The Catholic right is up in arms against the report prepared by Cardinal Peter Erdo of Esztergom-Budapest, who, as the synod's relator, had the task of synthesizing what the bishops said during the first week of their meeting.

At the forefront of the lambasting brigade one finds  US Cardinal Raymond L. Burke, prefect of the Supreme Court of the Apostolic Signature. My commentary – Synod Watch 3 – had already quoting him criticizing the Australian couple who said that families should invite a gay son and his partner for Christmas family lunch. He now criticized the Synod secretariat in stronger words than he criticized the invite for lunch.

In an interview with the conservative Catholic World Report, Burke accused the Synod secretariat as being biased in  favour of the positions they approve of and of giving the public a distorted image of what happened during the Synod’s discussions. This is not the Church’s way of doing things, Burke said.

As this is not already a grave accusation he went further.

Burke is also of the opinion that the report prepared by Cardinal Orde "advances positions which many synod fathers do not accept and, I would say, as faithful shepherds of the flock cannot accept. Clearly, the response to the document in the discussion which immediately followed its presentation manifested that a great number of synod fathers found it objectionable."

So we are not just being told that this was an interim report which could be tweaked a bit here and a bit there. For Burke this is an objectionable report proposing things which a bishop could not approve of. Sterner and tougher words one could hardly hurl at his ecclesiastical colleagues. The image of chummy/chummy bishops and cardinals gently arguing on a gin and tonic or a glass of red wine is an illusion.

More accusations of lack of orthodoxy were leveled at Cardinal Erdo by his fellow Archbishop Stanislaw Gadecki of Poznan, Poland, president of the Polish bishops' conference. The Polish supremo accused Erdo of departing from the theology of St. John Paul II and reflecting an ideology hostile to marriage by seeming to approve of same-sex couples raising children, among other ways. Cardinal Erdo’s report, according to Gadecki, “seems to accept everything as it is."

The accusation of lack of orthodoxy is a grave one indeed!

Cardinal Wilfrid F. Napier of Durban, South Africa, criticised aspects of the report but nowhere does he level the onerous accusations made by Burke and Gadechi. Napier said his group had found in the midterm report "quite a lot of things which are expressed in a way which we certainly wouldn't feel that are very helpful to giving a clear idea of where the church stands on some of the issues that are being raised."

It is one thing saying that the drafting is defective and another thing saying sterner stuff. I think one of the problems with the drafting could have been the speed with which things had to be done. But had the Synod secretariat decided to do what was always done, that is publish all the interventions as soon as they were made, a lot of the controversies tied to Erdo report at the mid-point of the Synod could have been avoided.

The bishops have today finished the discussions held in different language workshops. Relators are working overtime to finalise their reports which have to synthesise the whole Synod experience. Given that certain perceptions – rightly or wrongly – have been created the task to finalise a report is now harder than it usually is.