Damian Thompson

Just before Christmas, virtually unnoticed by the media, the German Catholic bishops made a plea for the readmission of divorced and remarried Catholics (or Catholics married to divorcees) to Holy Communion. That it should be the Germans, led by Cardinal Reinhard Marx – Archbishop of Munich, president of the German bishops' conference and coordinator of the Vatican's Secretariat for the Economy – is no coincidence. In 1993, the future Cardinals Kasper and Lehmann asked the Vatican to admit couples in irregular marriages to Communion – indeed, to allow these couples to make up their own minds as to whether they should receive the sacrament. Cardinal Ratzinger kicked that proposal, and with it the liberal German Church, into the long grass.

How many of Pope Francis's spiritual diseases do you suffer from? The pontiff laid out no fewer than 15 of them in an 'exchange of Christmas greetings' yesterday. They included 'spiritual Alzheimers', 'existential schizophrenia', 'working too much', 'planning too much', 'working without co-ordination' and, above all, 'the terrorism of gossip'. I did a quick check and found two I definitely don't suffer from: working too much and 'feeling immortal, immune and indispensable'. It reminds me of the narrator of Three Men in a Boat who, on leafing through a medical dictionary in the British Museum, discovers he suffers from every ghastly malady except housemaid's knee.

Cardinal George Pell, the Australian prelate charged by Pope Francis with cleaning up the Vatican's murky finances, has decided to speak bluntly about the appalling corrupt mess he found when he started work this year. Writing in the first issue of the Catholic Herald weekly magazine, out tomorrow, the Prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy – an entirely new post – says he was recently asked by a member of a British parliamentary delegation: 'Why did the authorities allow the situation to lurch along, disregarding modern accounting standards, for so many decades?' His response repays close examination. My emphases in bold.

‘At this very critical moment, there is a strong sense that the church is like a ship without a rudder,’ said a prominent Catholic conservative last week. No big deal, you might think. Opponents of Pope Francis have been casting doubt on his leadership abilities for months — and especially since October’s Vatican Synod on the Family, at which liberal cardinals pre-emptively announced a softening of the church’s line on homosexuality and second marriages, only to have their proposals torn up by their colleagues. But it is a big deal. The ‘rudderless’ comment came not from a mischievous traditionalist blogger but from Cardinal Raymond Burke, prefect of the Apostolic Signatura — that is, president of the Vatican’s supreme court.

The Catholic bishops of England and Wales are to hold an inquiry into the case of the Rt Rev Kieran Conry, he of the two (or is it three?) girlfriends, who resigned as Bishop of Arundel and Brighton when he had a crisis of conscience caused by the tabloids knocking on his door. Displaying their celebrated transparency, the bishops have decided to keep the name of the 'chair' of the inquiry secret. The committee will focus on whether Conry breached guidelines on 'vulnerable adults'. I very much doubt whether it will ask why Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor persuaded Rome to make his protégé a bishop when his relationship with a woman was already common knowledge.

'Thanks be to God', as we Catholic children used to say with heartfelt enthusiasm as Mass was over for another week. The most divisive meeting of Catholic bishops since Vatican II has ended – and no real damage has been done. Except, I'm sorry to say, to the reputation of Pope Francis. No real progress has been made, either. This afternoon the official report of the Synod was released and so far as I can tell it cancelled the 'earthquake' implied by the half-way report of the debates on Monday. This called for the 'gifts and values' of homosexuals to be recognised and of 'valuing' their sexual orientation. This language has disappeared from today's report – a 'working document' for a fuller Synod next year – whose paragraphs were voted on in sections.

Say what you like about H.E. Walter Card. Kasper, he speaks his mind. Normally this suits liberal Catholics. Today they're wishing he had maintained a prudential silence. In an interview with Edward Pentin of ZENIT published just as the fathers of the Carry On Synod on the Family thought things were calming down, the retired German cardinal held forth on Africans and how they don't get it on the subject of homosexuality and really there's no point in talking to them because they're such bigots. I paraphrase. Here is the exchange: Kasper: The problem, as well, is that there are different problems of different continents and different cultures. Africa is totally different from the West.

This tweet about the Vatican Synod on the Family has appeared in my timeline and it speaks volumes about the chaos the debates are generating: Cardinal Wilfred Napier, Archbishop of Durban, is a participant at the Synod and sometimes spoken of as the first black Pope. His quote refers not just to the media talk of an 'earthquake' in Catholic attitudes towards homosexuality but also to yesterday's document that produced it. To quote Prof James Hitchcock, writing in the National Catholic Register, 'there are internal tensions at the Synod that have become public, despite efforts to keep them confidential. Some bishops seem to be working to achieve diverse goals, often in opposition to one another.' Hitchcock is one of the world's leading conservative Catholic intellectuals.