It’s time to make a stand.
Dear 1P5 Readers,
I’m sure that you are as concerned about the Synod on the Family as I am. As the evidence mounts that the Synod’s outcome has been pre-determined, I have joined a number of other concerned Catholics in writing an open letter. In it, we request that those Synod fathers who are faithful to Christ’s teachings, if they continue to be thwarted in their efforts, walk out of the Synod before it is over rather than allow their participation be interpreted as support.
You can view the letter here. It is presented in the format of a petition, allowing Catholics to add their signatures. We would like to reach as many people as possible in the time we have left.
I know you are busy, but at this crucial time, I ask that you read the petition and consider signing it and sharing it with your social media contacts, family, and friends. We will be pushing it out through social media channels with the hashtag #SynodWalkout.
Even at this late hour, we must try to protect the faith.
Please Sign the Letter Today.
Thank you for your consideration of this crucial effort.
In Christ,
Steve Skojec
Publisher & Executive Director
OnePeterFive.com
Failed Synod, Steve? Really? I don’t know how a synod can be a failure (or a success). What is the criteria for failure or success? A very, very small percentage of Catholics are worried about the synod and wish it wasn’t happening. Most people are not concerned.
There are two categories of people who aren’t concerned about the Synod:
1) Those who have no access to information about it or are unable to understand it.
2) Non-Catholics or “Catholics” who disagree with Church teaching.
Pick one.
Seems to me that Catholics who disagree with Church teaching like the anti-doctrine sentiments belching forth from the corrupt proceedings.
Good grief, Skojec. What about another category–those faithful Catholics who, in prudence, are waiting until the end of the synod to assess it?
See category 1.
Nope. Your flippant answer doesn’t work. I have access to the information, understand it, and am waiting, in prudence, rather than fanning the flames of schism like you do every day.
Shh. Your arrogance is showing.
I agree with Nicholas. When we stopped believing that God is going to be with the Church until the end of times? And that the gates of hell will not stand against the Church? I think that the posture proposed by Nicholas is in accordance with God’s revelation, and the other one shows only arrogance of people that think they know the future, the Church, the Pope and the bishops better than God.
We never stopped believing that. The mistake is in thinking that papal infallibility lends to a pope the mysterious superpower of either a) impeccability or b)supernatural resilience to error on matters not binding to the Universal Church.
The deck is so transparently stacked, with all the strings in the pope’s hands, that to doubt the fact that this Synod has been rigged to achieve an outcome that will undermine the infallible teaching on marriage and sexuality is to engage in fairy tale thinking.
While it is certainly true that God may, in His providence, provide some miraculous conclusion to the Synod that preserves orthodoxy in more than just doctrine (which is what happened with Contraception post Humanae Vitae, for all the good it did) we would be rather silly to assume such miraculous intervention.
The bad guys have taken the castle. God will ultimately win, but certain short-term victories for the opposing team are almost definitely assured.
That’s a use of ‘prudence’ I do not recognise. Prudence means exercising you judgement in the light of facts currently in evidence, not simply waiting for new facts which may or may not arise. Prudence means taking action to prevent the house falling down, not sitting tight waiting to see how habitable it might remain after the storm.
Just as most Catholics have not been concerned about Catholics losing the faith massively since about 60 years ago. They haven’t been concerned that Catholics divorce as much as Protestants or non-believers; they haven’t been concerned that Catholics use artificial birth prevention devices as much as their non-Catholic neighbors; they haven’t been concerned that Catholics today often know less about their faith than do most Evangelical critics of that same faith; they haven’t been concerned that the vast majority of Catholics no longer go to Confession or Mass and no longer teach the Faith to their children (if they bother to have any); in short, most Catholics have made a veritable science of insouciance. Be that as it may, though, the criterion (not criteria) for failure or success of this Synod is its adherence to orthodox Catholic teachings about sexuality. If it resists the call of rebels for laxity and accommodation to dissipation, it will be a success; if it caves to demands for praxis that undermines orthodoxy, it will be an abject failure.
I wish I could up vote this about a thousand times. Yes, THIS!!!! This is the problem. For the vast majority of Catholics the past was erased. They don’t even know what they are missing. They don’t realize that Catholics actually DID know their Catechism at one point. They did take going to Mass seriously. It was even worth putting on long pants and real shoes.
We can take some comfort in history. In previous times of generalized Catholic apostasy, there came a renewal, most often from unsuspected and completely unnoticed sources. Contemporaries had no idea, for example, that the catastrophe of the Protestant revolt (for me the greatest blow to humanity after the Fall) would produce the glories of the Counter-Reformation with its thunderous intellectual explosion and its artistic renaissance. It’s hazardous to guess where the “Spirit is blowing” at the moment, but perhaps this Synod is lifting just a bit the veil on the secret. Could it be that Africa will come to our rescue once again as it did in the times of Athanasius? I don’t know.
In short: apostasy.
Bingo!
Please sign the letter today before it disappears like all the Facebook links to it have disappeared.
Nasty business out there.
Isn’t a synod merely an advisory body for the Pope that has no authority, as opposed to say, an ecumenical council, to “change doctrine”, modify practices, or basically anything else? Yes, it’s a grave concern the number of bishops who are expressing heterodox opinions, but in the end, don’t they simply produce a document that the Pope can then implement (to whatever extent and in whatever way) or simply discard into the nearest waste bin, as he sees fit?
What am I missing?
You mentioned what you may be missing, viz. a document that “the pope can then implement….or discard….” It is clear to all who are paying attention that this pope has every intention of implementing notions not in sync with or at least prejudicial to orthodox Catholic teaching. He seems to be orchestrating a Synod document that he can then use as cover for doing what he intended to do in the first place. In other words, the Synod is a smokescreen.
Yes, I admit, things don’t look good, but we’ll have to wait and see what the Pope actually does.
However, many are expressing a fear that this advisory body will “change doctrine”, something that not even the Pope can do. God has always seen to that.
No, but suppose Francis decided that each country or episcopal area (i.e. German, French, English, etc.) should establish its own rules about, say, reception of the Eucharist by those living in an adulterous marriage. Do you really have any doubt about what that would eventuate into? So, yes, the “rule” would be on the books, but practice would soon make it null and void in everyday life. (Remember that once “altar girls” were prohibited. The rebels back then didn’t change the rule, they just broke it.) And once adulterous marriages with a corresponding “right to Communion” had been widely accepted, how long would it take before the rebels argued that the sinful arrangement of sodomoshackups deserved just as much acceptance?
You are absolutely right. That would indeed be disastrous.
Look at what the commission that fabricated the new mass, the Mass of Paul IV, were able to accomplish is decimating the faith. Like the old Who song says, As the hook in the Who’s song says, “We Won’t Get Fooled Again”.
For those who may wish to listen to an edifying talk given in 1967 in Chicago, about the conciliar church…go to You Tube and enter the words, “Conciliar or Catholic? Fr. Gommar A. De Pauw”. Fr. De Pauw was a Professor of Theology and Doctor of Canon Law. He gives a history of the different schisms in the early church, etc.
Steve, Although I already signed the letter, I just read a letter on FB by Dr. Kelly Bowring, a noted theologian, who relates that it would be better for the participants to STAY at the synod n VOICE their disagreements there n then when Francis comes out w his FINAL WORDS that would be the time to STAND UP N SAY NO – WE SHALL REMAIN WITH JESUS! This way the synod participants would not be CAUSING A SCHISM AS IT WOULD BE FRANCIS N HIS FOLLOWERS IN SCHISM! Please try to read his suggestion on FB.
Why oh why was the petition posted on change dot org????? When Life Site News and CitizenGO offer Catholics a welcoming home for their causes? When Archbishop Cordileone first demanded last spring that Catholic school teachers believe, teach and live the Faith, change dot org and other “liberal” petition sites made it hard to find the petition the faithful started to support the Archbishop. Then, when the faithful did manage to find and sign the petition, they were spammed with emails asking them to sign other petitions for causes that go against our faith. Why give them traffic? Please consider not feeding the beast. I bet dollars to donuts that change dot org tipped off their buddies at Facebook to scrub all links to your petition and that’s why Catholic Mom of 6 cant find them anymore
The Catholic faithful are also asking the bishops to abandon the failed council known as Vatican II.