[Catholic Caucus] Bishop Eleganti joins Cardinal Müller’s support for cardinals’ dubia on Synod on Synodality

LifeSite News ^ | October 3, 2023 | Maike HIckson

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[Catholic Caucus] Bishop Eleganti joins Cardinal Müller’s support for cardinals’ dubia on Synod on Synodality

'Homosexual unions cannot be blessed because God does not bless objectively sinful behavior, but always forgives the subjectively repentant sinner.'

Yet another bishop of the Catholic Church has joined Cardinal Gerhard Müller in praising the five Cardinals who published their dubia challenging Pope Francis on some aspects of the upcoming Synod on Synodality – which are getting more and more explicit – that undermine the Church’s firm teachings on topic such as the ban on female ordination and the “blessings” of homosexual couples.

Müller gave LifeSiteNews on October 2 a statement in which he said that he is “glad” that “others in their own way do what is necessary” to remind the pope “of his God-given responsibility for the preservation of the Church.” He rejected any kind of what he called “neo-papalism” that puts the opinions of a pope above the teachings of Our Lord.

When contacted by LifeSite about Müller’s statement, Bishop Marian Eleganti expressed his own support of the German prelate’s initiative. He sent LifeSite his own statement (see full text below) and explained: “Above all, papolatry must stop. It already began with the preceding popes, but has reached cult status with people like Card. Fernandez. Also, the popes talk too much and in the wrong formats, Francis especially often (interviews). This leads to a trivialization of their statements as mere personal views, which in Francis’ case they are indeed.”

In his own longer statement in support of the five dubia Cardinals – Walter Brandmüller, Raymond Leo Burke, Juan Sandoval Íñiguez, Robert Sarah, and Joseph Zen – the retired auxiliary bishop of Chur, Switzerland, explained that the truths of Christ are unchangeable and not subject to the spirit of the time. Such unchangeable teachings are that homosexual unions cannot be blessed, that a condition for valid absolution in the confessional is sincere repentance and a will on behalf of the penitent to amend his ways, that there exists a hierarchical structure of the Church, and that “the Church does not have the authority to admit and ordain women to the priesthood.” Thereby, Eleganti himself restates and defends the Church’s doctrine in a clear manner and he challenges Pope Francis for his equivocal answers to the dubia of the cardinals, saying: “Whoever responds to dubia regarding his own orthodoxy, which could be dispelled with a simple yes or no, with long sentences, proves those right who doubt his orthodoxy.”

Eleganti insists that popes cannot contradict the Magisterium of former popes, and that popes have to teach in a clear manner, with “yes” or with “no.” He added: “Contradiction, confusion and revolution are not characteristics of the Holy Spirit.”

Bishop Athanasius Schneider today also joined Müller’s initiative of support for the dubia Cardinals, and he praised their “fraternal” correction of the pope, calling upon his fellow prelates to likewise speak up by saying, “it is much to be desired that many Cardinals and Bishops, mindful of the solemn promise of their episcopal ordination to defend the integrity of the Catholic Faith, support publicly this witness of the five Cardinals.”

Bishop Joseph Strickland himself has issued a pastoral letter in which he restates the Church’s moral teaching with regard to homosexual and cohabitating couples, countering Pope Francis’ own answer to the Cardinals’ dubia, namely Francis’ seeming openness to the idea of “blessing” homosexual unions. “Sexual activity outside marriage,” Strickland wrote, “is always gravely sinful and cannot be condoned, blessed, or deemed permissible by any authority inside the Church.”

Bishop Eleganti’s full statement:

Let your yes be a yes, your no a no!

Jesus says that our yes should be a yes and our no a no. And that everything that goes beyond that comes from the evil one.

The long answers [by Pope Francis and Cardinal Fernandez] to the dubia recently presented by 5 cardinals cannot stand up to the standards of the words of Jesus.

The historicization and regionalization of unchangeable truths as cultural conditionalities, which could not be upheld from today’s point of view, correspond to an unchanged argumentation scheme since the modernism crisis of the turn of the century before last (19th/20th century), which was also described as the “end of truth.” The latter means: No truths which are valid always and for all can be found out, because everything is historically conditioned, context-bound and regional. But this has never been the view of the Church. She holds, on the contrary, to unchangeable, revealed truths in light of every time period and region. Such truths in the context of the recently formulated dubia include statements such as the following:

1. God created man as man and woman. Homosexuality, transsexuality, surrogacy, heterogamy, artificial procreation and child trafficking in infertility and homosexuality, polyamory contradict the God-ordained order of creation and are objectively sinful.
2. Homosexual unions cannot be blessed because God does not bless objectively sinful behavior, but always forgives the subjectively repentant sinner.
3. Prerequisites for God’s mercy and forgiveness are acknowledgment, repentance, and the will to repent and not repeat the sin. Where these are lacking, absolution cannot be granted in confession.
4. The Church does not have the authority to admit and ordain women to the priesthood. It has already been clarified by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith under Card. Ratzinger that John Paul II’s statement in this regard fulfills the requirements of an infallible and irreversible teaching of the Church (Tradition: what has always been believed, everywhere, and by all is).
5. The Synod has no doctrinal authority, but only an advisory function. What is decisive is what the pope makes of the synodal votes. But even his pronouncements have different binding character.
6. The sacramental, hierarchical structure of the church is established by Christ (election of the apostles). The pope and bishops therefore exercise supreme authority in the church with respect to doctrine and governance, which cannot be distributed among committees or lay people (supposed control of power; co-determination), but is conferred only by ordination. “What you bind on earth is bound in heaven!”  This does not mean that the pope and bishops will not listen to the laity and reject their special competence and participation.
7. The Church in general and the popes in particular cannot contradict themselves: What was proclaimed and taught by them as true in the past remains binding for later generations, regardless of the views of their time (Zeitgeist). There is no cultural relativization or regionalization of (revealed) truths. The following applies: True remains true or once true – always true.
8. Therefore, what earlier popes and councils have magisterially proclaimed as correct, morally justified or permissible cannot be declared erroneous or morally impermissible by later popes and councils.

Whoever responds to dubia regarding his own orthodoxy, which could be dispelled with a simple yes or no, with long sentences, proves right those who doubt his orthodoxy. The above mentioned determinations (1-8) of the everlasting Magisterium would then not have to be further emphasized and elaborated. Instead, everything should be open again?

Pope and Church are not congruent. Infallible is the Church (tradition), the popes are infallible only in special moments, which can be seen already with St. Peter (Blessed Simon Bar-Jonah! – Get behind me, Satan!) and is rarely the case (promulgation of dogmas). Popes should not express on all possible occasions their personal views (interviews) as has been increasingly the case in recent decades. It should be clear to the faithful when they teach in a binding manner and when they do not. Contradiction, confusion and revolution are not characteristics of the Holy Spirit.

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Ping

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How can something such as homosexual activity, that is sui generis an abomination per scripture, be blessed? Defies logic. Proponents want everyone to suspend and reverse their faith, and deny scripture, in order to accommodate sin.

This synod is a direct satanic assault on morality that has stood for millennia.