First, let’s remember one thing: the outcome of the synod on Synodality has already been determined. Remember what happened with the Family Synod of 2016? According to Archbishop Forte, Pope Francis had a predetermined outcome and pushed it through against the will of the bishops, then “drew out the conclusions” in the infamous footnote. So all of this month is just a lot of smoke before the synod in October of 2024, and the Pope’s actions afterwards.
So no one needs to spend time reading through this final document as it stands. What matters is what happens after.
But we can see the ways the enemies of Christ are using and abusing poor souls for their own ends. According to Cardinal Müller:
One of the assigned speakers […] who is influenced by this “LGBT” ideology, spoke of a relative who was bisexual, who committed suicide, and the conclusion was that the Church must be open, not to these persons but to the ideology. The ideology is to blame for this. But we cannot resolve theological questions and problems through emotion. This is only speaking emotionally about the Holy Spirit and we were told we mustn’t make controversies, that speaking [strongly] against anything isn’t possible or one is stigmatized as an enemy of the Holy Spirit.
This is exactly how the Marxists exploit the poor for power in the name of helping the poor. Except now they are using and abusing a poor, tragic soul, in order to invoke the Holy Spirit to bless sin with an emotional appeal.
This is truly demonic and it’s being touted as “the Holy Spirit.” Our Lord condemned those who called demonic the Holy Spirit’s work. What about those who call demonic work the Holy Spirit? Is this blasphemy against the Holy Spirit?
It is the same Marxist tactic of James Martin in his “Bridge to Hell” book: create a victim complex, appeal to emotion, then draw out those conclusions. But Jim Martin was not pleased with the Synod conclusion so far, saying that he was
“disappointed but not surprised” by the result for LGBTQ Catholics.
“There were widely diverging views on the topic,” said Martin. “I wish, however, that some of those discussions, which were frank and open, had been captured in the final synthesis.”
Why was Martin so disappointed? Because his other Marxist tactic – causing sinners to self-identify with their sin – was left off the final document:
In the instrumentum laboris, the working document that guided the Synod on Synodality assembly discussions, phrases like “LGBTQ+ Catholics” and “LGBTQ+ persons” were included.
The use of “LGBTQ+” in this way is contested by many bishops and theologians, who argue that it unhelpfully frames an individual’s sexual attractions and/or sense of gender as a foundational part of his or her identity. Others, however, have pushed for Church documents to include this terminology, which is popular in secular Western societies but faces strong resistance in places like Africa and Eastern Europe.
But following assembly discussions, the initial draft of the summary report instead mentioned that the assembly had spoken not of “LGBTQ+ people,” but “people who identity as LGBTQ+.” Some Catholics consider that phrasing to be less problematic, because it uses “LGBTQ+” as a subjective identification, not a state of being.
However, by the time the final summary report was released, any mention of “LGBTQ+” was removed altogether. Instead, in the place where the draft had spoken of “people who identify as LGBTQ+,” the document spoke of “people who feel marginalized or excluded from the Church because of their marriage situation, identity, and sexuality.”
The summary report did, however, use the terms “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” at one point.
This terminology is one of the poisons in his book. Martin says it’s offensive to refuse “LGBT Catholics” their chosen title. But this self-identification is precisely the issue. How can anyone overcome a sin or temptation with which one personally identifies?
But the final synod document rejected this terminology, thankfully. But is this cause to rejoice?
“Yes, but” says Kwasniewski:
It seems to me that the point of synodality is in the perpetual process, not any particular results. What Pope Francis wants is for people to think that everything is up for perpetual discussion, emoting, and voting, because that means that the boundaries of right and wrong, true and false, are perpetually indefinite and debatable, however much a particular group of voters decides to vote in favor of traditional doctrine. Francis is content to reaffirm Catholic doctrine now and again, but only together with saying a plethora of confusing or conflicting things that transmitted the message: “Do as your conscience bids you” or “Do as modernity bids.”
Yes I think this is precisely it. The #SchismaticWay is about attempting to make permanent the wicked dream of Cardinal Martini of perpetual revolution, world without end. It is implementing the mob-rule tactics of the American and French Liberal revolutions, copied again by the Communists. They started doing this with the media at Vatican I and II, but now we’ve got the momentum running wild under this pontificate.
And let’s not forget that even though Martin seems to be disappointed with the final text, the OG #SchismaticWay was pleased:
The head of Germany’s bishops, Bishop Georg Bätzing, said Sunday that the Synod on Synodality’s final text “is a big step for the universal Church” and that the wish of the synod to revise Catholic sexual ethics is an “enormous step forward.” He contended that an overwhelming… pic.twitter.com/kvCSJcOZUt
— Edward Pentin (@EdwardPentin) October 29, 2023
So after next October, we might have another “Papal Footnote Document,” or maybe the whole synodality is just an effort to strengthen this institution and make the firm the bureaucracy so it can go on and on like this. I remember Fr. Charles Murr telling me that the only way to solve Vatican corruption is for a new pope to literally sack every single Vatican official and bring in their own people. Otherwise, the machinations and the bureaucracy that the last pope put in – and the wicked corruption he left behind – will never be rooted out.
The Synod on Synodality is probably meant to simply make this corrupted system more permanent. This is why Bishop Schneider’s unprecedented action is so important – it re-establishes the primacy of Tradition in the life of the bishop. Meanwhile, he already summarized what should be said about this synod and all of these synods on synodalities. Instead of using and abusing the poor, the Synod should shut itself down and use the money to actually help the poor:
The continuous meetings and assemblies of bishops: they are spending so much money, it’s incredible. If we would reduce drastically the frequency of these meetings, we could give millions of dollars every year to the poor around the world. To me, this is a sin that churchmen are committing today. Even setting to the side for a moment the problems with these excessive meetings, which are ultimately a manifestation of Pelagianism and undermine the supernatural—to say nothing of the problem of the almost continuous stream of doctrinally ambiguous documents they produce — I believe it is sinful to spend so much money, which we could give to the poor in our world. We have to stop this.
