Pope Francis meets with leaders of the Synod of Bishops' general secretariat in the library of the Apostolic Palace at the Vatican Oct. 14, 2022. Pictured with the pontiff are XaviËre Missionary Sister Nathalie Becquart, undersecretary; Bishop Luis MarÌn de San MartÌn, undersecretary; Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich of Luxembourg, relator general; Cardinal Mario Grech, secretary-general and Jesuit Father Giacomo Costa, consultant. (CNS photo/Vatican Media)
Vatican City, Oct 16, 2022 / 05:30 am (CNA).
Pope Francis announced on Sunday that the Synod on Synodality will be extended to 2024.
Speaking in his Angelus address on Oct. 16, the pope shared his decision to divide the Synod of Bishops into two sessions that will meet in Rome in October 2023 and October 2024.
Pope Francis explained that he made the decision “in order to have a more relaxed period of discernment.”
“The fruits of the synodal process under way are many, but so that they might come to full maturity, it is necessary not to be in a rush,” Francis said.
“I trust that this decision will promote the understanding of synodality as a constitutive dimension of the Church, and help everyone to live it as the journey of brothers and sisters who proclaim the joy of the Gospel,” he said.
The two sessions of the XVI Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops will take place from Oct. 4 to 29, 2023, and in October 2024, bringing together bishops from across the world to discuss and prepare a document to counsel the pope.
Pope Francis launched the Synod on Synodality in October 2021 as a worldwide undertaking during which Catholics were encouraged to submit feedback to their local dioceses.
The Catholic Church’s massive multi-year synodal process has been divided into stages. The initial diocesan listening phase concluded with the participation of 112 out of 114 of the world’s Catholic bishops’ conferences, according to the General Secretariat of the Synod of Bishops.
According to a report from the U.S. bishops’ conference, about 700,000 people participated in the diocesan phase of the synod in the U.S. out of 66.8 million Catholics in the country.
The second, continental phase is taking place from September 2022 to March 2023. In this stage, Continental Synodal Assemblies will be convened between January and March of next year.
The General Secretariat of the Synod of Bishops describes these continental assemblies as a meeting to “reread the journey made and to continue the listening and discernment … proceeding in accord with the socio-cultural specificities of their respective regions.”
An Instrumentum laboris — or DTC (Documento per la Tappa Continentale), as the Synod of Bishops is calling it — will guide the continental phase discussions. The document is expected to be published by the end of this month or early November and is being drafted by the synod’s leadership, advisory committee, and a group of approximately 20 “experts.”
The final, universal phase will begin with the XVI Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops at the Vatican in October 2023 and continue in October 2024.
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CNA Staff, Mar 1, 2021 / 02:48 pm (CNA).- The Hasbro toy company is now marketing a gender-neutral Potato Head family set showing same-sex couples and a baby, alongside a traditional family portrayal.
Swiss Guard cadets prepare their armor in the guards’ barracks at the Vatican on April 30, 2024. / Credit: Matthew Santucci/CNA
Vatican City, May 5, 2024 / 17:00 pm (CNA).
For the newest class of 34 Swiss Guards who will be sworn in on Monday, their service is based on faith and a love for the Church and the pope, as storied as the uniform itself.
“For me it was something, first and foremost, to give something to the Church, because the Catholic Church gave us a lot when I was a child and with this service, I can give something back,” explained Nicolas Hirt, one of the new guards who hails from the Swiss canton of Fribourg.
The cadets, joined by their instructors, gathered for a media event on April 30 in the courtyard behind the barracks adjacent to the Sant’Anna entrance, which was adorned with the flags from each of the Swiss cantons.
The Swiss Guard’s annual swearing-in ceremony will take place on Monday, May 6, in the San Damaso courtyard of the Apostolic Palace. There, the new guards will solemnly raise their right hands, with three fingers extended, representing the Holy Trinity, and proclaim their oath: “I swear I will faithfully, loyally, and honorably serve the Supreme Pontiff and his legitimate successors and I dedicate myself to them with all my strength. I assume this same commitment with regard to the Sacred College of Cardinals whenever the Apostolic See is vacant.”
Swiss Guard cadets drill at the Vatican on April 30, 2024. Credit: Matthew Santucci/CNA
There was a palpable sense of pride, perhaps even a hint of nervousness, as the young men marched last week in the storied corridors, perfecting the ancient rites ahead of a day that will mark a milestone in their lives.
Renato Peter, who comes from a small village near St. Gallen (the first from his village to enter the guards), said he first developed a desire to enter into the service of the papal guards after a trip to Rome in 2012 with his diocese.
“When you work in the Vatican, you have to feel like you go back in history because a lot of European history has been made here,” said Peter, who is mindful that those who wear the iconic tricolor uniform bear a great responsibility and represent a connection to the history of the Church.
“We are the smallest military in the world,” Peter continued, emphasizing that service in the Swiss Guards is like no other. “But, we are not training to make war. We are like the military, yes, but we’re for the security of the Pope.”
The Swiss Guard is indeed the smallest standing army in the world, numbering only 135 members (Pope Francis increased its ranks from 110 in 2018), protecting not only the smallest sovereign territory in the world, Vatican City State, but also acting as the personal security force of the Holy Father.
This year the Swiss Guard celebrated 518 years of service to the Apostolic See. Its history dates back to Jan. 22, 1506, when 150 Swiss mercenaries, led by Captain Kasper von Silenen from the central Swiss canton of Uri, arrived in Rome at the request of Pope Julius II.
But the swearing-in ceremony takes place on May 6, marking the anniversary of the Sack of Rome in 1527 by the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V when 147 guards died protecting Pope Clement VII.
The Swiss Guards form an integral part of the history of the papacy, and a core component of the security apparatus of the Vatican, but they also occupy a special palace in the popular imagination, one underscored by a profound spirituality.
“It’s another world, another culture, and above all doing a fairly unique job, that is to say, there is the protection of the Holy Father,” said Vice-Corporal Eliah Cinotti, spokesman for the guards.
“I don’t think there are many of us who are lucky enough to have the opportunity to serve the Holy Father in that way, therefore the Swiss Guard is a quite unique institution.”
Cinotti observed that for many of the pilgrims coming to Rome, which is often a once-in-a-lifetime experience, the guards act as a point of encounter between the people and the Church, shedding light on an evangelical dimension of their mission.
“Since we are Swiss Guards and represent the pope, we are also there to be Christians, to listen to these people. There is no specific training for this because it already comes from our Christian character to help others.”
Service in the Swiss Guards is both physically and psychologically demanding, and the entry requirements are strict, even though the guards do not face deployment to active war zones, like conventional soldiers.
A prospective guard must hold Swiss citizenship, be Catholic, single, and male (after five years in service the guards are allowed to marry), and be at least 1.74 meters tall (approximately 5’8”). They are required to have completed secondary school (or the equivalent) and have completed mandatory military service.
Despite what some may consider prohibitive entry restrictions, Cinotti noted, during the annual call for applications there are anywhere from 45-50 applicants, and there has not been a problem with recruitment.
During the first round, prospective candidates go through a preliminary screening and, if selected, they will sit with a recruitment officer in Switzerland for an initial interview, which generally lasts anywhere from 30 minutes to one hour. Candidates also have to undergo an intensive psychological test, to assess whether they can withstand the demands of the job.
Should their candidacy proceed, they are then sent to Rome where, for the first two months, they are exposed to the working environment of the Vatican, and around 56 hours of intensive instruction in Italian. Their instruction also includes an emphasis on their cultural and spiritual formation.
Swiss Guard cadets inspect their armor in their barracks at the Vatican on April 30, 2024. Credit: Matthew Santucci/CNA
The cadets are then sent to the Italian-speaking canton of Ticino in Switzerland, where they are instructed in self-defense and the use of firearms by local police. While the guards carry medieval halberds — an ax blade topped with a spike mounted on a long shaft — during official papal events, each is equipped with a 9mm GLOCK 19 Gen4 pistol, taser, and pepper spray.
There is also a two-year minimum service requirement after which they can decide to remain, or return to Switzerland.
“About 80% return to Switzerland and 20% stay,” Cinotti said. “And the 80% who return to Switzerland go to the police or the army or return to their basic profession or go to study at university.”
He also noted there have been some years where a guard will discern a vocation to the priesthood. “And we also had a certain point, people who entered the seminary at the time, one per year more or less.”
He added: “We haven’t had anyone for two years, but I think they will arrive, or rather it’s a question of vocations.”
Swiss Guards stand in the middle of Paul VI Hall during Pope Francis’ general audience on Jan. 10, 2024. Credit: Vatican Media
Cinotti spoke on the myriad security challenges that a guard will have to face in his day-to-day work, which can last anywhere from six to 12 hours of continuous duty, noting that there has been an uptick in the number of people coming to the Vatican for help.
Cinotti also noted that for all of the guards, there has been the additional learning curve of adapting to Pope Francis’ pastoral style, which has brought him in close proximity to the faithful during his audiences in Rome and his travels abroad.
“Pope Francis is like every pope,” Cinotti remarked. “He has his own style, and we must adapt to the pope.”
“If he wants to go to contact the people of God, we must guarantee that, of course, everything is fine, but we cannot prevent it. He does what he wants, he is the pope,” he added.
While this can raise some logistical problems, Cinotti reassured that the guards have been trained to respond to possible threats. He said they have developed a symbiotic, and always professional, relationship with Francis.
“He transmits a certain serenity and a certain awareness that we are there next to him, we are there, like the gendarmerie, which allows us to operate in complete tranquility on the ground without being disturbed,” he said.
“He likes to change plans and will change plans throughout the day,” Cinotti added, “but it suits us very well because we adapt to him and we do this service and for us, it is still important to guarantee his safety.”
A Pope, resistant to doctrine and the Ordinary Magisterium relative to centuries of Church Tradition, continues to turn the minor experience of a ‘synod’ into the universal importance of a Council under the guise of ‘listening to the people’ and continuing to be indifferent to Revelation and forgetting what it means to bring Souls back to Christ.
Two years instead of one, a great idea! As things now stand, synodality is all over the map in every sense of the word. Time now for a reality check by the one, hole, catholic and apostolic Church…
Yes, extended to two sessions there’s even the opportunity for Batzing to be replaced, and for a smooth replacement of the echo-chamber voices, Grech and Hollerich. And, even for a successor pope (?) to restore all of the Successors of the Apostles as something more than flip-chart “facilitators” for a congeries of interests of one color or another, or of all colors in the rainbow.
Butt, one problem is that the gangrenous German “synodal way” is also likely on a 2024 timeline. With its agenda to mainstream the homosexual lifestyle, masturbation (be inclusive!), bigamy, and priestesses. So, the fly in the ointment (double entendre intended) is the danger of some kind of plebiscite mega-surprise attached in the second year 2024—just as undefined “synodality” itself was annexed in 2018 to the very unrelated “Synod on Young People, Faith and Vocational Discernment.” Pin the tail on the donkey!
Still, 2024 is a good opportunity in the United States to leaven synodal listening with the 2024 National Eucharistic Conference in Indianapolis. And, of course the year 2023 must be avoided, since that will be the 30th Anniversary of Veritatis Splendor—a modernday “prisoner of the Vatican.”
Great. Another year of confusion, navel-gazing and catering to the zeitgeist.
Or maybe more time to expose the rot so we can excise it.
One can only hope. And pray.
First the synod general secretariat said that the whole-church Synod is the fruit of VATICAN II and now the Holy Father takes it further and says that it is “constitutive dimension of the Church” whereby it will help Christians “proclaim the joy of the Gospel”.
I suspect and I suggest that there is some other cause -misgiving- for the extension but a need to make it known in haste determined a badly crafted explanation.
The thing that constitutes the Church is the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.
“Synod” being “mentioned throughout the Council documents” refers to subsidiary activity in particular Churches.
‘ “To know the reality of Asia, which is a vast continent starting from Kazakhstan in the far west end to Japan in the far east end, we have to immerse ourselves into the completely diverse stories of each of the 22 countries present,” Kikuchi said.
“We immediately realized that as Asia is a continent of complex realities with different cultures, it is not easy task to make one unified policy for pastoral response. Because of this realization, we understood the meaning of the last phrase of the Theme of the General Conference which is: And they went a different way,” the archbishop said. ‘
Many of the buffoons who write for that journal (which often appears as much of a journal of Catholic anti-Catholic bigotry as the bad NCR) never tire of contriving the immutable truth it is the Church’s mission to witness as an act of imperialism which requires heavy doses of moral relativism to counteract, oblivious to how this affects the destruction of life and souls. “Complex” has become the new bludgeon word for denying the reality of God’s gift of truth.
If the China Provisional Agreement is renewed later this month on its “anniversary” October 22 and gets another 2-year period, it then coincides with the extended timeline of the “Synod”.
The FIDES article is worth reading in full I think.
‘ In the dominant representations of the relations between China and the Vatican, the factors that pushed the Holy See to follow the path it has taken, and the criteria that have guided it in its choices on questions so vital to the sensus Ecclesiae of Chinese Catholics, are generally suppressed and hidden. ‘
Yes, let’s twiddle our thumbs while Rome burns.
I am so done with this S on S.
I’m with Robert Royal, The Catholic Thing, “VIII by a thousand cuts” (words to that effect), Oct. 17.
It’s worth noting that a full half of the Synodality leadership as shown in the photo (3 out of 6) are Jesuits. They’re not doing a very good job of hiding their takeover of the Church, are they?
Wang Libin supplies good information and, I think, analysis, in his article here at THE DIPLOMAT May 7 2022, “China-Vatican Relations in the Xi Era”; however he hasn’t disentangled the problems:
‘ The practical need to gain control, if only nominally, of China’s 12 million Catholics has conflicted with the conscientious need to condemn the CCP, making Pope Francis ambivalent about whether the two sides should sign a formal agreement on the bishop arrangement this October, when the renewed deal will expire. ‘
The problem is serial, i.e., inter-connected with one consequent on the other, etc. The Holy Father identifies “formal” relations as inferior but the Provisional Agreement has fixed faithful Catholics under the legalistic handle of the CPC inside a confusion of ideas; and placed the Holy See in a conflict between not dividing the hierarchy but dividing it. It’s one thing to identify formalism as having a danger of being empty. But are you even able to handle substantial relationships that do not have formalist expression? Do you even care to do so? Mustn’t you at least try? And mustn’t you avoid over-laying your effort with other actions that tend to neutralize it or cancel it?
Why subjugate Chinese Catholics and all Chinese with them, to the ideas of the CPC? How can you do that and in the same moment proclaim that reality is greater than ideas? Which reality is being sustained?
Following Libin’s train of thought, 4 years have passed and nothing has changed.
Then can’t it also be seen that 4 years have passed and nothing has been learned?
Maybe enough discernment has occurred to discern that the Holy Spirit is busy discerning and is still very confused since Francis has discerned in his many discernments that God is a God in process, a God who discerns through history, uncertain from one age to another of what is really true or not, what is really real or not, what needs to be discerned about right and wrong. After all, the Holy Spirit should not be tempted to be involved in commiting the “sin of backwardness”. Francis must be discerning that discerning is difficult for all beings, greater and lesser.
A famous saying is “ if it ain’t broke, dont fix it”. An extra year of this confused synod is nothing more than an extended opportunity to misdirect and destroy the church. The church has been mostly skidding downhill since V2 wrought so much destruction on tradition, discipline and decimated vocations. This so-called synod is on target to make it worse. Disgusted by the vapidness of the German Bishops.
https://wherepeteris.com/the-synod-on-synodality-mission-accomplished/ – a difft take on the need for the process of listening , in the trusting hope in The Spirit that it would open hearts to hear Him , to bring needed repentance too in all areas where in the enemy voice reverberates .. the decision to extend the synod for another year – ? also as reparation for a Church that has closed its ears and heart , while giving lip service if at that to the role of the Holy Father and The Catholic Church,
? effects of same manifesting in own people as hatred for life and related addictions , lust for power and money among those in authority .. Same then spilling over as wars and vindictiveness, instead of the good will to listen to own people to hear of the help needed , in how to be ‘orthodox ‘in protecting the sacredness of life and marriage ..
Good to see EWTN doing the Rosary devotion for peace in Ukraine by participating in same from Lourdes …Immaculate Conception – a blessed truth given to The Church , to prepare the children for these times of carnal flood waters .. for a deeper awareness that each life has its origin in the Giver of Life , that the noncarnal purity of same is for us through The Mother … ? the fear of that truth as the tool used by the enemy to keep even Churches that claim oneness in Truth , yet reluctant to accept same whole heartedly ..and instead find reasons to magnify perceived errors in the patient , compassionate stand of the Holy Father in his difficult role to deal with the entrenched wounds and sensitivities …the joy and enthusiasm with which the synodal process is accepted in some places to be ? the antidote for the fears and the sclerotic stubborness in other places ..instead to be young at heart, through the young too , who ‘make a mess ‘ – such as the Bl.Carlo Acutis who loved St.Francis and The Eucharist ..The endearing dialogue that St.Luke would have had with The Mother – that they likley continue in heaven , rejoicing in already beholding in the Eternal Now in the Divine Will , how the mighty have been cast down – as given in a recent talking / teaching ‘doctoring ‘ moment by the Holy Father …may The Spirit drown out and remove all dragon flood waters to help us all to heed His whisper – as His Love for the littlest to the least ..
FIAT !
What exactly is “compassionate” from the actions of a “Holy Father” who seeks to trivialize the damage done to the victims of sin through institutionalizing the process of a permanent deconstruction of the objective moral order given to us by God to where it becomes meaningless?
Personally, I’d like to see synodality extended into 2025 as well. But why stop there? Since it’s such a brilliant, stupendous idea, let’s make it perpetual. It will, thus, renew the Church every year like clockwork, long after Pope F. has sailed off into the sunset. What a legacy it will be. Eternal sodality–at least until the Kingdom comes.
A Pope, resistant to doctrine and the Ordinary Magisterium relative to centuries of Church Tradition, continues to turn the minor experience of a ‘synod’ into the universal importance of a Council under the guise of ‘listening to the people’ and continuing to be indifferent to Revelation and forgetting what it means to bring Souls back to Christ.
Two years instead of one, a great idea! As things now stand, synodality is all over the map in every sense of the word. Time now for a reality check by the one, hole, catholic and apostolic Church…
Yes, extended to two sessions there’s even the opportunity for Batzing to be replaced, and for a smooth replacement of the echo-chamber voices, Grech and Hollerich. And, even for a successor pope (?) to restore all of the Successors of the Apostles as something more than flip-chart “facilitators” for a congeries of interests of one color or another, or of all colors in the rainbow.
Butt, one problem is that the gangrenous German “synodal way” is also likely on a 2024 timeline. With its agenda to mainstream the homosexual lifestyle, masturbation (be inclusive!), bigamy, and priestesses. So, the fly in the ointment (double entendre intended) is the danger of some kind of plebiscite mega-surprise attached in the second year 2024—just as undefined “synodality” itself was annexed in 2018 to the very unrelated “Synod on Young People, Faith and Vocational Discernment.” Pin the tail on the donkey!
Still, 2024 is a good opportunity in the United States to leaven synodal listening with the 2024 National Eucharistic Conference in Indianapolis. And, of course the year 2023 must be avoided, since that will be the 30th Anniversary of Veritatis Splendor—a modernday “prisoner of the Vatican.”
Great. Another year of confusion, navel-gazing and catering to the zeitgeist.
Or maybe more time to expose the rot so we can excise it.
One can only hope. And pray.
First the synod general secretariat said that the whole-church Synod is the fruit of VATICAN II and now the Holy Father takes it further and says that it is “constitutive dimension of the Church” whereby it will help Christians “proclaim the joy of the Gospel”.
I suspect and I suggest that there is some other cause -misgiving- for the extension but a need to make it known in haste determined a badly crafted explanation.
The thing that constitutes the Church is the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.
“Synod” being “mentioned throughout the Council documents” refers to subsidiary activity in particular Churches.
https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2022/10/10/vaticans-synod-on-synodality-organizers-say-synod-is-fruit-of-second-vatican-council/
‘ “To know the reality of Asia, which is a vast continent starting from Kazakhstan in the far west end to Japan in the far east end, we have to immerse ourselves into the completely diverse stories of each of the 22 countries present,” Kikuchi said.
“We immediately realized that as Asia is a continent of complex realities with different cultures, it is not easy task to make one unified policy for pastoral response. Because of this realization, we understood the meaning of the last phrase of the Theme of the General Conference which is: And they went a different way,” the archbishop said. ‘
https://cruxnow.com/church-in-asia/2022/10/asian-bishops-considers-future-paths-for-church-on-continent-of-complex-realities
https://cruxnow.com/church-in-asia/2022/10/pope-urges-asian-bishops-to-count-on-laypeople-celebrate-diversity
https://cruxnow.com/church-in-oceania/2022/10/fiji-archbishop-warns-against-new-colonial-forces-in-pacific-nation
Many of the buffoons who write for that journal (which often appears as much of a journal of Catholic anti-Catholic bigotry as the bad NCR) never tire of contriving the immutable truth it is the Church’s mission to witness as an act of imperialism which requires heavy doses of moral relativism to counteract, oblivious to how this affects the destruction of life and souls. “Complex” has become the new bludgeon word for denying the reality of God’s gift of truth.
May the Father of Lights prolong and extend their discernment…indefinitely.
My sentiments exactly. Make the Synod a permanent fixture in the Church rather than torturing us with death by a thousand paper cuts.
“The Synod on Destroying Catholicism” is taking longer than originally thought.
If the China Provisional Agreement is renewed later this month on its “anniversary” October 22 and gets another 2-year period, it then coincides with the extended timeline of the “Synod”.
The FIDES article is worth reading in full I think.
‘ In the dominant representations of the relations between China and the Vatican, the factors that pushed the Holy See to follow the path it has taken, and the criteria that have guided it in its choices on questions so vital to the sensus Ecclesiae of Chinese Catholics, are generally suppressed and hidden. ‘
http://www.fides.org/en/news/72835-VATICAN_The_China_Holy_See_Agreement_and_the_treasure_of_faith
https://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/en/bollettino/pubblico/2020/10/22/201022a.html
Yes, let’s twiddle our thumbs while Rome burns.
I am so done with this S on S.
I’m with Robert Royal, The Catholic Thing, “VIII by a thousand cuts” (words to that effect), Oct. 17.
In the photo are 6 people that I wouldn’t entrust to be alone talking to my children, or anyone I cared about.
They oppose the apostolic faith, for instance, they oppose the Church’s moral teaching against sodomy, as stated by Eminence Hollerich, SJ.
They should be shunned, as St. Paul says about disbelievers “inside the Church.”
It’s worth noting that a full half of the Synodality leadership as shown in the photo (3 out of 6) are Jesuits. They’re not doing a very good job of hiding their takeover of the Church, are they?
Wang Libin supplies good information and, I think, analysis, in his article here at THE DIPLOMAT May 7 2022, “China-Vatican Relations in the Xi Era”; however he hasn’t disentangled the problems:
‘ The practical need to gain control, if only nominally, of China’s 12 million Catholics has conflicted with the conscientious need to condemn the CCP, making Pope Francis ambivalent about whether the two sides should sign a formal agreement on the bishop arrangement this October, when the renewed deal will expire. ‘
The problem is serial, i.e., inter-connected with one consequent on the other, etc. The Holy Father identifies “formal” relations as inferior but the Provisional Agreement has fixed faithful Catholics under the legalistic handle of the CPC inside a confusion of ideas; and placed the Holy See in a conflict between not dividing the hierarchy but dividing it. It’s one thing to identify formalism as having a danger of being empty. But are you even able to handle substantial relationships that do not have formalist expression? Do you even care to do so? Mustn’t you at least try? And mustn’t you avoid over-laying your effort with other actions that tend to neutralize it or cancel it?
Why subjugate Chinese Catholics and all Chinese with them, to the ideas of the CPC? How can you do that and in the same moment proclaim that reality is greater than ideas? Which reality is being sustained?
Following Libin’s train of thought, 4 years have passed and nothing has changed.
Then can’t it also be seen that 4 years have passed and nothing has been learned?
https://thediplomat.com/2022/05/china-vatican-relations-in-the-xi-era/
Maybe enough discernment has occurred to discern that the Holy Spirit is busy discerning and is still very confused since Francis has discerned in his many discernments that God is a God in process, a God who discerns through history, uncertain from one age to another of what is really true or not, what is really real or not, what needs to be discerned about right and wrong. After all, the Holy Spirit should not be tempted to be involved in commiting the “sin of backwardness”. Francis must be discerning that discerning is difficult for all beings, greater and lesser.
A famous saying is “ if it ain’t broke, dont fix it”. An extra year of this confused synod is nothing more than an extended opportunity to misdirect and destroy the church. The church has been mostly skidding downhill since V2 wrought so much destruction on tradition, discipline and decimated vocations. This so-called synod is on target to make it worse. Disgusted by the vapidness of the German Bishops.
https://wherepeteris.com/the-synod-on-synodality-mission-accomplished/ – a difft take on the need for the process of listening , in the trusting hope in The Spirit that it would open hearts to hear Him , to bring needed repentance too in all areas where in the enemy voice reverberates .. the decision to extend the synod for another year – ? also as reparation for a Church that has closed its ears and heart , while giving lip service if at that to the role of the Holy Father and The Catholic Church,
? effects of same manifesting in own people as hatred for life and related addictions , lust for power and money among those in authority .. Same then spilling over as wars and vindictiveness, instead of the good will to listen to own people to hear of the help needed , in how to be ‘orthodox ‘in protecting the sacredness of life and marriage ..
Good to see EWTN doing the Rosary devotion for peace in Ukraine by participating in same from Lourdes …Immaculate Conception – a blessed truth given to The Church , to prepare the children for these times of carnal flood waters .. for a deeper awareness that each life has its origin in the Giver of Life , that the noncarnal purity of same is for us through The Mother … ? the fear of that truth as the tool used by the enemy to keep even Churches that claim oneness in Truth , yet reluctant to accept same whole heartedly ..and instead find reasons to magnify perceived errors in the patient , compassionate stand of the Holy Father in his difficult role to deal with the entrenched wounds and sensitivities …the joy and enthusiasm with which the synodal process is accepted in some places to be ? the antidote for the fears and the sclerotic stubborness in other places ..instead to be young at heart, through the young too , who ‘make a mess ‘ – such as the Bl.Carlo Acutis who loved St.Francis and The Eucharist ..The endearing dialogue that St.Luke would have had with The Mother – that they likley continue in heaven , rejoicing in already beholding in the Eternal Now in the Divine Will , how the mighty have been cast down – as given in a recent talking / teaching ‘doctoring ‘ moment by the Holy Father …may The Spirit drown out and remove all dragon flood waters to help us all to heed His whisper – as His Love for the littlest to the least ..
FIAT !
What exactly is “compassionate” from the actions of a “Holy Father” who seeks to trivialize the damage done to the victims of sin through institutionalizing the process of a permanent deconstruction of the objective moral order given to us by God to where it becomes meaningless?
Personally, I’d like to see synodality extended into 2025 as well. But why stop there? Since it’s such a brilliant, stupendous idea, let’s make it perpetual. It will, thus, renew the Church every year like clockwork, long after Pope F. has sailed off into the sunset. What a legacy it will be. Eternal sodality–at least until the Kingdom comes.
Synods will continue until consensus is reached!