Today’s post is at The Stream: “Sins of The Synod: Behind The Scenes at The Synod on The Family”.
This is a review of Edward Pentin’s must-read new book The Rigging of a Vatican Synod? An Investigation of Alleged Manipulation at the Extraordinary Synod on the Family.
“Earthquake in the Catholic Church!” That, and many like it, was the headline in the Western press after the mid-way point in last year’s Extraordinary Synod on the Family held at the Vatican. The press, in their calm and sensible way, were reacting to the release of a document which purported to summarize what the attendees of the synod—bishops, archbishops, and cardinals—spoke about during their first week.
The religious temblor was caused in large part because of these words:
Homosexuals have gifts and qualities to offer to the Christian community: are we capable of welcoming these people, guaranteeing to them a fraternal space in our communities? Often they wish to encounter a Church that offers them a welcoming home. Are our communities capable of providing that, accepting and valuing their sexual orientation, without compromising Catholic doctrine on the family and matrimony?
It’s rare, but the metaphor the press chose in this case was accurate. An earthquake is a violent, unpredictable, destructive, and often deadly cataclysm, an event the wise do not welcome. Yet the press and the liberal blogosphere was aflame with giddiness that the Church was going to abandon some 2,000 years of doctrine and accept same-sex acts as on par with normal sexual relations. Traditionalists who honored Church teachings feared the liberals might be right.
These activities have the same smell as what goes on in the NFL hierarchy.
A question somewhat related to the topic of this post: what’s the business going on with marriage annulment in the Catholic Church?
Given the title of the interim report, i.e., Relatio post disceptationem
Perhaps a better title of the book would be :
(wait for it)
After the Fellatio Deception
Might sell a few more copies
Always happens when a church worships money and not God. The Catholic church had a good run for a while, but obviously they are now worshipping money and pitching God out a Vatican window. Greed is certainly not limited to the secular world, nor is the need to be loved and adored, rather than right. Churches succumb to this thinking and discard anything, including God, that gets in their way. They live in the here and now, caring not if there’s a hereafter. Probably, they hope there is not and the nonsense about God was just a way of getting money in the first place. I’m not being cynical—human beings are a greedy bunch that want what they want, caring not about the consequences (see the story of Adam and Eve). There’s no evidence a church is immune since it’s made up of human beings. Humans have not been fans of God since he created them. It’s just the way it is. Eventually, everything goes to the dark, hot place on earth and life is miserable and finally someone timidly suggests maybe there is a God and we should have listened to him. No way I know of to skip that dark, deadly middle phase. People worship God until He gets in the way of what they want, then dump him, only to search for him when life gets really ugly without him. As the gays and pedophiles say “The heart wants what the heart wants.”
Gary,
See:
https://canonlawblog.wordpress.com/2015/09/08/a-second-look-at-mitis-especially-at-the-new-fast-track-annulment-process/
http://wdtprs.com/blog/2015/09/pope-francis-has-changed-canon-law-procedures-for-annulments/
And, for fun, this:
http://wdtprs.com/blog/2015/09/a-bit-of-wry-humor/
Briggs, thanks for the links, especially the second. When a subject is worthy of mockery, it’s worthy of more careful examination. Frankly, annulment looks like a fig leaf the Church has invented to get itself out of the bind that it put itself in when it assumed the authority of “licensing” marriage (ie, making it a sacrament). Given the validity of arguments elsewhere that the State doesn’t have such authority, the ecclesiastical hierarchy doesn’t have it either. The church (ie, community of believers) is at the core merely a witness to marriage. So when a marriage is dissolved, the church remains a witness, while also being the friend who seeks reconciliation and redemption, of course. Annulment, either fast or slow, and especially as frequently administered with partiality and hypocrisy, doesn’t pass the smell test.
Given the preselection supposedly occurring for this Synod (i.e. the questions about whether prospective members are “liberal” or “conservative”), one wonders whether this particular Synod is guided by the Holy Spirit.
If you go to the official description of what the Synod process is about (established in 1965 by Pope Paul VI), there is nothing there as far as I can read that says what comes out is necessarily part of the Magisterium, i.e. either doctrine or dogma.
So this particular Synod may amount to venting for the liberal wing of the Church. Nothing to get excised about, UNLESS Pope Francis through on some wacko recommendations.
PROOF READ! PROOF READ!
“Pope Francis through”—> “Pope Francis follows through”
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The whole business which you report resembles the way that Climate Change is being manipulated.
BTW in the Orthodox Church it seems to be that marriage has always been a sacrament and they take the view that a man who divorces his wife and marries another is committing adultery as The Lord said. I think that may mean that the Roman Catholic Church would have had the same view in the past. Consult the Pravmir site for the Orthodox position on marriage
@ John B – come on, an educated man of the West should know enough Latin to keep the document names in Latin; I suggest the better title of Deceptio Propter Fellationem. Though that’s not explicit enough about the homosexual nature of the synodal decree. I instead look forward to Bergoglio’s future encyclicals, “Adulterii Gaudium” and “Sodomizzato Sia.”
@Sheri – The Catholic Church teaches that those who publicly deny defined points of divine and catholic faith are automatically excommunicated from the Church and deprived of all jurisdiction, even if their heresy is merely material (i.e., without malicious intent to deny doctrine). There is a canonical process for convicting them of the canonical crime of heresy, in which the formality and pertinacity of the heresy is determined, and this is very helpful and desirable in the case of prelates, for the purpose of appointing new and orthodox Catholics in their stead. But the canonical crime of heresy is a separate thing from the sin against Divine Law of heresy, and also from the fact of material heresy and its incompatibility with the notes of the Church. Divine Law ensures the automatic excommunication of all public heretics, regardless of any canonical process that may or may not occur. The Church provides for Her children, and does not leave them in a position where they must futilely wring their hands and wait for manifest heretics to provide them with Catholic Truth and piety.
The point? Those men are not Catholics and do not represent the Catholic Church. They are heretics, apostates and perverts whose consciences are seared, who have occupied the structures of the Vatican during what has been a very confusing and disturbing period of Church history, realizing a portion of the chastisement foretold in numerous Marian apparitions of the past two centuries. Nothing those men enact or decree has any validity, and this can be confirmed beyond all shadow of doubt by consulting very authoritative, very easily available tomes of Catholic law and theology. Sadly, most Catholics never do this, and assume that they have to stick with the pope no matter what… apparently not realizing that there have been many men in history who claimed to be popes and were not, the Church herself teaches that public heretics cannot become popes and cannot remain popes (even if their heresy is material and no canonical warning is given), and that even if these men remained popes, the Church teaches we would have a duty to disobey popes who commanded impiety or immorality.
We deserve what we get, if we aren’t willing to know the principles of our own Faith and to act upon them with a clean conscience.
A contextual reading of Paul would allow for more tolerance of homosexuality in today’s society from the Catholic Church. We are not Greek Anatolians from 2000 years ago. There is no moral imperative here. Just people with sexual hang-ups complaining about other people.
JMJ
Lord’s DIRECT words!!! Goodness. Perhaps, “church’s teachings” is more appropriate.
This reminds me of a scene in the TV series The Borgias, in which the patriarch of the Borgia family, who became the Pope, prayed frustratingly due to God’s silence as if God’d talk to him directly after becoming as a successor to Saint Peter.
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