an effort to reach what is not said, what cannot be said, what cannot be wholly divided into parts, but which is the vital world in which human processes, historical processes, etc. are situated. And there is a further level that points to that experience of the mystery of life and of the world and that all of us have and which cannot be referred to a mere linguistic or rational formula, that is, an excess of the Mystery that surrounds the world, that surrounds the life of each one of us and that we continually perceive with surprise, with wonder, which we can reflect in words only up to a certain point.

However, a science that takes wonder seriously in face of this Mystery, the possibility that the latter be said without betraying oneself, that is, the possibility of Revelation, and that one make it the subject of one's thought, becomes an absolutely precious science. In a similar hermeneutical dimension, interpretative of reality -- which does not stop at the immediate but always seeks the ultimate, the profound connections -- it seems to me that theology is presented with full dignity as a science of which man is in need to live and to die, as he needs God and the meaning of life to live and to die.

Is theology that takes the modern subjective turn seriously doomed to failure? Is a realist theology better suited to the task? If we are confined by our words, and words are not signs of reality but only of our thoughts, then how can we attain the real? I do not think Gadamer is a (naive) realist, but what sort of understanding of the relationship between language and reality does he offer to replace realism?