THE CHURCH MILITANT - BELEAGUERED BY BERGOGLIANISM

Mons. Chaput, archbishop of Philadelphia and a member of the Synod of Bishops’ permanent council, called on Pope Francis, in an August 30 news conference (in the wake of the Vigano 'Testimony'),
called on Pope Francis to postpone the so-called 'youth synod' since "right now, the bishops would have absolutely no credibility in addressing this topic,". Instead, he suggested that the Pope
“begin making plans for a synod on the life of bishops”. Today, he has taken the unusual step of publishing an analysis by an unnamed theologian of the already much-criticized 'working document' for
said youth synod. The wide-ranging analysis warns that the Instrumentum veers dangerously close to heresy – specifically the heresies of naturalism, Lutheranism, and relativism... I suspect that the
theologian author may be Fr Weinandy, a Capuchin like Abp. Chaput, and already a leading critic of many Bergoglian initiatives. Last year, he was dismissed as a theological consultant to the USCCB
after he published his first critical article.




Over the past several months, I’ve received scores of emails and letters from laypeople, clergy, theologians, and other scholars, young and old, with their thoughts
regarding the October synod of bishops in Rome focused on young people.
- Nearly all note the importance of the subject matter.
- Nearly all praise the synod’s intent.
- And nearly all raise concerns of one sort or another about the synod’s timing and possible content.

The critique below, received from a respected North American theologian, is one person’s analysis; others may disagree. But it is substantive enough to warrant
much wider consideration and discussion as bishop-delegates prepare to engage the synod’s theme. Thus, I offer it here:

Principal theological difficulties
in the Instrumentum Laboris (IL)
for the 2018 synod:

I. Naturalism
The IL displays a pervasive focus on socio-cultural elements, to the exclusion of deeper religious and moral issues. Though the document expresses the desire to “re-read” “concrete realities” “in the light of the faith and the experience of the Church (§4),” the IL regrettably fails to do so. Specific examples:
- §52. After a discussion of the contemporary instrumentalized conception of the body and its effects of “early sexual activity, multiple sexual partners, digital pornography, exhibiting bodies online and sexual tourism,” the document laments only its “disfiguring the beauty and depth of affective and sex life.” No mention is made about the disfigurement of the soul, its consequent spiritual blindness, and impact on the reception of the gospel by the one so wounded.

- §144. There is much discussion about what young people want; little about how these wants must be transformed by grace in a life that conforms to God’s will for their lives.

After pages of analysis of their material conditions, the IL offers no guidance on how these material concerns might be elevated and oriented toward their supernatural end.

Though the IL does offer some criticism of exclusively materialistic/utilitarian goals (§147), the majority of the document painstakingly catalogues the varied socio-economic and cultural realities of young adults while offering no meaningful reflection on spiritual, existential, or moral concerns. The reader may easily conclude that the latter are of no importance to the Church.

The IL rightfully notes that the Church must encourage youth “to abandon the constant search for small certainties (§145).” Nowhere, however, does it note that she must also enlarge this view with the great certainty that there is a God, that he loves them, and that he wills their eternal good.

- This naturalism is also evidenced in the document's preoccupation with the following considerations: globalization (§10); advocating for the Church’s role in creating “responsible citizens” rather than saints (§147) and preparing youth for their role in society (§135); secular goals for education (§149); promoting sustainability and other secular goals (§152-154); promoting “social and political engagement” as a “true vocation” (§156); encouragement of “networking” as a role of the Church.

- The hope of the gospel is noticeably missing.
In §166, in the context of a discussion of sickness and suffering, a disabled man is quoted: “you are never prepared enough to live with a disability: it prompts you to ask questions about your own life, and wonder about your finiteness.” These are existential questions for which the Church possesses the answers. The IL never responds to this quotation with a discussion of the Cross, redemptive suffering, providence, sin, or the Divine Love.

The IL is similarly weak on the question of death in §171: suicide is described as merely “unfortunate,” and no attempt is made to correlate it to the failures of a materialistic ethos. This is also seen in the tepid treatment of addiction (§49-50).

II. An inadequate grasp of the Church’s spiritual authority
The IL upends the respective roles of the ecclesia docens and the ecclesia discens (the Church teaching and the
Church learning). The entire document is premised on the belief that the principal role of the magisterial Church is “listening.”

Most problematic is §140: “The Church will have to opt for dialogue as her style and method, fostering an awareness of the existence of bonds and connections in a complex reality. . . . No vocation, especially within the Church, can be placed outside this outgoing dynamism of dialogue...” In other words, the Church does not possess the truth but must take its place alongside other voices. Those who have held the role of teacher and preacher in the Church must replace their authority with dialogue. (In this regard, see also §67-70).

The theological consequence of this error is the conflation of the baptismal and sacramental priesthood.
- From the foundation of the Church, by divine command, the ordained ministers of the Church have been invested with the task of teaching and preaching.
- from her foundation, the baptized faithful have been tasked with hearing and conforming to the preached Word.
- Moreover, the mandate of preaching is co-instituted by Our Lord with the ministerial priesthood itself (Cf. Mt 28:19-20).

Were the Church to abandon her ministry of preaching, that is, were the roles of the teaching Church and the listening Church to be inverted, the hierarchy itself would be inverted, and the ministerial priesthood would collapse into the baptismal priesthood. In short, we would become Lutherans.

Apart from this serious ecclesiological problem, this approach presents a pastoral problem. It is common knowledge that adolescents from permissive households typically yearn for parents to care enough to set limits and give direction, even if they rebel against this direction.

Similarly, the Church as mother and teacher cannot through negligence or cowardice forfeit this necessary role of setting limits and directing (Cf. §178). In this regard §171, which points to the motherhood of the Church, does not go far enough. It offers only a listening and accompanying role while eliminating that of teaching.

III. A partial theological anthropology
Discussion of the human person in the IL fails to make any mention of the will. The human person is reduced in numerous places to “intellect and desire,” “reason and affectivity” (§147).

The Church, however, teaches that man, created in the image of God, possesses an intellect and will, while sharing with the rest of the animal kingdom a body, with its affect. It is the will that is fundamentally directed toward the good.

The theological consequence of this glaring omission is extraordinarily important, since the seat of the moral life resides in the will and not in the vicissitudes of the affect. Other examples include §114 and §118.

IV. A relativistic conception of vocation
Throughout the document the impression is given that vocation concerns the individual’s search for private meaning and truth.

Examples include:
§129. What is meant by “personal form of holiness?” Or, one’s “own truth?” This is relativism. While the Church certainly proposes the personal appropriation of truth and holiness, Scripture is very clear that God, the First Truth, is One; the devil is legion.

§139 gives the impression that the Church cannot propose the (singular) truth to people and that they must decide for themselves. The role of the Church consists only in accompaniment. This false humility risks diminishing the legitimate contributions that the Church can and ought to make.

§157. Why should the Church be about “supporting pathways to change lifestyles?” This in conjunction with exhortations for youth to take responsibility for their own lives (§62) and to construct meaning for themselves (§7, §68-69) gives the impression that absolute truth is not found in God.

V. An impoverished understanding of Christian joy
Christian spirituality and the moral life are reduced to the affective dimension, clearest in §130, evidenced by a sentimentalist conception of “joy.” Joy seems to be a purely affective state, a happy emotion, sometimes grounded in the body or human love (§76), sometimes in social engagement (§90).

Despite its constant reference to “joy,” nowhere does the IL describe it as the fruit of the theological virtue of charity. Nor is charity characterized as the proper ordering of love, putting God first and then ordering all other loves with reference to God.

The theological consequence of this is that the IL lacks any theology of the Cross. Christian joy is not antithetical to suffering, which is a necessary component of a cruciform life.
-The document gives the impression that the true Christian will be “happy” at all times, in the colloquial sense.
- It further implies the error that the spiritual life itself will always result in felt (affective) joy.

The pastoral problem that results from this comes to the fore most clearly in §137: Is it the role of the Church to make youth “feel loved by him [God]” or to aid them in knowing they are loved regardless of how they might feel?

Besides the above considerations, there are other serious theological concerns in the IL, including:
- a false understanding of the conscience and its role in the moral life;
- a false dichotomy proposed between truth and freedom;
- false equivalence between dialogue with LGBT youth and ecumenical dialogue; and
- an insufficient treatment of the abuse scandal.

The wide range of criticisms proposed above is appalling, especially since it simply reflects how anti-Catholic this Vatican has become under an increasingly and unapologetically anti-Catholic pope.

Yet this is the kind of faithless, truth-less rubbish that is increasingly dumped by this pope on Catholics and on the one true Church of Christ. Disposing quickly of all such rubbish ought to be each Catholic's first and foremost ecological concern. What does it profit the Church or anyone to be mindful of physical material ecology when our spiritual ecology is being violated relentlessly and without quarter by the very man who was elected to lead the Church?

Earlier, George Weigel had a brief but blistering critique of the IL in his weekly column for the DENVER CATHOLIC:

Saving the 2018 synod from itself
by George Weigel

September 12, 2018

Anyone looking for a remedy for insomnia might try working through the Instrumentum Laboris, or “working document,” for the XV Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, to be held in Rome next month on the theme “Young People, the Faith, and Vocational Discernment.”

The IL is a 30,000+ word brick: a bloated, tedious door stop full of sociologese but woefully lacking in spiritual or theological insight.

Moreover, and more sadly, the IL has little to say about “the faith” except to hint on numerous occasions that its authors are somewhat embarrassed by Catholic teaching – and not because that teaching has been betrayed by churchmen of various ranks, but because that teaching challenges the world’s smug sureties about, and its fanatical commitment to, the sexual revolution in all its expressions.

A gargantuan text like this can’t seriously be considered as a basis for discussion at the Synod. No text of more than 30,000 words, even if written in a scintillating and compelling style, can be a discussion guide.

The IL for Synod-2018 reads, rather, like a draft of a Synod Final Report. [It most probably is. Its generics will simply be propped up by whatever specifics the synodal fathers may come up with during the actual meeting - - sifted, filtered, edited and supplemented, of course, as the Synod Secretariat deems necessary. And voila! - Bergoglio's post-synodal exhortation -Homosexualitatis...er, Clericalismus gaudium, or whatever - is already 90 percent pre-fabricated!]

And that is a prescription for a failed Synod.

So what might the participants in Synod-2018 do to salvage a useful discussion in October?

They might challenge the IL’s oft-repeated claim that young people want a “Church that listens.” That is so obvious as to be a thumping banality: no one, young or old, wants a Church that’s a nagging, unsympathetic nanny.

And yes, young people (and the rest of us) want a “Church that listens” in spiritual direction and confession to the difficulties we all experience in living and sharing the Gospel and in obeying God’s law.

But above all, and perhaps especially in this time of grave troubles, what young people want (and what the rest of us want, at least in the living parts of the Church) is a Church that lives joyfully, teaches clearly, manifests holiness, offers comfort and support to the needy – and answers our questions clearly and honestly.

Young people (and the rest of us) do not want a pandering Church, but an evangelically-vibrant Church that manifests and offers friendship with Jesus Christ.

Synod participants might also emphasize that the clarity of Catholic teaching on life issues attracts many young people today, precisely because that clarity is in sharp contrast to the incoherence about what makes for human happiness that people of all ages increasingly detect in the lifestyle libertinism of contemporary Western culture.

Someone at Synod-2018 should, for example, talk about the experience of the annual March for Life in Washington, D.C., which, for years now, has become both larger and younger.

Success stories in youth ministry should be persistently, even relentlessly, lifted up at Synod-2018.

The IL betrays a soured sense of incapacity, even failure. Yet the past 30 years or so have seen a renaissance in young adult ministry.
- So let someone at Synod-2018 talk about the impressive record of Christian formation compiled by campus ministries like that at Texas A&M University.
- Let someone at the Synod tell the world Church about the intellectual and spiritual achievements of orthodox, academically vibrant Catholic liberal arts colleges and universities in the United States.
- Let someone bear witness to the great work being done on over a hundred campuses by FOCUS, the Fellowship of Catholic University Students, which singularly embodies the “Church permanently in mission” of which the Pope speaks.
- And let’s hope there’s room at Synod-2018 for churchmen to learn about the work of the World Youth Alliance, an international network of pro-life young adults on all continents, whose work is explicitly based on the Church’s teaching about the dignity of the human person.

Synod-2018’s IL contains no reflection on why St. John Paul II was a magnet for millions of young people, which surely had something to do with both his compassion and his clarity about the truth.

Father Karol Wojtyla, who later became John Paul II, led a young adult ministry of challenging spiritual accompaniment a half-century before “accompaniment” became code in some Catholic circles for “This [hard teaching] is really a goal or ideal.”

So let Synod-2018 rescue “accompaniment” and link it to the truth that liberates. That’s the least the Church deserves in this time of purification.