I FIND THIS RATHER PECULIAR--IS IT A SMOKE SCREEN OR A COUP D'éTAT? I REPORT; YOU DECIDE

Cardinal Marx is one of Pope Francis' closest advisors. Why would His Eminence ignore the Holy Father and why would the Vatican make such a public statement against the German Church?

Why am I so cynical?

Vatican: German Synod Plans ‘Not Ecclesiologically Valid’

An assessment, signed by the head of the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts, says that the plans violate canonical norms and set out to alter universal norms and doctrines of the Church.

Ed Condon/CNA

EXCERPTS:

In a Sept. 4 letter addressed to Cardinal Marx, Cardinal Marc Ouellet, head of the Vatican’s Congregation for Bishops, said that plans for a Synodal Assembly must conform to guidelines issued by Pope Francis in June, especially that a synod in Germany could not act to change universal Church teaching or discipline.

Cardinal Ouellet also sent Cardinal Marx a four-page legal assessment of the German bishops’ draft statues.

Both the letter from Cardinal Ouellet and the attached legal assessment were obtained by CNA.

The assessment, signed by the head of the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts, says that the German bishops’ plans violate canonical norms and do, in fact, set out to alter universal norms and doctrines of the Church.

In his legal review of the draft statutes, Archbishop Filippo Iannone, head of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts, noted that the Germans propose to treat four key themes: “authority, participation and separation of powers,” “sexual morality,” “the form of priestly life” and “women in Church ministries and offices.”

“It is easy to see that these themes do not only affect the Church in Germany but the universal Church and — with few exceptions — cannot be the object of the deliberations or decisions of a particular Church without contravening what is expressed by the Holy Father in his letter,” Archbishop Iannone wrote.

In his letter to the Church in Germany issued in June, Pope Francis warned the German bishops to respect the universal communion of the Church.

 “There is no question that they know what the Pope wants of them,” a senior official at the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts told CNA. “The question is if the German bishops remain interested in what the Holy Father says.”