Hushed Dutch Synod still stays sweet

from Desmond trt:rady in Rome
11112. DUTCH bishops at the special Synod in Rome are seeing eye to eye with the Pope. They are united in insistence on priestly celibacy according to Bishop Johannes Moller of Groningen. a 'progressive'.
Pope John Paul has not spoken in the Synod's first eight days, as the Dutch bishops have been backing him.
The agreement on priestly celibacy is the only result to emerge so far from the Synod but it is a significant one. Bishop Moller said Pope John Paul had made his position crystal clear before the Synod and, as bishops, they could only agree with him.
But the Dutch bishops had passed on to the Vatican the recommendation of the Dutch
Pastoral Council in 1968 that celibacy should be optional for priests. And some of them have participated in discussions about new pastoral problems which suggest married priests could he useful.
II' Bishop Moller is to be believed. the bishops will take a limier line as a result of the Synod.
It might be said that the Vatican, through the Synod. has put the Dutch bishops in a pressure cooker and boded hell out of them. Or a better comparison might be a microwave oven where the cooked are unaware they are undergoing the third degree. Bishop Moller and Bishop Cornelius Ernst, of Breda, another of the five progiessiye bishops, came out smiling I.or their press conference, They said the blackout on precise information of Synod
proceedings had hen wanted by the Dutch bishops to allow free and frank discussion. which YY as taking place.
Apparently the Synod is unifying the bishops along the lines degired by the Vatican. The reaction of Dutch Catholics has yet to be seen.
There is talk of modifying the statutes of the Dutch episcopal conference and there is a commis si Dutch bishops,
c e
sociologists and
pastoral experts studying creation of new dioceses, These two measures eould give the episcopal conference greater power over individual bishops and also increase the number of bishops, either through the creation of new dioceses or of auxiliaries. In this way, the Dutch church, in which at present there are seven bishops it U I5 manv dioi..ese-. could :icouire a new physioguom■„ The Sy nod is discussing a report on pastoral collaboration presented hy the Belgian Mgr 111)ett Descamp who is an assistant to Bishop Joseph Tomko. the Vatican Secretary General of the Synod, as %yell as a teacher of Biblical exegesis at Louvain university.
The Vatican press bulletins give only a hazy idea of the synodal discussions which seems confined to general principles. In the press conference, Bishop Ernst admitted alai Illally SIN:I.:WIC issues have not yet been tackled.
It seems probably that the Synod W ill go beyond the original ciosing &hilt: or Januar% 26. No votes have yet heen taken hut there will be voting in the closing days.