Synodal Metastasis

 

Gavin has had a new chat with Professor Larry Chapp. You can watch/ listen to it here:

I think there are some excellent points made, especially regarding the non-prophetic stance the Vatican has taken under Pope Francis which simply accepts the current world view and seeks to conform the Church to modern progressive secular values. We have seen another major example of this trend this week as the Vatican adopts BCE and CE over BC and AD, as Katherine & Gavin discuss in this video:

Returning to Gavin's discussion with Dr Chapp, the key points revolve around the idea of synodality, what it means and what the two academics think it is supposed to achieve.

Neither of them are deceived. It's is very obvious to anyone with even a modicum of theology insight that the revisionist theology of proletarian privilege runs like an Ariadne’s thread through the whole thing.

We can also see clearly (and this isn't mentioned in the interview) the fingerprints of the now deceased Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, arch-liberal Jesuit and a key participant in the Saint Gallen group. An informal gathering of churchmen who shared concerns about the direction of the Church and hoped for reform which would embrace all the main tenets of the sexual revolution of the Sixties. The group was known to include:

 

Godfried Danneels (Belgium)

Walter Kasper (Germany)

Achille Silvestrini (Italy)

Basil Hume (UK), later replaced by Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, the former Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster.

The Saint Gallen group came about as a reaction to the orthodoxy of the papacies of John Paul II and Benedict XVI, both of whom emphasised the preservation and defence of the Church's traditional teachings. This included a strong stance on issues like sexual ethics, the sanctity of life, the role of the family, and the authority of the Magisterium (the Church's teaching authority). By way of contrast, the Saint Galen group dream of a non-hierarchical, non dogmatic, non moralizing, non Christocentric and more theocentric Church. They want a Church that is globalist, relativist, subjectivist and collectivist. They want a Christ who is just "one saviour figure among many" and a Church that is just a meeting place for super nice people.

Of course we have been through all of this in the Sixties, Seventies and Eighties. I really thought we had utterly debunked it. It is clearly and obviously intellectually dishonest. And perhaps that is demonstrated by the cretins Pope Francis has had to resort to in order to run with such an intellectually bankrupt agenda:

So if we can recognise it so clearly, and we have shown it to be false, how has it managed to gain any traction?

The answer can only be because it never really went away, like a dormant cancer in remission that has flared back to life. Pope John Paul II and Benedict XVI did officially "debunk" it all, but they did not kill it or drive a dagger into its heart. Professor Chapp, who was involved in the Catholic Theological Guild for decades, tells first hand that the Guild was still dominated by the liberal wing. All it needed to make a comeback and metastasize was a nitwit Pope who sympathised with it. And that is what we have. 

And the same goes for many of our bishops unfortunately. Many of them are on board with this agenda because they are men of very limited intellectual ability. This poison is in the air we breathe culturally. So as soon as you lose the Christian sense of being a "sign of contradiction" you then just embrace the culture by default and ride the wave. It is all so utterly superficial.

John Paul II and Benedict XVI embraced the Church as a sign of contradiction. Francis embraces modernity instead.

Despite this, the nightmare scenario has not yet happened. Things are still intact. The nightmare will be if we get a Francis II who is younger and actually even more liberal than Francis. But that seems almost impossible at this juncture. Everything I hear from Rome and elsewhere is that everyone has had enough of the unpredictable, confusing Pope Francis who upsets everyone on all sides of the Church. 

The Cardinals must be able to see that what we need right now is someone to steady the ship, not make yet more trouble! And we all need to pray for a John Paul III and not a Francis II!!