A “New Synod To Make A New Church”?

By RAYMOND DE SOUZA, KM

I prefer to let cardinals of the Church speak, instead of me. I simply quote from the study The Synod, a Pandora Box, published in eight languages and sent to each and every Catholic bishop of the world.
Raymond Cardinal Burke wrote in the foreword, “Everyone who pays attention to the events of today in the Church sees that we are going through a great crisis, the most serious crisis in history. The coming synod on synodality (a new word that hardly any Catholic knows how to define with precision) reportedly aims to question the very structure of the Church. They propose to rethink the Church, transforming it into a new “constitutively synodal Church” by changing the basic elements of its organic constitution. This change is so radical that the Synod documents speak of “conversion,” as if the Church has been on the wrong path and needs to make a U-turn.
Gerhard Cardinal Mueller, former prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, stated: “They are dreaming of another church that has nothing to do with the Catholic faith…and they want to abuse this process, for shifting the Catholic Church — and not only in [an]other direction but in the destruction of the Catholic Church.”
Speaking on the German Synodal Way, he said: “The Weg is controversial and has led to the approval of resolutions that have deprived the Catholic faithful of ‘the truth of the Gospel’ to replace it with ‘a homosexualized ideology, the true center of gravity of German synodalism’.”
The Synod will not discuss a specific pastoral theme, as is usually the case in these assemblies, but the very structure of the Church. For this reason, it is also known as the Synod on Synodality. They will give a voice to what they call minorities, who allegedly had had hardly any voice. But who are these minorities?
The Working Document for the Continental Stage of the Synod lists some of the minorities: “remarried divorcees, single parents, people living in a polygamous marriage, LGBTQ people, etc.”
The Working Document says that a new culture must be established in the Church, with new practices, structures, and habits for full and equal participation of women in the governing structures of ecclesiastical bodies. It says that many demand the female diaconate and the possibility to preach.
Since deacons are clergymen, and the diaconate is the first step to priesthood, therefore, some propose the ordination of women to the priesthood.
Pope Francis himself took a significant step. In April, for the first time in history, he granted women the power to vote in the Synod. The Roman Pontiff determined that up to 25 percent of Synod participants would be laypeople, men and women, all with equal voting rights with the bishops
The Most Rev. Marian Eleganti, OSB, auxiliary bishop emeritus of Chur, Switzerland, states: “Democracy, participation, empowerment, women in all offices and women’s diaconate or priesthood; revising sexual morality on extramarital sexual relations, remarriage and homosexuality: ending the priesthood in the liturgy, etc.”
Gavin Ashenden — former Anglican bishop and chaplain to Queen Elizabeth II, a convert to Catholicism, denounced the Synod’s Working Document as a Trojan horse. “Inclusion stays, judgment and hell go. Which is another way of saying, ‘Jesus goes, and Marx stays’.”
“They will naturally call for a renewal of structures at various levels of the Church:
“ — those living in adulterous second ‘marriages,’
“ — men who have two or three or more wives,
“ — homosexuals and bisexuals,
“ — people who believe they are not the sex they were born as,
“ — women who want to be ordained deacons and priests,
“ — lay people who want the authority given by God to bishops and priests.”
The late George Cardinal Pell described the Working Document as “one of the most incoherent documents ever sent out from Rome.”
“It is not a summary of Catholic faith or New Testament teaching. It is incomplete, hostile in significant ways to the apostolic tradition, and nowhere acknowledges the New Testament as the Word of God, normative for all teaching on faith and morals. The Old Testament is ignored, patriarchy rejected, and the Mosaic Law, including the Ten Commandments, is not acknowledged.”
Jean-Claude Cardinal Hollerich of Luxembourg, the Synod’s relator general, has called for a revision of the Church’s teaching on homosexuality, supported the priestly ordination of married men, and declared himself open to female ordinations.
He openly questioned the Magisterium of John Paul II on the ordination of women. He condemned the doctrine of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which calls homosexual persons to chastity: “Calling others to chastity seems like speaking Egyptian to them.” He concluded: “I find the part of the teaching calling homosexuality ‘intrinsically disordered’ a bit dubious.”
A typical example of this rebellious attitude was the approval of the document titled, “Blessings for Couples Who Love Each Other” (sic!), during the fifth and last Synodal Assembly in March 2023. The document passed by 176 votes in favor, 14 against, and 12 abstentions. The bishops voted 38 in favor, 9 against, and 11 abstained. This paper flatly contradicts the Vatican’s February 22, 2021 Responsum that “the Church does not have, and cannot have, the power to bless unions of persons of the same sex.”
Raymond Cardinal Burke also urged the Vatican to sanction bishops who voted to bless homosexual unions. Nothing happened.
The absence of any reprimand from Vatican authorities to Robert Cardinal McElroy for his scandalous article on homosexuality in the Jesuit magazine America is striking.
Cardinal Hollerich was confirmed in the decisive role of relator general of the Synod, even after his scandalous statements on the need to change the Church’s Magisterium on homosexuality. Moreover, he was included in the so-called C9 — the select group of cardinals who advise Pope Francis directly.
In short:
First: The German synod speaks favorably on homosexuality, women priests, communion for the divorced. The Pope is silent.
Second: Jean-Claude Cardinal Hollerich rejects the Christian teaching on sexuality. The Pope is silent.
Bishop Robert Barron of the Diocese of Winona-Rochester had already expressed his concerns about the moral relativism in one of the documents approved by the Synod. He wrote:
“As one poignant example, the Synodal Way approved a text for the blessing of couples that also applies to same-sex couples on the basis of a re-evaluation of homosexuality as a norm variant of human sexuality.” That measure passed with eighteen yes votes and only three no votes. A section of this just-quoted document, headed “Reasoning,” is disturbing to orthodox Catholics.
“The document basically insists on moral relativism and ridicules the perennial teaching of the Church’s Magisterium on sexual morality. The contemporary zeitgeist is upheld as being more in accord with God’s will than the Church’s official doctrine.”
“But some have been suggesting that the synod ought to consider a change in the Church’s moral teaching and sacramental discipline in order to make alienated Catholics feel more included. And here I hesitate, precisely because feelings, however intense, do not in themselves constitute a theological argument…The point is that we cannot adjudicate the matter by remaining at the level of feelings. We have to move to the level of real argument based on the Bible, the theological tradition, and the natural moral law.”
Shortly before his death, George Cardinal Pell commented:
“Previously, it [the motto] was: ‘Roma locuta. Causa finita est’ [Rome has spoken, the issue is settled]. Today it is: “Roma loquitur. Confusio augetur” [Rome speaks, confusion grows].
Indeed, Pope Paul VI’s prophetic warning has indeed come true: The Church entered a process of self-destruction and the smoke of Satan appears to be inside the sanctuary.
The Study on The Synod as the Pandora’s Box can be downloaded free of charge or be purchased in printed format from this site: www.tfp.org/the-synodal-process-is-a-pandoras-box
The study ends with this short prayer: “Let us beseech Our Lady, Mother of the Church, not to allow the disfigurement of her Divine Son’s Mystical Body to continue but, on the contrary, to hasten the restoration she promised at Fatima: “Finally, my Immaculate Heart will triumph!”