Posted on 10/21/2026 8:42:47 AM PDT by ebb tide
I have recently read the statement by Cardinal Filipe Neri Ferrão regarding the family at the Amoris Laetitia Summit in Rome. I was disturbed but not as utterly shocked as I should have been.
I would have been more shocked had the statement not been a part of a whole host of alarming comments and actions from some of the hierarchy of the Church rooted in the so-called Synodal Way.
Ponder this from the Cardinal, “it (the Church) must accommodate ‘new forms of partnership and cohabitation,’ interfaith unions, and changing ideas about gender rather than insist on an ‘ideal family’ model.” And it “must alter her understanding and pastoral practices to accommodate modern relationship models rather than insisting on immutable moral norms.”
RELATED: Cardinal betrays natural family at Amoris Laetitia summit
It is clear to me that some Church leaders are working to adapt the Church and its Teaching to the spirit of the world and have forgotten that it is their primary duty to proclaim the Truth who is, of course, Our Lord Jesus Christ. They seem to be hell bent on dismantling the very faith they are called to uphold and proclaim. Dr. Peter Kwasniewski calls it the “nullification of doctrine.”
Cardinal Ferrão’s words stem from the Synodal mentality which is essentially rooted in the heresy of Universalism (i.e. no matter who you are or what you do, you will ultimately arrive in Heaven). From this heretical perspective, there is no necessity to live according to the teaching of Christ as “all religions are pathways to God” (as said Pope Francis). There is no need to believe in Him as the Way the Truth and the Life. There was, indeed, no need for His life, death and resurrection because there are as many ways to God as there are human beings.
RELATED: Pope Francis: ‘Every religion is a way to arrive at God’
This current synodal spirit elevates individualism and relativism and turns away from teaching to listening. This is a reversal of the Church’s mandate from the Lord to proclaim the Gospel to all nations; to proclaim Christ as the absolute Truth and the only way to the Father. It is a denial that the world should configure itself to Christ and is an upside down and ugly assertion that the Church should configure itself to the world.
This Synodal Way comes to us with a smiling face and a warm and friendly voice. It speaks of listening, welcoming, and accompanying. Sounds good! But the questions are: Listening to what? Welcoming what? Accompanying what? The listening is a listening to the way of the world and not to the Word of God. The welcoming is a welcoming and acceptance of what people think and say and do whether it is opposed to the will of God or not. This is not a call out of darkness into the light of God’s presence by living revealed truth. The accompanying is walking hand in hand with everyone even if they are lost and wandering in trackless wastes. This is not a guiding hand from true shepherds to the fertile pastures of love and truth.
This is not “nice” of the “Church of Nice.” It is certainly not loving, but rather assisted suicide masquerading as compassion. It leaves the ignorant and the sinner alienated from God which is death to the soul. Peter Kreeft shows us the root of this distorted perspective and pastoral practice when he says: “No age has been more prone to confuse the sin with the sinner, not by hating the sinner along with the sin, but by loving the sin along with the sinner. We often use ‘compassion’ as an equivalent for moral relativism.”
Many Church leaders are surrendering to the world in this way and hence the anti-Christian view expressed by Cardinal Ferrẽo quoted above. This Synodal Way democratizes doctrine and rejects Revelation. It only leaves people lost in the darkness of their own limited being unenlightened by the Word of God.
Father John Rice is a parish priest of the Diocese of Plymouth, England.
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Ping
If the good Princes of the Church try to establish the reversal of Christ’s Teachings and accept this as dogma, I think Christ will return on Earth with a Vengeance making World War I and II as picnics.
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