VATICAN CITY (ChurchMilitant.com) – A leading cardinal is warning that the forthcoming Synod on Synodality is “a revolution” that is at work “to change radically the Church’s self-understanding in accord with a contemporary ideology which denies much of what the Church has always taught and practiced.”
Pope Francis with Cdl. Raymond Burke at the Vatican
In a foreword to a new book titled The Synodal Process Is a Pandora’s Box: 100 Questions & Answers, Cdl. Raymond Burke notes that “synodality,” which is set to redefine Catholicism, “has no history in the doctrine of the Church” and “no reasonable definition.”
Lamenting “the evident and grave harm” that the synodal process “is inflicting upon the Mystical Body of Christ,” Burke cautions Catholics that the synodal model, which is already spreading confusion, error and schism in Germany, will replicate itself in the universal Church.
Citing Catholic thinker Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, the book’s authors José Antonio Ureta and Julio Loredo de Izcue explain how synodality is being used as a “talismanic” word that “is susceptible to being radicalized and abused for propaganda” given its “elastic” meaning.
Ureta and Loredo warn that Pope Francis’ synodal project is a “revolutionary” process that “takes up old heresies repeatedly condemned by the Magisterium” and is in “imminent danger of building a new Church, different from the Catholic Church as it has always existed.”
“To a diligent observer, this panorama takes on apocalyptic tones. A maneuver is underway to demolish Holy Mother Church by erasing the basic elements of her organic constitution and doctrine, rendering her unrecognizable,” the authors emphasize.
Written in the form of a catechism of 100 questions and answers, the authors explain how the proposed changes are “so radical that the synod documents speak of ‘conversion,’ as if the Church has been on the wrong path and needs to make a U-turn.”
On the mortal sin of sodomy, Ureta and Loredo note that some synodal fathers are “looking for loopholes to canonically legitimize same-sex unions” and “open[ing] all sacraments to them — even marriage.”
“Almost all concluding documents of the synodal journey’s continental stages (Continental Syntheses) explicitly mention the need to include LGBT persons” and “explicitly mention that special care was taken to consult ‘marginalized minorities,'” the authors observe.
Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich, relator general of the synod “has declared that the Church’s doctrine on homosexual relations is ‘false’ and must, therefore, be changed because ‘the sociological–scientific foundation of such teaching is no longer correct,'” they note.
Moreover, some French bishops have asked Pope Francis to expunge the description of homosexual acts as “intrinsically disordered” and “contrary to the natural law” from the Catechism of the Catholic Church and have created a commission to study reformulating the doctrine on this subject.
The book raises the specter of the synod approving deaconesses and even priestesses, observing how Pope Francis himself “determined that up to 25% of synod participants would be laypeople, men and women, all with equal voting rights with the bishops.”
John William Waterhouse’s painting of Pandora’s box
Even if the synodal process approves only some proposals, “changes in the Catholic Church would be such that one could legitimately ask whether she would still look like the Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church founded by Our Lord Jesus Christ,” the book warns.
Among other changes, the synod is also seeking to end mandatory celibacy for priests and include “marginalized minorities” such as “remarried divorcees, single parents, people living in a polygamous marriage, LGBTQ people, etc.”
Explaining the synodal methodology, the book explains how the hierarchy is “allow[ing] tension between thesis and antithesis to grow until a consensual synthesis is reached.”
The book demonstrates the failure of the synodal model in the Church of England, citing the testimonies of two former Anglican bishops, Dr. Gavin Ashenden and Dr. Michael Nazir-Ali, both recent converts to Catholicism.
The synodal spirit “draws on ancient errors and heresies” such as the humanistic “conciliarist current” which arose as early as the 15th century that “sought to reduce the pope’s hierarchical power in favor of a conciliar assembly,” the book explains.
In such a scenario, the pope, reduced to a primus inter pares (first among equals), would be required to submit to the synod’s decisions reached through a democratic and majority vote of its participants.
The myth of Pandora has its origin in the writings of the Greek poet Hesiod. Before he left Pandora on earth, the Greek god Zeus handed her a beautiful box and said, “This is my own special gift to you. Don’t ever open it.”
However, Pandora’s curiosity got the best of her, and she opened the chest, from which flew troubles and woes — sorrow, disease, vice, violence, greed, madness, old age, death — to plague mankind forever.