One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic

For anyone who might happen to be following the events leading up to the Amazon Synod (and there might not be too many; we Catholics can be a pretty complacent lot at times), I offer the following statement made by Cardinal Burke and Bishop Athanasius Schneider on 24 September. ------------------------------------------------------- A clarification about the meaning of fidelity to the Supreme Pontiff No honest person can anymore deny the almost general doctrinal confusion which is reigning in the life of the Church in our days. This is particularly due to ambiguities regarding the indissolubility of marriage, which is being relativized through the practice of the admittance of persons cohabitating in irregular unions to Holy Communion, due to the increasing approval of homosexual acts, which are intrinsically contrary to nature and contrary to the revealed will of God, due to errors regarding the uniqueness of the Our Lord Jesus Christ and His redemptive work, which is bein...

It’s good that our Holy Father isn’t worried about an American schism, since there won’t be any. Hopefully, though, he’s keeping a close eye on the Germans. Reinhard Cardinal Marx, head of the German bishops’ conference, is planning to convene a two-year-long “binding synod,” in which certain influential laymen will be invited to participate. Its stated topics are a laundry list of progressive euphemisms: the “authority and separation of powers” (Gallicanism), “sexual morality” (legitimizing adultery and homosexuality), “the priestly mode of life” (abolishing clerical celibacy), and “women at the service of ecclesiastical offices” (female deacons, priests and bishops). In June, Pope Francis sent a letter rebuking his ally Marx and all the participating bishops, ordering them not to go ahead with the sham synod. Marx ignored the pontiff. Then, last week, the Vatican’s Congregation for Bishops sent a letter to Marx informing him that the synod was “not ecclesiologically valid,” and th...