By Sandy Wallace
The Catholic Church was born from the sacrifice of Christ on the cross. She is not a man made construct open to endless manipulation and change.
What has been taking place under the guise of a ‘Plenary Council’ over the last five years is a betrayal of most basic and fundamental understanding of the nature of the Catholic Church. The path that has been followed in the preparation and ‘process’ for the Plenary Council, it is not a legitimate ‘development’ of tradition, it is not a ‘new’ interpretation, consistent with the Canon Law or tradition. It is nothing less than a rejection of the authentic Christ given teaching of the nature of the Catholic Church.
What has caused confusion and allowed this ‘process’ to be imposed on the Church in Australia is the move by some at the highest levels of the Church leadership to assert that the Church by her nature is ‘synodal’. While the Church has used ‘synods’ or gathering of the Church leadership to discuss and resolve serious problems or crises with the Church throughout her history, the Church herself, by her nature is not ‘synodal’ as this is being defined.
“Christ established the leadership of the Church in the form of 12 Apostles … This form of leadership was not the product of ‘cultural bias’ … No, this structure was put in place by God …”
There are many dimensions to the nature of the Church, however her deepest reality is mystical and nuptial, she is the mystical bride of Christ, born from His wounds on the cross, and her nature is fundamentally life giving in its fullest sense of eternal life, through her we have the sacraments and we can be born anew in the Holy Spirit, cleansed of original sin and called into intimate relationship with the Divine.
Christ established the leadership of the Church in the form of 12 Apostles, sinful and imperfect men, to guide the mission of the Church on earth. The essential and most basic mission was to ‘go and preach the Gospel’, to speak the truth and offer to all the possibility of eternal beatitude, to worship God, as Christ has shown them, through the institution of what we have come to know as the Holy Mass and to be the instruments of grace, in particular through the provision of what we have come to know as the seven sacraments of the Church.
This form of leadership was not the product of ‘cultural bias’, or simply the form required by the particular social and historical context, which needs to be ‘reinterpreted’ to remain relevant. No, this structure was put in place by God, it has a Divine mandate, that is not and cannot be limited by cultural or history, it transcends these by its very Divine nature.
This understanding has been made clear by successive popes, that governance of the Church and ordinary ministry of the Church is by Divine will given to men. There are of course deep anthropological and ontological meanings and reality for this which have not been, for the most part, properly explained, and which we are continually trying to understand more deeply. There are many teachings of God that we find difficult to understand in our limited human understanding, but this does not make them any less true. All we can do is to pray to receive the grace needed to understand more deeply God’s nature and will, and the creative act of God in reality, which provides the basis for this teaching.
The notion that the Church is ‘synodal’ (in the way it is being presented) is a fundamental distortion of her true nature. The Church is not (and cannot be) governed by gatherings of the ordained and the laity who engage in ‘deep listening’ (whatever that means), where everyone speaks their ‘feelings’ regardless of their spiritual, intellectual or human formation, and the statement of truth is deliberately withheld. Such an approach is fundamentally incompatible with Divinely revealed Catholic teaching.
Of course ‘feelings’ alone cannot provide the basis for governing, so then ‘experts’ are brought in to shape the ‘feelings’ into documents, motions or proposals for what the Church should do, how it should change. The work of ‘experts’ is then presented and is expected to be endorsed by these gatherings. This of course is claimed to all be the work of the Spirit (for some reason the ‘Holy’ part is dropped, perhaps for good reason) the outcomes of which are not to be questioned. This is the ‘process’ that all are told to trust. This is the new ‘synodal’ way.
“The problem with the Plenary Council is exactly ‘the process’ and the understanding underlying the ‘process’ that participants and the faithful more broadly are being told to trust.”
What of course is completely obscured is that this approach is fundamentally opposed to the authentic nature of the Church, in particular it attacks the Divinely instituted nature of the governance and care of the Church given to ordained men. Even more deeply it attacks the very anthropological and ontological nature of masculinity as crated by God and the complimentary role of the feminine. It is not surprising that this kind of attack is taking place in the broader context where the very notion of biological sex is being pathologised and removed from the Australian law and the culture, and more broadly is happening through the developed world.
The problem then with the Plenary Council is not simply the documents or proposals that have been formulated and presented, these are simply the symptoms of the much more significant disease. Rather the problem with the Plenary Council is exactly ‘the process’ and the understanding underlying the ‘process’ that participants and the faithful more broadly are being told to trust.
The Holy Spirit can only act in the context where there is authentic freedom, this entire Council from beginning to end has been the exact opposite of authentic freedom, it has been unrelentingly ideological. The ideological of ‘synodality’, with its roots in subjectivism and Marxism has been imposed. Participants have been ‘re-educated’ through unconscious bias training, they have been given the ‘form’ or language for their interactions with others (told to us the form ‘in prayer today I feel’). Even the form of prayer has been imposed from sources fundamentally alien to the Catholic tradition. By definition the entire process and approach can only be termed ‘diabolical’, the very antithesis of Catholicism.
What should have been rejected from the very beginning and what must now be rejected is the ‘process’. The real agenda of those seeking change is to get acceptance of the ‘process’, a process based in ideology of the self and feelings, and identity, with roots in Marxist understanding.
There is nothing ‘objective’ in the process, indeed it is the very nature of synodality that it must be thoroughly subjective. Once the new process is ‘endorsed’ then all sorts of things become possible in the future.
The only option for the Church in Australia is to recognise the manipulation that has occurred, to reject the fruits of the manipulation in the form of the documents and motions being presented, and to begin again the process of holding a Plenary Council based in authentic Catholic theological understanding, in particular ecclesiology, anthropological and ontological. The very nature of what has taken place under the guise of a ‘Plenary Council’ can be considered nothing less than an offense to God that itself requires acts of penance.
“It is not an overstatement to say that the faith of many is placed in jeopardy by the continuation of what can best be described as a parody of a properly constituted Plenary Council of the Catholic Church.”
A Plenary Council properly understood in Canonical terms is a meeting of bishops, called for the good of the Church in a particular region. While the bishops can of course take advice and receive assistance in the preparation and planning of a Plenary Council, to be an authentic Plenary Council it must driven and owned by the bishops.
More importantly is must be based on the truth, both that which is objectively revealed and that which has been attained through the work of reason reflecting on human experience (the natural law), not feelings.
The truth of this situation must be made clear. It is not an overstatement to say that the faith of many is placed in jeopardy by the continuation of what can best be described as a parody of a properly constituted Plenary Council of the Catholic Church, which threatens to fundamentally change the way in which the Church is governed in Australia.
The reality of this underlying disease of the ‘synodal’ approach became even more clear with what took place on Wednesday 6 July, when after all the manipulation and ideological imposition, the consciences of a number of the participants would not allow them to support what were objectively disordered propositions.
The response of those leading the Council who had been telling everyone to ‘trust the process’ was that even when participants went alone with the deformed and manipulative process, and it did not produce ‘what was expected or meant to happen’ that the agreed ‘rules’ were simply disregarded. The pure subjectivity of the concept of ‘synodality’ was fully exposed for everyone to see.
When those controlling the process do not get what they wanted, when ‘feelings were hurt’ you simply change the ‘rules’. What happened on Wednesday and the response from those in charge is fully consistent with the ‘process’ of ‘synodality’.
“The time has come for this diabolical agenda to be exposed and rejected by the faithful.”
This is ideology, based fundamentally in subjectivity, is by its nature bully and unrelenting. It is simply about the imposition of the self on reality, and as such is antithetical to the truth.
In this, those in charge of the Council are seeking to move the way in which the Church is governed from that of objective principle based in Divine truth to subjective feelings which are guided as based in the prevailing culture of the world.
The time has come for this diabolical agenda to be exposed and rejected by the faithful.