Run-Up To The Synod . . . Some Disturbing Initiatives Get Underway

By MAIKE HICKSON

Since the October 2014 Synod of Bishops on Marriage and the Family and its scandalous midterm report — which promoted a looser and ostensibly more liberal attitude toward “remarried” divorcees and practicing homosexuals — the Catholic Church is increasingly faced with bishops and prelates who also support that innovating agenda with respect to the traditional moral teaching of the Church.
Just in the last few weeks, some sobering events have happened: A German archbishop publicly declared his support of active homosexuals; a Spanish bishop allowed a transgender woman to become the godmother of her nephew; a Swiss bishop is now being sued by a homosexual organization for an alleged hate crime because he quoted, and too literally, the Old Testament; one of the Pope’s close advisers will give a speech at a conference in Rome with several markedly progressive speakers.
Let us go more into detail.
First, on August 1, the archbishop of Hamburg, Stefan Hesse, came out and publicly defended a more permissive attitude toward homosexual couples and “remarried” divorcees. As the official website of the German Bishops Conference, katholisch.de, reported:
“Even though he [Archbishop Hesse] is still somewhat hesitant concerning the ‘homosexual marriage,’ Hesse also says: ‘But when these people seek to be close to us, then we as Church are there for them. What else?’ The Church has to cherish it when in homosexual relationships there are to be found values such as fidelity and reliability. ‘In my eyes, this does not minimize the love and fidelity between two people,’ according to Hesse. He also wishes for the remarried divorcees ‘livable forms for the Church’s recognition and accompaniment,’ without thereby giving up the ideal of marriage.”
Archbishop Hesse clearly comes across in this statement as undermining Christ’s teaching on marriage, ignoring the fact that both groups — practicing homosexuals and “remarried” divorcees — often enough objectively live in a state of sin.
Then, on August 8, it was reported that a Spanish bishop announced that he would allow a transsexual to become a godparent at an upcoming Baptism. As the Swiss website kath.ch reported, the bishop of Cadiz and Ceuta, Spain, Rafael Zornoza Boy, gave permission to 21-year-old Alex Salinas to become the godparent of her nephew. Salinas was born a woman but now claims to be a man.
This decision came after a national petition was launched in defense of Salinas, who first had been denied permission to become a godparent because she does not live in accordance with the Church’s moral teaching. More than 35,000 people signed the petition in favor of Salinas. Now the Diocese of Cadiz has reversed itself and openly declared that “being transsexual does not constitute a reason for being excluded from the office of a godfather,” as kath.ch reports. Salinas herself commented on the new decision, as follows, according to the Spanish newspaper El Pais:
“I don’t know if the pope saw my petition — I have no knowledge about that — but of course the entire Church is changing. In fact, they just said that divorced Catholics cannot [sic] be excommunicated and I think it is wonderful that the Church is taking a new route.”
On August 10, a Swiss umbrella organization for male homosexuals, Pink Cross, filed a lawsuit against a Swiss bishop of the Catholic Church, Vitus Huonder, the bishop of Chur (Graubünden), for his having defectively quoted the Old Testament against homosexuality. At a conference in Fulda, Germany, Bishop Huonder, on July 31, had presented essential parts of Holy Scripture — Old and New Testaments — in order to show God’s own plan for marriage and the family.
With regard to homosexuality, Bishop Huonder quoted two parts from the Book of Leviticus, saying: “These two parts would be sufficient to give us the right direction with regard to homosexuality, in the light of our faith.” Both quotes show how the practice of any specifically homosexual act is condemned in Holy Scripture, and with the added assertion that such persons commit a grave crime and deserve to be put to death.
Huonder continued, saying that even to claim that there are an allowable variety of models of marriage and family is already “an attack against the Creator, but also against the Redeemer and against the Sanctifier, that is to say, against the entire Holy Trinity.”
After the protest against Huonder’s statement erupted in the Swiss secular media, on August 7, the president of the Swiss Bishops Conference, Bishop Markus Büchel of St. Gallen, came out in a public letter, showing considerable sympathy and indulgence toward homosexual couples. Bishop Büchel, moreover, made a statement explicitly distancing himself from his own fellow bishop. He even went so far as to say that it does not matter what sexual orientation one has, as long as one lives it “in a responsible way.” In this statement, the Swiss bishop said:
“For the promotion of the good of the person, it is less decisive whether someone has a hetero or homosexual inclination; rather, the responsible approach to sexuality and all the other dimensions of a relationship (such as attentiveness, carefulness, respect, or fidelity) is decisive. Here we are permitted, as Catholic faithful, to trust the conscience of each individual.
“Let us rejoice about every relationship in which the partners accept one another as equal, valuable, beloved children of God and respect the dignity of the other and promote the well-being of the persons!”
Bishop Büchel continues to stress that to respect the dignity of the human person “also means not to reduce a person and his relationships to the mere sexual question.”
The German pro-life activist and author, Mathias von Gersdorff, later commented upon this statement on his own website: “Herewith, he [Büchel] contradicts in a straightforward way the Catholic Church’s moral teaching on sexuality and also, most probably, her teaching on Christian anthropology [i.e., ‘the Doctrine of Man’].”
Most troubling, this bishop’s statement was followed by the disturbing words of another important prelate and member of the Bishops Conference of Switzerland, Abbot Urban Federer of Einsiedeln, who declared on August 11 that the Church should not condemn homosexuals, but, rather, welcome them.
He stated: “The Church may rejoice about homosexuals as children of God!” And he continued: “Did not Pope Francis already show the Church how to deal with homosexuals in the right manner? In his first press conference as the head of Roman Catholic Church he promoted the idea not to discriminate against male and female homosexuals. Verbatim, the Pope asked: ‘When a person is homosexual and seeks God and is of good will, who am I to judge?’”
On top of all these heterodox (or more) views and cumulative developments, none other than a close collaborator of the Pope (and member of the Council of Nine Cardinals) — Oscar Cardinal Rodriguez Maradiaga from Tegucigalpa, Honduras — is now being announced as a speaker at a progressive conference in Rome.
On September 10-12, the “International Academy for Marital Spirituality” (INTAMS) from Belgium will host a conference on the themes of the upcoming October 2015 synod, and among the speakers will be two progressive German theologians, Professors Eberhard Schockenhoff and Jochen Sautermeister. Both defend the “Kasper Proposal” and promote the liberalization of the Church’s moral teaching.
Schockenhoff had proposed in May of 2015 that homosexual couples should receive an official recognition by the Church, and Sautermeister wrote an article in 2014 in the German Catholic journal Herder Korrespondenz in which he openly promoted the Kasper agenda.

Take Back The Initiative

For the U.S., another shock came when Catholic News Agency reported August 7 that, according to their sources, liberal Archbishop Blase Cupich of Chicago will be chosen by Pope Francis to be a special delegate for the upcoming Synod of Bishops on the Family. (See editorial by Dexter Duggan on p. 5A of this issue of The Wanderer on a recent essay by Archbishop Cupich)
All these signs of a cumulative strengthening of the progressivist elements within the Catholic Church — after all, none of them have been disciplined so far by Rome for their tendentiously heterodox statements — come at a time when anti-Christian forces worldwide are gaining momentum and growing stronger and becoming bolder.
The teaching of Jesus Christ is being more and more isolated, put into a corner, and threatened and suppressed.
May the Catholic faithful, clergy and laymen alike, find now the courage to stand up for Him — and thus to fight intelligently and perseveringly against this accumulating momentum, so as to take back some of the initiative — before it may be too late.