Looking at the Synod (“Walking Together: “W-T”) from as far as I can manage while being in Rome and as close as I need to be because I simply have to, the image that comes to mind is tied sack full of cats and parrots: something’s going on in there, alright, and it doesn’t sound very good. The sounds and the movements on the surface of the bag suggest that there are disagreeing participants in there and not a lot of organization.
As I have been saying all along, whatever they might produce in some sort of written form – which I firmly believe was already determined before the cat and parrot bag was filled and sewn shut – will not be the true message. The true message is that synodality (“Walking Togetherity”) must be perpetuated.
This is the establishment of “permanent revolution”, perpetual discontinuity, ongoing reinterpretation.
Some time ago I became convinced that those who have their hands on the levers and wheels behind the curtain are aiming at systematic reinterpretation of every aspect of the Church through their understanding of what Vatican II was all about. These folks are of a mind that the black on white texts of the Council are secondary in importance to the real content of the Council “event”, the “spirit”, which only a limited number of people are authorized to discern. The V2 Gnostics have it in mind that every aspect of the Church through history, all her institutions (except those they hold that give them power for change), doctrine, liturgy (which is doctrine), etc., must be reinterpreted in the light of their discernments about the “spirit of the Council”. This is what we are seeing today in the Synod (“walking together”).
That said, there seems to be one issue that has come to the fore and is being pushed hard into our faces: the homosexualist agenda.
There are lots of mosaics in Rome, some fairly recent, others quite ancient. Mosaics are made up of little tesserae, blocks of color which, by themselves, tell you nothing. Examine the mosaic at very close range and you simply see little stones. Put these random pieces into order and then step back and images are discerned.
You can perhaps fill in more examples, but consider:
- Timothy Radcliffe, OP addresses the participants in significant measure.
- James Martin, SJ was a special appointment.
- An activist from St. Joan of Arc in Minneapolis was appointed (who sat with the above)
- Francis met with an actress and social commentatrix famous for her multiple abortions and support of homosexuality
- Francis met for almost an hour with New Ways Ministry
One more piece of the puzzle emerged today. Close confidant and highly visible Antonio Spadaro, SJ, is published today in the Italian, daily La Stampa, recounting his years and years of labor over the works of the Italian homoerotic writer Pier Vittorio Tondelli, who died of AIDS in 1991. Spadaro has long maintained a website dedicated to Tondelli under his own name: HERE.
Look. This single item doesn’t mean much in itself. Neither does Francis meeting with New Ways or James Martin being anywhere at all. Put all the bits together and a picture emerges.
Someone perhaps can tell me how I am getting this wrong, and I will be grateful.
However, it seems to me that if other issues, such as married priests and women’s ordination, communion for the civilly remarried blah blah can be postponed to a future date when synodality (W-T) has been widely imposed, this issue, the homosexualist agenda, is decidedly not being held back. It is being firmly shoved in everyone’s face. By the highest authorities.
The Prefect of the Dicastery for Doctrine, Fernandez recently said that we shouldn’t use words like “sinner,” “sodomy,” “adultery,” “illegitimate”.
A German Bishop responded in a Synod (“w-t”) presser to a question about his own statements that even Apostolic Tradition is among the “traditionalisms” that have to go. He even clarified that that is what he meant in a follow up. I hate to break it to that bishop but he is supposedly a successor of the APOSTLES. Will you kindly forego a salary, Your Excellency?
If there is no Apostolic Tradition… what is there?
All that remains is “walking togetherity”… to the edge of the modernist cliff.
The first command God gave to our First Parents is well-known: “be fruitful and multiply”. Homosexual behavior is exactly the undoing of that command. The Enemy knows where to strike. Make the human race so confused and arrogant that we don’t know who we are in God’s image, female or male, what the components we have are for, rearrange things by sheer brute force, manipulate the building blocks of life…. Sterility.
We see this in the larger world. We see something like it going on in the Church: confusion of roles, rearrangement by force, manipulating basic teachings. Plummeting vocations.
UPDATE:
Robert Royal’s observations at The Catholic Thing today about “Walking Together about Walking Togetherity”.
Royal presents a good summary of the disruptive incoherence that is this Synod (“W-T”), mentioning several key speakers and statements and ancillary helps such as who is receiving papal audiences.
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As a simple layman this is my perspective also. The entire thing is about homosexuality and undoing morality and Christian ethics. Throw out virtue and let’s say vice is good because we discerned it by walking together and listening. It seems quite obvious to be honest.
The interview with Father de Souza on Robert Royal’s “The Vatican Thing” reminded me of a conversation I had with a young Episcopalian priest in the mid-70s. He stated the church had to change because the majority (of Americans?) would soon no longer be Christian. Of course I think what he meant by this is the church needed to water down its moral teachings since society at large could no longer accept them. I interpreted Father de Souza in the interview as more or less criticizing this idea. Even though this has not worked out so well for the Episcopal Church and other liberal Anglican denominations, I suspect this is approach many liberal Catholic priests and bishops are taking. My response, and I think the correct response to this notion, is to consider whether Saints Peter and Paul, not to mention St Stephen and all the apostles, were concerned with changing doctrine to better suit the Romans. I doubt it. The Church has the solution for Sin, and if there is no such thing as Sin there is no need for the Church.
You provide a perfectly accurate, blistering and heartbreaking analysis of this circus today, Father. I don’t know how you maintain.
When I saw Radcliffe’s name on the headlines the other day I thought I was having a recuring nightmare — he was our James Martin before we had James Martin SJ. And then, last week not only Whoopi, but a VEILED Jeannine Gramick. That head hasn’t been veiled in fifty years. Yet more evidence that we are drowning in mendacity and manipulation. They constitute a staged production on the art of narcissism.
Do they really believe the laity to be plain stupid? They do indeed. That alone indicates that the crew doesn’t have a oar in the water. Their enterprise is going to be a failure as has proved the last mid-century council. Their feigned expertise in all things theological and ecclesial will once again be unveiled as vacuous. Pastoral endeavors require supernatural faith, and there is none, none, in evidence at the circus underway in Rome except for a few marginalized participants who were only invited to provide it some cover.
I hear what you say Fr Z but, well, I’m not pessimistic.
Pope Francis has totally dismissed any recognition of same-sex marriage (sic).
He has never said there will be blessings for gay couples.
He has reiterated that homosexual acts are sinful.
Certainly there is a homosexualist agenda with some. But it can go nowhere.
Maximillian, I agree with you that Francis, personally, has publicly stated that there cannot be same-sex marriages. But Francis will not be here permanently. The process is about moving the goal-posts a few more feet in their direction, every cycle of changes.
And for practical purposes, (at least so they think), it’s OK if the Church officially doesn’t change doctrine by, say, revising the Catechism the way they would like it to read. If the pastors and bishops are in fact blessing gay couples in the Church, they will have gained most of the objective, by papal silence that permits the abuses to go on. That’s what happened with communion on the hand and altar girls, too. Eventually, they think, the practice in the parishes will percolate upwards and force a change in doctrine. The fact that the Church will never formally OK such a reversal of doctrine doesn’t impinge on them, because they don’t believe in infallibility, or in the Church, for that matter.
I fear that Francis, unless he changes his tune, will end up in the history books like another Liberius.
Maximillian, I disagree. Francis says a lot of things to a lot of people, and many of the things he says contradict other things he said to other people. I take any and every thing the man says with more than just a grain of salt.
If you want to know what Francis *truly* wants, keep in mind that “personnel is policy”. Look at the people with whom Francis chooses to surround himself— and look at those whom he chooses to sack, humiliate, and banish.
To think that Francis intends to hold the line against ‘normalizing’ sodomy because somewhere he’s said he will is, frankly, naive.
Re: the homosexualist agenda, don’t forget Whoopi Goldberg’s 1 hour visit with Pope Francis, which Michael Matt sizes up very well in this week’s Remnant TV broadcast.
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I have been trying to ignore all this. I have enough going on in my own life working on my salvation.
However, my impression of what the leaders of this “synod” (for lack of a better term) are doing is “putting lipstick on a pig”. No matter how much they try, it is still heresy.
“If there is no Apostolic Tradition… what is there?”
Scripture is what remains, Father! Only Scripture! Or, since you ossified manualists like Latin, allow this German help you out: Sola Scriptura!
Oh, wait……
hilltop – what is being aimed at is something far worse than “sola scriptura”. It’s more like “sola Zeitgeist” [if I may mix languages], or perhaps “sola ego”.
Whatever the prevailing worldly spirit says is the hermeneutic by which Scripture will be interpreted. The “faith” (for it is not a true faith) becomes an ever-morphing morass of constantly changing content.
If you like your Catholicism you CAN’T KEEP IT. The longer this evolving monkey show goes on the worse it’s going to get. We can complain about it publicly. That’s not nothing, but it’s not as much of a something as the Cardinals and bishops could do, today, if they wanted to.
Thus far, only one seems prepared to take action. For the rest we need pitbulls and all we’ve got is kittens. I would say it’s shocking, but what does shocking mean anymore. That being said, if and when God decides we need pitbulls we’ll get them. It’s His church.
Scripture is Written Apostolic Tradition. Apostolic Tradition and Scripture are concentric circles.
Oh, you’re correct. I think Thomas Reese is there as well. We all know where this is going. McCarrick told us (“We did it!”). None of this, The Pornocracy Redux, should be surprising. The Vatican has adopted the sign of the times (h/t T.J. Reese SJ) and the coming century will be one of a great deal of pain, apostasy, many lost souls, and probably another schism.
I have read somewhere that traditionally it is believed that the Deluge was chiefly the result of perversion in the marriage bed. The current acceptance of perversions, such as sodomy, appears to have began as a weakening of the sanctity of marriage in general and particularly the marriage bed after the protestant revolt. The general acceptance of unnatural acts in Christian marriage has led to the general acceptance of unnatural carnal acts altogether, inside or outside of legitimate marriage.