Youth Synod Group Calls Church to Attend to ‘Realities’ of Gay ‘Marriage’, Surrogacy, Adoption

Here's just a few highlights:

A Synod is a meeting of bishops only ...
with an advisory (not legislative or judicial) role only....
The general assemblies are either ordinary (held at fixed intervals) or extraordinary (held to treat of some urgent matter).
The Code of Canon Law (CIC) defines it as "a group of bishops who have been chosen from different regions to assist in the preservation and growth of faith and morals ...
and in the strengthening of ecclesiastical discipline."

However, Pope Francis greatly increased both the authority and influence of Synods.

Francis seems to treat them both as sources of doctrine and as personal instruments of "popularizing" his own agenda, by manipulating who are invited as lay advisors (this used to be theologians, but no more); selecting who are appointed as voting bishop members (at one time there were regional synods who had their geography in common; now typically all they have in common is that they're "friends of Francis") and controlling who writes the "Instrumentum Laboris" ('the Agenda') beforehand, and the summary afterwards.

The last two meet-ups were flagrantly stage-managed from top to bottom. Even some of Francis' buds were shocked to find that the "conclusions" were largely determined beforehand. This is a clear instance of the Delphi Technique (LINK), a recognized set of steps valuable in manipulating ANY meeting toward a predetermined end.

I've seen it in action (not a Synod, but the Delphi Technique in another context.) This is manufacturing a pseudo- "grass-roots movement" ---astro-turfing --- corralling people to think they "own" an already-settled conclusion.

Some might call the conduct of Synods under Francis "Ecclesiastical Peronism".

If anybody wants to jump in and say more, I hope they will.

Yes, I will jump in. The Delphi method was originally developed as an efficient method of enabling a group to reach a conclusion. I have taught it, and used it, many times.

However, it has been perverted into a method of misleading a group to reach a predetermined conclusion, essentially by lying to the group about what their fellow members actually think.

If you are ever involved in such a process, be very careful to be sure you're getting valid feedback from the rest of he group, and not intentionally distorted feedback. It's the opportunity for the person running the exercise to distort the feedback that makes Delphi dangerous.

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