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The Synodal Comedy: Act IIIn the Synodal Sessions, the Faith's majesty is trampled upon, then traded for the cheap trinkets of the best psychobabble money can buy.Assaults on the city of Rome, the See of Peter, have not been infrequent over the course of the millennia. Attila attempted. But he failed when he came into the formidable presence of Leo, called “the Great,” resulting in a dramatic volte-face. Napoleon conquered Rome in 1809. The Italian Nationalists of the Risorgimento mounted attacks upon Rome in 1848, forcing Blessed Pius IX to flee in a simple black Roman cassock to Gaeta in...

[Catholic Caucus] Bishop Strickland calls on ‘all of the shepherds of the Church’ to defend the faith as Synod loomsBishop Joseph Strickland implored the Church’s shepherds ‘to stand firmly for Christ’ ahead of the Synod on Synodality and urged the faithful not to accept ‘any synodal process that contradicts the Deposit of Faith of the Catholic Church.’The following is Bishop Joseph Strickland’s open letter to the participants of the Synod on Synodality.September 30, 2024The Feast Day of St. JeromeAn open letter to the participants of the final session of the Synod on Synodality, as well as to the Faithful who...

[Catholic Caucus] Bishop Schneider: Synod’s confession event a ‘tool’ to push ‘new agenda’ and ‘doctrines’Regarding the 'sins against synodality' to be confessed, such as 'using doctrine as stones to be hurled,' the faithful bishop said there are 'no such sins in divine revelation.'Bishop Athanasius Schneider accused a Vatican Synod on Synodality event as being “a tool to promote a new agenda in the synod to establish new doctrines which are contrary to the divine revelation, or undermine divine revelation.”The Astana auxiliary’s forthright comments came during a recent interview on Raymond Arroyo’s World Over, during which Arroyo questioned Schneider about an...

Today’s the day, folks! Preston Sprinkle, the theologian extraordinaire of the pro-LGBTQ leftist evangelical machine, founder of the Center for Faith, Sexuality, and Gender, and one of the original board members of Revoice, is back with his latest attempt to completely undermine biblical orthodoxy. In an email newsletter sent out today, Sprinkle announces the release of The Upside Down Kingdom Study Bible, a project that reeks of theological compromise and cultural pandering. Now, let’s take a moment to let that sink in. Preston Sprinkle—whose claim to fame is normalizing homosexuality, transgenderism, and other aberrant sexuality within the Church—is the general...

[Catholic Caucus] Cardinal Zen publishes book on building Church without ‘synodal process’Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-kiun published a book on August 20 providing advice and practical wisdom for how to live an authentically Catholic life amid the contention brought by the Synod on Synodality.Cardinal Zen, who has previously criticized the Synod, focuses on ways to daily live out the Catholic faith in his book, “Catholic and Apostolic: From the Church of the Apostles to the ‘Synodal’ Church.” One of his former criticisms of the Synod was that it is at the universal level with no clear goal, Catholic News Agency reported...

[Catholic Caucus] African archbishop: Opposition to homosexuality is not ‘cultural’ but about fidelity to Christ‘Africa was not defending a cultural idea. Africa was defending the teaching that the Church has had for 2,000 years,’ Archbishop Andrew Nkea Fuanya of Cameroon said about opposition to homosexual ‘blessings.’In an apparent rebuke of Pope Francis, the president of the Cameroon Episcopal Conference reiterated that African clerical resistance to “female deacons” and LGBT ideology is not based on the continent’s conservative cultural outlook but rather on “fidelity to what Christ taught.” “Africa was not defending a cultural idea. Africa was defending the teaching that...

Catholic Church Can’t Compromise: Denying Food and Water to Patients is EvilOn August 13, the Pontifical Academy for Life (PAL), headed by Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, released “Little Lexicon on End of Life,” which wrestles with various bioethical issues.One particularly noteworthy issue is the necessity of providing patients in a persistent vegetative state (PVS) with food and hydration via feeding tubes. That the PAL felt the need to raise questions in the first place is troubling enough, but the documents unclear language also amplified confusion.For example, it states that persons diagnosed as being in a PVS are victims “of a reductive...

[Catholic Caucus] The Modernist Pedigree of Francis’s Synod on Synodality, and Its Implications“The Holy People of God has been set in motion for mission thanks to the synodal experience. . . The seeds of the Synodal Church are already sprouting!” (Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich, June 14, 2024)Fr. Dominique Bourmaud went to his eternal reward on September 4, 2021, a month before Francis announced his intention to “create a different church” with the Synod on Synodality. Remarkably, though, Fr. Bourmaud was able to describe the essence of the Synodal Church in his 2003 book, One Hundred Years of Modernism:“The Tyrrellian Church is...

[Catholic Caucus] Synodal ecclesiology is an ecclesiology without ChristThe following interview shows what happens when the Church as the People of God is promoted at the expense of the Church as the Mystical Body of Christ. Synod becomes a law unto itself without reference to Christ.The Venezuelan theologian Rafael Luciani is a Professor at the Andrés Bello Catholic University in Caracas (Venezuela). He is also an associate professor at Boston College (USA) and an advisor to the General Secretariat of the World Synod in the Vatican and the Latin American Bishops' Council CELAM. Luciani's research focuses on Christology, ecclesiology, Latin...

[Catholic Caucus] Deleted: Francis’ Ex-Synod Crushed in Their Own PollThe social media account 'Synod.va' launched a poll on Twitter and Facebook on 25 July.It asked the question: "Do you believe that synodality, as a way of conversion and reform, can strengthen the mission and participation of all the baptised?"From the start, the negative responses were overwhelming.The screenshot that still exists to illustrate this article shows that at the moment there are 5,633 votes, 88% of them negative. The percentage of "no" responses on Facebook was similar.On 26 July Synod.va deleted the poll. Those who are interested in religion and voted...

[Catholic Caucus] "Request from Rome": Nuns of Pontcalec Introduce Novus OrdoThe Dominican Sisters of Pontcalec, still an institute of the Roman Rite, announced on 7 July during Sunday Mass that at their retreat (27 July to 2 August) the community Mass would be celebrated according to the Novus Ordo Missae.This measure was taken at "the request from Rome".The news was published in an open letter on LeForumCatholique.org (21 July) by outraged faithful who have settled near the monastery precisely to attend the Roman Mass with their families. They now feel betrayed.They write that the nuns are about "to abandon the...

[Catholic Caucus] Tradition and Traditionalism: Let us not be "men of little faith" - by Father Richard CipollaFather Richard CipollaIn that by now well -read article posted at Messa in Latino just a few weeks ago in which a representative of that web site engaged in a conversation with Andrea Grillo, the famous (or infamous) professor of Sacramental Theology at the Pontifical University of Sant’Anselmo in Rome, I was of course, struck by Professor Grillo’s un-Catholic statement that “Tradition is the future”. The image that sprang to my mind is the Mad Hatter’s tea party in Alice in Wonderland. Or...

[Catholic Caucus] A pattern on TLM indults being denied and approvedThere is an interesting pattern beginning to develop.Two U.S. dioceses (Baltimore and Richmond) that have the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter in them, with personal parishes, will no longer have any diocesan parish traditional Latin Masses offered, despite the noble attempt by the local bishops for renewals of existing two-year parish indults. In the Archdiocese of Baltimore and Diocese of Richmond, no diocesan clergy at diocesan parishes may licitly offer TLMs.On the other hand, two U.S. dioceses (San Antonio and Arlington, Virginia) that do NOT have the Priestly Fraternity of...

“The People Shall Save the Church.” But How?p>n October 4, 2019, at the Hotel Massimo D’Azeglio in Rome, there was a roundtable discussion, sponsored by Voice of the Family, an international lay initiative supporting Catholic teaching on the family. The topic was: “Our Church – Reformed or Deformed?” The panelists were a who’s who of lay Catholic thought leaders. Panelist John-Henry Westen, co-founder of LifeSiteNews, said one word that reverberated throughout the whole conference: “Enough!” Enough to the harm being done to the faith by Pope Francis. At virtually the same time, the Pachamama idol was being worshipped in the...

[Catholic Caucus] Wheat and TaresDuring your life, you have resided under the Muhammad Ali of American presidents “the greatest of all time,” and as luck would have it, you are now living under the second greatest president, ever. What are the odds? Provided that is not enough, over in Rome on the chair of Peter sits the grandest pope in the history of the Church. Every day is like having the largest Powerball winning lottery ticket sitting on your dresser waiting to be cashed. Halcyon days, indeed.And then you wake up.As the American nation endures a cold civil war, its...

[Catholic Caucus] The Issue with Fiducia SupplicansA few weeks after the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith promulgated Fiducia supplicans,[1] it published a "[p]ress release concerning the reception" of the document.[2] The issue in the dicastery’s view was thus the document’s reception, which had not been universally favorable.[3] The dicastery urged a "full and calm reading of the Declaration so as to better understand its meaning and purpose," thereby suggesting its critics lacked reading comprehension and emotional control. But the issue with the document is not extrinsic. The issue is intrinsic, specifically an apparent reliance on process theology. Process...

[Catholic Caucus] New Synodal Working Document: Continuing Plan to Ordain Women?Editor’s note: follow Synod Watch for analysis of the upcoming Synod on Synodality in Rome this fall. In his new article “Pope Francis Disappoints Progressives. He Will Do So Again,” Fr. Thomas Reese describes a source of frustration for some papal supporters: the slow pace of change in certain areas of the Church. From the pope’s “temporary no” to the ordination of married men (Reese’s words) to Francis’s current “no” to the ordination of women deacons, the pope has surprised many by stepping back—more than once—from the precipice of change.So...

[Catholic Caucus] Vatican issues text underpinning controversial Synod on Synodality October meetingsWhile there are no explicit calls for female deacons, as there have been in other texts, the Vatican's new document seeks to cement synodality as the way forward for the Church.The Vatican has issued the working document which will guide October’s Synod on Synodality meetings, containing key themes and calls to action for reorganizing Church governance and decision making to involve lay people in a more “synodal” style.Published July 9, the lengthy Instrumentum laboris (IL) states that at the center of the multi-year synod process “is a call to...

[Catholic Caucus] Italian priest to ‘bless’ homosexual activist ‘couple’ after civil union ceremonyDon Giuseppe Cavoli will ‘bless’ Hector Pautasso and Filippo Sanchi at the reception after the two LGBT activists contract a civil union, in the Italian diocese of Francis-appointed Bishop Andrea Andreozzi.Bishop Andrea AndreozziCARTOCETO, Italy (LifeSiteNews) — Two homosexual activists are due to receive a “blessing” from a Catholic priest following their civil union ceremony later this year, with the longtime cohabiting pair also intending to adopt a child. A July 7 report by an Italian daily highlighted the upcoming plans for the state and ecclesial approval of the...

[Catholic Caucus] Appeal to priests: Resist ‘blessings’ for homosexual ‘couples,’ even to the point of shedding bloodPriests who ‘bless’ a homosexual or other sinful ‘couple’ defy the universal and constant teaching of the Church and commit at least four mortal sins at once. On the Day of Judgment, Christ will say to them: ‘Depart from me, I do not know you.’The heterodox “blessing” of homosexual “couples” and those in “irregular situations,” which Pope Francis and Cardinal Fernández have proposed in Ficucia supplicans, continues to be a cause of grave scandal and confusion among priests and faithful alike. Many bishops and...