Four Synod Related Books Worth Reading

For last year's Synod, in response to Walter Cardinal Kasper's book The Gospel of the Family, five Cardinals (Walter Cardinal Brandmüller, Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke, Carlo Cardinal Caffarra, Velasio Cardinal De Paolis and Gerhard Ludwig Cardinal Müller) released Remaining in the Truth of Christ: Marriage and Communion in the Catholic Church. The volume's editor, Fr. Robert Dodaro, O.S.A., President of the Patristic Institute in Rome, explains its purpose:

[Walter Cardinal ] Kasper’s book contains the address he gave during the Extraordinary Consistory of Cardinals held on February 20–21, 2014. An important focus of that meeting was to prepare for the two sessions of the Synod of Bishops convened by Pope Francis for 2014 and 2015, concerning the theme "Pastoral Challenges to the Family in the Context of Evangelization". Toward the end of his address Cardinal Kasper proposed a change in the Church’s sacramental teaching and discipline, one that would permit, in limited cases, divorced and civilly remarried Catholics to be admitted to Eucharistic Communion following a period of penance.

The purpose of the present volume is to answer Cardinal Kasper’s invitation for further discussion. The essays published in this volume rebut his specific proposal for a Catholic form of oikonomia in certain cases of divorced, civilly remarried persons on the grounds that it cannot be reconciled with the Catholic doctrine on the indissolubility of marriage, and that it thus reinforces misleading understandings of both fidelity and mercy. ...

Here is a PDF of the first 35 pages of Remaining in the Truth of Christ: Marriage and Communion in the Catholic Church.

Now, for Synod 2015, comes Eleven Cardinals Speak on Marriage and the Family, and also, Christ's New Homeland - Africa. If you watched this video from an earlier post, you will note that Africa's bishop's intend to exert their influence during the current Synod. (See Edward Pentin's The Rigging of a Vatican Synod? for more.)

Last but not least, is the book that many are calling the Ratzinger Report for our time: Robert Cardinal Sarah's God or Nothing: A Conversation on Faith, in which his eminence writes:

The idea of putting Magisterial teaching in a beautiful display case while separating it from pastoral practice, which then could evolve along with circumstances, fashions, and passions, is a sort of heresy, a dangerous schizophrenic pathology.  I therefore solemnly state that the Church in Africa is staunchly opposed to any rebellion against the teaching of Jesus and of the Magisterium. . . .  The Church of Africa is committed in the name of the Lord Jesus to keeping unchanged the teaching of God and of the Church.

These books offer beautiful articulations and vehement defenses of the Church's teachings on marriage and the family that are well your time.