Form a committee or some kind of group and after awhile they will want to know how much power they have.
I read at CNA:
Synod on Synodality members ask ‘for greater discernment’ of Church teaching on sexuality
Participants in the Synod on Synodality have asked “for greater discernment on the teaching of the Church on the subject of sexuality,” a Vatican spokesman said at a press briefing today.
The revelation seems to be at odds with synod organizers’ repeated insistence that the monthlong assembly will not take up doctrinal questions but will instead focus on how the Church can better listen to its members.
The discussion of sexual doctrine came during the synod members’ work in the morning session, shared Paolo Ruffini, the president of the synod’s communications commission. During that session, participants focused on the theme of “mercy and truth.” The theme includes a controversial question on “what concrete steps are needed to welcome those who feel excluded from the Church today because of their status or sexuality.”
Ruffini said that while some asked for further discernment on the Church’s sexual teaching, others “said there’s no need for this further discernment.”
Ruffini did not expand on what he meant by “discernment” and was not asked to clarify. [Not asked to clarify? It seems to me that if some want more of something, it would be good to know what it is.]
Members made the request for “greater discernment” of the Church’s sexual doctrine during the assembly’s discussion of the controversial topic of LGBTQ inclusion. Following the synod’s working document, participants were asked to consider “what concrete steps are needed to welcome those who feel excluded from the Church today because of their status or sexuality.”
[…]
And Cardinal Mario Grech, who heads the Vatican office for synods, said that “no one wants to depart from the Church’s teaching,” this past July in response to questions about doctrinal changes that could result from the synod. [No one wants to depart from the Church’s teaching…. riiiiiight.]
Here we go!
This is about sodomy, I’m afraid.
What they want won’t happen in this round of W-T. Remember, the true content of the W-T about W-T is the process. During the processing and discerning, eventually what will happen in common perception is that what Paul with zero ambiguity condemns in Ephesians 5 is actually okay. No, wait, maybe we start with Card. Kasper’s beloved formula of “tolerated but not accepted” and then move, through the permanent revolution processing and discernment to where those things are “accepted, not just tolerated”. Finally, they could become obligatory, once the masks are off.
Ephesians 5, friends. Colossians 3. “αἰσχρότης , ητος, ἡ,” (aischrót?s) … it meant something in the Greek of the ancient world: ugliness, deformity, filthy conduct. It is a euphemism for homosexual acts.
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If you torture a theological principle long enough, it will confess whatever you want it to.
“What is a moderate interpretation of the text? Halfway between what it really means and what you’d like it to mean?” — Justice Antonin Scalia
I think we should all take a moment and pray for God’s miraculous intervention for the Synod, especially where it concerns LGBTQIASJ matters, through the intercession of Fr. John Harvey, OSFS. As some of you may know, Fr. Harvey founded the organization Courage at the request of Terence Cardinal Cooke as a faithfully Catholic organization to help those dealing with SSA live according to the tenets of our faith and God’s plan for us. I was privileged to get to know Fr. Harvey in his later years: a gentle man, to be sure, but on fire with the Holy Spirit and firm in his convictions. As one person recalled of meeting with Fr. Harvey for the first time, “I told him I wanted to start a chapter [of Courage] in my diocese, but didn’t know if the Bishop would approve. Fr. Harvey said, ‘You don’t need your Bishop’s permission to practice chastity.’ I loved him for focusing on the solution, not my imagined problem.”
The Father John Harvey guild is seeking to have his cause opened; to learn more about this wonderful priest and his faithful ministry, please go to Fr.JohnHarvey.com.
Are we surprised by this? Anyone?… Buehler?
In a documentary titled “The Pope: Answers,” filmed in June 2022 and released by Disney+, Pope Francis said that the Church’s “catechesis on sex is still in diapers.”
See here: https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2023/04/06/a-pope-at-disney-and-the-church-in-diapers/
So, what we may (probably?) hear next, on “further” or “greater discernment” on the Church’s sexual teaching, is that there has been a *development of certain moral doctrines of the Faith.* (You know, since those moral teachings are “still in diapers”.)
I’m with Fr Z on this. It’s about the acceptance of s0d0my and other (im)moral practices.
“what concrete steps are needed to welcome those who feel excluded from the Church today because of their status or sexuality.”
I honestly think this is a very important topic for the Church today, but it worries me because it is going to be difficult to arrive at good answers, as a result of so many people wanting and working hard toward the goal of having the Church arrive at bad answers.
For most of the other topics before the Church today, we already have good answers, even if many in the Church refuse to accept those answers.
But I’m personally at a loss, for example, how best to engage with my brother, who has requested to be addressed as a sister. I worry very deeply for him, and don’t have a clue how to work on drawing him back closer to the Church. In some manner, I have to tell him things he does not want to hear, and that he already completely cut off communication with our father over, but I will be competing against a very large number of people telling him things he wants to hear.
I need a lot more discernment on this topic.
“no one wants to depart from the Church’s teaching,”
We can all hear the “but” that was not included in the quote but was fully intended. But we don’t LIKE the old teaching, we want a NEW teaching so we don’t have to depart from THAT.
some asked for further discernment on the Church’s sexual teaching
We can give you further discernment: we can lay out 10 ways in which to establish that sodomy is an evil act. Want more discernment? We can teach you a 100 ways in which it damages you and society. Need even more discernment? Sure: we’ll give you a thousand methods of self-discipline to undertake to learn chastity. Want more? [We] can do this all day.
Take them at their word (that they want more), and fill up the entire space with well-discerned teaching on the evils of sodomy. Discern that, buddy.
“what concrete steps are needed to welcome those who feel excluded from the Church today because of their status or sexuality.”
What concrete steps? Gee, I haven’t thought of it in those terms, but if you think concrete steps will work, we can give it a try: Can I pick up my concrete front steps and beat over the head the malicious and pernicious dolts trying to reverse Scripture on the subject?
We won’t even BEGIN a useful discussion of the issue unless we are willing to discern between those whom THE CHURCH has inadvertently excluded, and those who have voluntarily chosen to exclude themselves from the Church by insisting on adhering to heresy that they know is contrary to Christ’s teaching, and for which they have no intention of listening to any suggestions as to why the Church teaches these things. Like our dear Lord when he taught about the Eucharist (John 6), we cannot alter the truth we proclaim because others reject hearing it. Any attempt to begin the discussion without clarification on these as separate problems is, in effect, an attempt to force the Church to change doctrine.
But pay little attention to these: ALL of these individual questions are really just smoke and mirrors. They are not pushing these questions in order to get preferred answers today. It is to generate the PROCESS, the permanent revolution, under which they can just move the goalposts 1 inch a year and still expect to gain their objectives.
When they tell us we’re “obsessed with sex [i.e., sexual aberration],” they mean that we confront it honestly and they do not.
Like a number of other present-day disingenuities, this will blow up in their faces, not without claiming countless misled, once-blameless souls as casualties.