MUMBAI, India (ChurchMilitant.com) – A flagship Jesuit church in the megalopolis of Mumbai is using the forthcoming Synod on Synodality as a vehicle to change Catholic teaching on abortion.
Pro-life memorial at Portuguese Church in Mumbai
Saint Peter’s Church in Mumbai’s upmarket suburb of Bandra has published a questionnaire telling parishioners that their “suggestions” could “reach the pope” and even “change the direction of the Church” on key issues of faith and morals.
Loaded Questions
The parish questionnaire asks six loaded questions, clearly slanted in favor of heterodox Catholicism, requesting members tick “yes” or “no” and then fill in the blanks.
“What changes would you like in the Church?” the second question asks. One of the answers provided reads, “This area of faith or morality I would like the Church to change (e.g., doctrine on contraception/abortion or the idea of only Christians being saved).”
Parishioners are also asked if the Eucharist “could be made more meaningful” if the Church permits “carefully chosen lay people” or nuns to preach “in addition to/instead of the priest celebrant.”
Another change proposed is ordaining women deacons “as in the early Church.” However, the proposal gives no evidence for the existence of deaconesses — or the particular form and role of the office in nascent Christianity.
The questionnaire also suggests changing Church tradition by doing away with celibacy for priests and “building fraternity by respecting and trying to understand the genuine spiritual experiences of people of other faiths.”
The poll emphasizes interfaith relations rather than evangelization, even though Mumbai’s evangelical denominations have been engaged in intense evangelization of Hindus, Muslims and Buddhists — while continuing to convert Catholics to their brand of Christianity.
There is no reference to the Traditional Latin Mass, even though a significant number of Catholics have been struggling to organize a regular TLM in the archdiocese and a petition is currently before Cdl. Oswald Gracias, archbishop of Bombay.
Justin Joseph, an aviator and Catholic lay leader from Mumbai, told Church Militant he was shocked by the fact that the questionnaire gives Catholics the impression they can change doctrinal matters as grave as abortion (which Vatican II called an “unspeakable sin”) by democratic vote.
Joseph elaborated:
It is ironic that we have Mumbai’s premier Jesuit parish, in one of the most Catholic areas of the megalopolis, opening the door to the slaughter of unborn children and promoting women’s ordination — when India’s gravest crime is the mass extermination of female unborn babies and when the Jesuits are the first to pontificate on feminism.
The Indian Catholic hierarchy is also using the Synod on Synodality as a Trojan horse to push a heterodox interfaith agenda that is already widespread — the claim that you can be saved through Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism or other religions. And, like Germany, a number of shrill voices are already calling for teaching on homosexuality and transgenderism to be changed.
India’s sex-selective abortion holocaust astronomically eclipses COVID-19 fatalities. Up to 22 million female babies are estimated to have been massacred in the last three decades, Church Militant earlier reported.
India Killing Girls
Fr. Frazer Mascarenhas, parish priest of St. Peter’s Church
According to the medical journal The Lancet, India accounts for half of the world’s prevented female births. Seven Indian researchers writing in the peer-reviewed publication posit that there are “a total of between 13.5 million and 22.1 million missing female births from 1987 to 2016 due to sex-selective abortion — a consequence of ‘daughter aversion.'”
“This ongoing slaughter of unborn baby girls dwarfs the number of recent COVID-19 deaths. It is a human tragedy of enormous proportions that will haunt India for generations,” social scientist Steven Mosher, president of the Population Research Institute, told Church Militant.
“Since 1990, approximately 15.8 million women have gone ‘missing’ from annual birth cohorts,” a 2019 PRI report revealed. “We at PRI are confident that our number of 15.8 million missing girls in India is close to the mark,” Mosher asserted.
India conducted 12.7 million sex-selective abortions between 2000 and 2014 according to Mosher’s 65-page report, which lamented that, “since 2014, approximately 550,000 girls go ‘missing’ from the birth cohorts every year due to the practice of sex-selective abortion and other forms of prenatal sex selection.”
Among other factors in daughter aversion, Hindus display a higher preference for sons, who are valued for carrying out funeral rites for their parents (most Hindus believe that a son must fulfill this role).
In January 2020, India amended its abortion law, raising the upper limit for killing an unborn baby from 20 to 24 weeks of pregnancy. There is currently no gestational age limit for abortions in the case of fetal “abnormalities.”
Cardinal Oswald Gracias condemned the bill, insisting that “human life must be respected and protected absolutely from the moment of conception.”
“The Church is totally against abortion,” Gracias stressed, adding, “We certainly oppose the recent cabinet decision and cannot remain silent.”
Interior view of St. Peter’s Church, Bandra
Church Militant contacted Cdl. Gracias, asking how he could accept a leading church in his diocese promoting changes to the Church’s teaching on abortion. There was no response as of press time.
Investing in Millstones
Commenting earlier on the synodal process, Bp. Robert Barron warned that the use of imprecise language “gave the impression that the Church is a kind of freewheeling democracy — making up its principles and teachings as it goes along.”
The bishop said he was alarmed when he saw that the German bishops’ Synodal Way was “open to a reconsideration of some of the most fundamental moral teachings and disciplines of the Church, including the nature of the sexual act, the theology of the priesthood and the possibility of ordination for women.”
“Whatever Pope Francis means by ‘synodality,’ he quite clearly doesn’t mean a process of democratization or putting doctrine up for a vote,” Barron stressed.
“Whoever wrote this questionnaire should be congratulated at least for recognizing that artificial contraception and abortion are two sides of the same coin, and that they overlap,” Dr. Michael Pakaluk, professor of ethics and social philosophy at the Catholic University of America, told Church Militant.
“My advice is to buy options on millstones. There will be a shortage on Judgment Day,” Pakaluk remarked.