Countdown to the Synod manipulations under the watchful eyes of the Pope himself

Now that the Pope has returned to Rome and we've heard that capital punishment, notwithstanding the Catechism of the Catholic Church and Holy Scripture must be abolished because of Pope Bergoglio's personal opinion (it is nothing more) the environment has rights (United Nations) and that all religions are essentially the same (Ground Zero talk), talk that would fit well in any Masonic Lodge, let us return to the issues of the upcoming Ordinary Synod on the Family beginning next weekend.

The Synod is a front and an affront. The proof is the Pope's recent motu proprio on annulment. He disregarded the discussions of the last Synod and struck a secretive committee to implement his own personal desires. Is he about to do the same again? What is the point of calling a Synod? If Benedict or John Paul II ever, ever tried to govern the Church in this manner, they would have been pilloried. Using just Summorum Pontificum as an example, it was no secret, it was talked about publicly for months. Benedict XVI spoke to groups and individual bishops about it and issued a serene letter as to why it was issued and they destroyed him over it.

As some have now discovered, and Father Z had intimated about months ago, the Gospel for next Sunday in the Ordinary Form of the Mass is the indissolubility of marriage and the words of Our Blessed Lord, "what God has joined together let no man put asunder." How prophetically fitting and proof that God, indeed, has a sense of humour.

On his flight back to Rome, Pope Francis answered questions again on the plane. I truly wish Popes would not hold press conferences on planes or anywhere else. The interview includes a question on the matter of divorce and remarriage and annulments. The Pope states quite clearly that:

"The question about 'Catholic divorce.' That doesn't exist. Either it wasn't a marriage, and this is nullity -- it didn't exist. And if it did, it's indissoluble. This is clear."

In fact, it is not "clear" and that is the whole problem. He goes on to give other examples of why he felt he had to change annulment parameters but with what he has done leading to potentially "millions of annulments" akin to the situation in the United States in the early 1970's, is that not what he has done? There is a disconnect between what he is says on the plane and what he has said on paper in the motu proprio. You don't have to take this unqualified writer's word for it. Canonists have spoken out about this. Father Gerald E. Murray calls it a "flawed innovation." Benedict Nguyen writes that it will create "more confusion than clarity" and Ed Peters who calls for new consultation says these are the most revisions in "three hundred years." Remember, this is not about mercy, it is about law because it is about the sacraments. Pope Francis is not a canonist and he fired the best one in the Church!

Do not, I repeat, do not tire, do not develop synod fatigue. The next month is going to be from Hell, brought to you by the Danneels Mafiosi and Kasper conspiracy. You must read and pray and pray more and you must alert your Catholic friends to what is happening. Do not develop synod fatigue, the very future of the Church is at stake. Remember, Our Lord said, "the gates of Hell will not prevail" but that does not mean She won't be shaken to Her core. They may end up with the buildings but you and I must preserve the Faith!

Sandro Magister, one of the most credible Vatican journalists, along with Edward Pentin, has released this morning his latest column. He encapsulates much of what has been out there for a few weeks now and hones in on the risks we face. 

I post the entire column below, with my observations interspersed throughout.

Synod’s Turn To Speak. But Decisions Will Be Up To Francis

The last exchange of fire before the opening of the work. The uncertainty about the procedure. The appeals to the pope. Why in the end it will be he alone who will draw the conclusions

by Sandro Magister

ROME, September 28, 2015 – Back in Rome after his journey to Cuba and the United States, culminating with the world meeting of families in Philadelphia, Pope Francis is now facing the much more exacting challenge of the synod that will open on October 4, the Sunday of the liturgical year on which - as if by a jest of providence - Catholic churches all around the world will resound with these words of Jesus: “Therefore what God has joined together, no human being must separate.”

The synod will last for three weeks, and the procedures that will be adopted have not yet been made known, despite having a big influence on the outcome of the work.

What is certain is that there will not be a final message, no commission having been set up to write one.

Another definite feature, preannounced by Pope Francis, is that “each week there will be a discussion of one chapter” of the three into which the preparatory document is subdivided:

 Instrumentum laboris

So this time there will be no “Relatio post disceptationem” halfway through the work, after a first phase of free discussion on everything, as at the synod of October 2014. The discussion will be broken up right away into narrow linguistic groups, each of which will sum up its perspectives in reports destined to remain confidential. At the end of the three weeks there will be a vote on a final “Relatio,” and the pope will give the concluding talk. (The old “divide and conquer.” No group will know what the other is doing or what other language groups are thinking. Let’s not mix the Poles with the Germans lest Marx and Kasper be confronted and confounded.)

Also unlike in the past it is not expected that after a few months there will be a postsynodal apostolic exhortation to cap everything off. The discussion will remain open to future developments. The only embodiment of the provisory conclusions will be the pope’s talk at the end of the work, which will as a matter of course overtop and obscure all the other voices. (This has been rumoured for a while. We will have to wait and see. Apostolic Exhortations sum up the Synodal process and give Pope’s response. What will we see? More personal decisions such as the recent motu proprio that simply order the will of Francis not knowing what the Synodal Fathers desired? Where is Collegiality?

In spite of the much-heralded emphasis on collegiality, in fact, the next round of the synod will also see at work in Francis a monocratic exercise of papal authority, as in last year’s session, at the end of which the pope kept alive propositions that had not obtained the votes necessary for approval. And they were precisely the ones on the most controversial points, divorce and homosexuality. (Pope Francis has been governing the Church in a monarchical manner not seen since the time of Pius XI and certainly not in the post-Vatican II era. Never, ever did St. John Paul II or Benedict XVI and certainly not poor abused Paul VI ever, ever run roughshod over the bishops and faithful as this Argentine Pope who grew up under Peron, has done. Where is the Collegiality so demanded at Vatican II? Or, is this Vatican II revisited and its final chapter?

One undisputed sign of this monocratic exercise of papal authority was the publication, last September 8, of the two motu proprio with which Francis reformed annulment procedures: (Indeed! A totally unexpected and secret act on the part of Pope Bergoglio to turn hundreds of years of Canon Law and Our Lord’s words on their heads. Annulments are not about mercy, they are about law because of the sacrament!

Forbidden To Call It Divorce. But It Sure Looks Like It

A reform of marital cases had been expected for some time. But Francis set it in motion while keeping out the family-centered synod, which he knew was not inclined to approve what he had in mind. He set up the preparatory commission in August of 2014, before the convocation of the first session of the synod. And he signed the motu proprio last August 15, before the second session, scheduling its implementation for next December 8. (Did you notice that? The Pope signed the Catholic divorce motu proprio on the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary and it is to become law on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary. If he did this in some fain attempt to obtain Her blessing, I don’t think he will find it so. I interpret this as a mocking of Our Lady and a vain attempt at letting us know that this is infallible, which it is not for the very reason that a future Pope can undo it. You see, the First Vatican Council codified the infallibility of the Pope. Much to the surprise of the papolaters out there, it did not give him more power, it in fact, limited his monarchical power. It defined very narrowly what papal infallibility is and is not. The Pope can say the environment has rights and capital punishment should be abolished but it has no more weight than if he said the moon was made of creamed cheese. These are his opinions, they are not doctrine and cannot be defined as dogma. They can quite rightly be ignored. On the issue of infallibility, the only two times that it has ever been invoked was when the Dogmas of Our Lady’s Immaculate Conception and her glorious Assumption were defined. Ironic, eh? What a disgrace!

The most substantial innovation of the new procedures is that in order to obtain a declaration of nullity, the mere word of the applicant will have the “force of full proof,” without the need for other evidence, and the presumed “lack of faith” will act as a universal master key not just for thousands but for millions of marriages to be declared null, with an ultra-fast procedure and with the local bishop as the sole judge. (Catholic Divorce friends, pure and simple.)

On this the synod fathers therefore find themselves facing a fait accompli. But it is hard to imagine that they are not discussing it. Church historian Roberto de Mattei has even hypothesized that some synod fathers may ask for the abrogation of this act of governance on the part of Pope Francis, “up to now his most revolutionary.” And he has cited the historical precedent of the retraction made in 1813 by Pius VII - imprisoned by Napoleon Bonaparte - of his act of subjection of the Holy See to the sovereignty of the emperor: a retraction invoked publicly by Cardinal Bartolomeo Pacca, pro-secretary of state, and by other “zealous” cardinals, as well as by the great spiritual master Pio Brunone Lanteri, a future venerable: (The Pope must withdraw the motu proprio on annulments. He must be resisted!)

Meanwhile, an appeal has been issued in the American magazine “First Things” by a hefty number of theologians, philosophers, and scholars from various countries, asking the synod fathers to reject paragraph 137 of the preparatory document, judged as contrary to the magisterium of the Church and a portent of confusion among the faithful:

An Appeal Recalling the Teaching of "Humanae Vitae"

The appeal concerns the teaching of Paul VI’s encyclical “Humanae Vitae” on birth control - an encyclical that Pope Francis himself has called “prophetic” - and numbers among its authors and signatories a good number of professors from the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family: Stephan Kampowski, Livio Melina, Jaroslav Merecki, José Noriega, Juan José Pérez-Soba, Mary Shivanandan, Luigi Zucaro, as well as luminaries like the German philosopher Robert Spaemann and the Swiss ethicist Martin Rhonheimer. (How bad has it gotten when the Catholic faithful need to petition the Pope to be Catholic!)

In the judgment of the signatories of the appeal, paragraph 137 of the preparatory document assigns absolute primacy to the individual conscience in the selection of the means of birth control, even against the teaching of the Church’s magisterium, with the added risk that such primacy could also be extended to other areas, like abortion and euthanasia.

In effect, it is precisely on the primacy of the individual conscience “beyond what the rule might say objectively” that the supporters of communion for the divorced and remarried rely, as one of these, cardinal of Vienna Christoph Schönborn explained in an interview with “La Civiltà Cattolica” of September 26:

“There are situations in which the priest, the guide, who knows the persons, can come to the point of saying: ‘Your situation is such that, in conscience, in your and in my conscience as a pastor, I see your place in the sacramental life of the Church.’” (What happened to him since he was the main force behind the Catechism of the Catholic Church?)

The split between the individual conscience and the magisterium of the Church is analogous to that which separates pastoral practice from doctrine: ”: (Remember that Father Thomas Rosica has been saying this for nearly two years and I was sued by him for calling him out on this) a danger that in the judgment of many looms over the synod and has been the object of very strong words from Cardinal Gerhard Müller, prefect of the congregation for the doctrine of the faith, in a lecture given on September 1 in Regensburg on the occasion of the release of the German edition of Cardinal Robert Sarah’s book “God or Nothing

> Liturgy, Grace, Marriage, and the New Danger of Schism

According to Müller, “the separation of teaching and practice of the faith” was precisely that which in the 16th century led to the schism in the Western Church. With the deceptive practice of indulgences, the Church of Rome was in fact ignoring doctrine and “the original protest of Luther himself against the negligence of the shepherds of the Church was justified, because one may not play with the salvation of souls, even if the purpose of the deception would be to bring about a good deed.” (There can be no question that Martin Luther’s original aims were just and many of his thesis points were valid. However, once cut off from the Church there was no end to that which would follow – which is why that we, no matter what Rome does, can never abandon our Mother!)

And today – the cardinal continued – the question is the same: “We may not deceive the people, when it comes to the sacramentality of marriage, its indissolubility, its openness toward the child, and the fundamental complementarity of the two sexes. Pastoral care must keep in view the eternal salvation, and it should not try to be superficially pleasing according to the wishes of the people.”

As can be seen, the proponents of “openness” are very active, but the stances of those who oppose it are also numerous and strong.

On September 29 there will be a repeat presentation in Rome, backed up with 700,000 signatures including those of 180 cardinals and bishops, of the “Filial Appeal” to Pope Francis that he pronounce “a word of clarification” against the “widespread confusion arising from the possibility that a breach has been opened within the Church that would accept adultery—by permitting divorced and then civilly remarried Catholics to receive Holy Communion—and would virtually accept even homosexual unions.” (St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle …)

This appeal to the pope is not far from what was said by Cardinal Angelo Scola, archbishop of Milan and a father at the next synod, in an interview with “Corriere della Sera” of Sunday, September 27:

“The urgent priority, for me, is that the synod would suggest to the Holy Father a magisterial statement that would unify by simplifying the doctrine on marriage. A statement aimed at demonstrating the relationship between the experience of faith and the sacramental nature of marriage.”

The complete text of the interview:

On September 30, at the Angelicum University, cardinals Carlo Caffarra and Raymond Leo Burke, two of the five cardinals who on the verge of the synod of 2014 took a stance against their colleague Walter Kasper with the book “Remaining in the Truth of Christ,” will reassert their ideas together with Archbishop Cyril Vasil, secretary of the congregation for the Oriental Churches and also a coauthor of the book.

And two more books with the same perspective are about to come out, written by not just five cardinals but seventeen, from Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas, six of whom will take part in the synod either by reason of office, like the Guinean Robert Sarah, or because they were appointed by the pope himself, like the Italian Caffarra:

First Five, Now Seventeen Anti-Kasper Cardinals

The synod is around the corner and the battle is in full swing. And Pope Francis will have the last word.

Please visit the site for embedded links and other relevant articles.

http://chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/articolo/1351139?eng=y

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English translation by Matthew Sherry, Ballwin, Missouri, U.S.A.