Vatican City, Oct 11, 2023 / 15:40 pm (CNA).
Participants in the Synod on Synodality have asked “for greater discernment on the teaching of the Church on the subject of sexuality,” a Vatican spokesman said at a press briefing today.
The revelation seems to be at odds with synod organizers’ repeated insistence that the monthlong assembly will not take up doctrinal questions but will instead focus on how the Church can better listen to its members.
The discussion of sexual doctrine came during the synod members’ work in the morning session, shared Paolo Ruffini, the president of the synod’s communications commission. During that session, participants focused on the theme of “mercy and truth.” The theme includes a controversial question on “what concrete steps are needed to welcome those who feel excluded from the Church today because of their status or sexuality.”
Ruffini said that while some asked for further discernment on the Church’s sexual teaching, others “said there’s no need for this further discernment.”
Ruffini did not expand on what he meant by “discernment” and was not asked to clarify.
Members made the request for “greater discernment” of the Church’s sexual doctrine during the assembly’s discussion of the controversial topic of LGBTQ inclusion. Following the synod’s working document, participants were asked to consider “what concrete steps are needed to welcome those who feel excluded from the Church today because of their status or sexuality.”
Representatives for small groups assigned to the topic shared their table’s report with the wider assembly, while others made speeches in response.
Ruffini said that speeches addressing “sexual identity” were met with “responsibility and comprehension, remaining faithful to the Gospel and the teaching of the Church.” He added that there was widespread agreement that the Church “must reject every form of homophobia” and that the lack of familiarity with the personal journey of LGBTQ-identifying people leads to “many problems.”
Some speakers emphasized the importance of encountering LGBTQ people and developing pastoral ministries “to understand their lives,” said Ruffini, while others “highlighted the importance of remaining in the magisterial teaching of the Church.”
Ruffini said that the climate was not characterized by polarization but by a family-style exchange of views.
“How can we be welcoming for everyone, and, on the other hand, how can we remain faithful to truth?” he said describing the conversation.
The synod spokesman did not disclose which participants were behind the push for “greater discernment” of the Church’s sexual doctrine, but several synod members have already signaled their intent to push for changes on Church teaching on the subject.
German Bishops Georg Bätzing and Franz-Josef Overbeck, for instance, have said they plan to advocate for wider acceptance of the proposals adopted by the controversial German Synodal Way at the Synod on Synodality. The Synodal Way, a non-canonically recognized project of the German Bishops’ Conference and lay employees, approved blessings for same-sex unions this past March.
If matters of doctrine are up for debate at the Synod on Synodality, it would fly in the face of repeated assurances to the contrary made by top officials.
Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich, the synod’s relator general, said in August 2022 that the synod “is not meant to change doctrine, but attitudes.”
This past June, U.S. papal nuncio Cardinal Christoph Pierre told the U.S. bishops that “synodality is not a disguise for changing doctrine” but “a way of being Church.”
And Cardinal Mario Grech, who heads the Vatican office for synods, said that “no one wants to depart from the Church’s teaching,” this past July in response to questions about doctrinal changes that could result from the synod.
Tomorrow morning, the small groups assigned the question of LGBTQ inclusion will finalize their reports and submit them to synod organizers. The reports will then be used to draft outlines of the assembly’s proceedings, culminating with a final summary that the assembly will approve at the end of the month.
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They won’t touch the Doctrines of the Church, they will just allow you to develop a work around based on your concrete circumstances and your own discernment. A false mercy.
I think it important to recognize that the Church can never be welcoming to everyone. This sounds so nice; but, the reality is there are those will never conform to the will of God. We can welcome sinners, but not those that revel in sin and simply want the Church to accommodate them.
Secondly, it is vital to recognize that, at best, radical gender ideology (the best term to identify LBGTQI+) is a several mental illness. When there is conflict between one’s perception of their sexuality and their physical sex, physical sex is reality. The conflict is a delusion.
What a waste of time
Are we listening to God? Are we listening to Christ, the Word of God? This seems more an exercise in rebellion clandestinely masquerading as a kumbaya collabrarive. We’re to love, serve and adore God. Re-imagining the Church will just lead to more identity crisis.
It seems like a replay of the 1970’s, Mark.
I suppose the good news is that those who lived through and adopted the culture of the 1970s will become fewer in number with the passing of time. They also have mostly not reproduced themselves, so they will have less influence on future generations.
But meanwhile they appear to be causing as much trouble as possible.
God is in charge of His Church and our job is to be faithful and vigilant.
So true, so true. I think when this gaggle of ghastly souls have crossed the threshold, we will see the barren landscape they left us and mourning will be our lot for 3 to 5 generations.
At our moment in human history the centripetal forces are winning, and it makes profound sense for the perennial Catholic Church to assemble its members. The alternative being that they will all be sucked into the orbit of some global ideology or another.
What’s new since the Reformation?…today, from “sects” to sex, and a unisex priesthood, and a pluralistica-sex post-morality. Just look at this word-game “mess!” Homophobia is out, and unspoken heterophobia is in! And, we now can all look forward to, what, reports, proceedings, outlines, and summaries! All provisional, or course.
Hurray for Gutenberg and his spawn–in just six centuries a devolution from interchangeable type to interchangeable genetalia!
Yours truly had expected that the generous year of reflection between “synods” would enable a rich harvest of sober “discernment” by everyone, even and especially outside of the favored, predictable, and encysted 450. But why hope for such longer-term divine intervention as almost at Nineveh?
And why should theologians even stoop to the level of pseudo-theologians, when the real game is not theological at all, but rather sociological, psychological, organizational, and ideological? Butt, now with the relief of instant gratification by the Keystone Cops?
Chastiphobia is in. Diane Montagna has a nack for embarrassing the bishops by asking obvious and straightforward questions. I would love to see her ask why there is so much difficulty in addressing traditional Catholic concepts of personal virtue such as chastity, unless that’s considered too “backwardist”.
Centrifugal!
I’m starting to hate the D-word.
Seems peculiar that there is this obsession over homosexuality. Regular church attendance has plummeted. If their are a billion Catholics and not even half of them keep the Sabbath, why not put the emphasis on this. Jesus knew where to cast His net and where to shake the dust from His sandals.
Hmm. Interesting.
Apparently the synodolers are in charge of what the Holy Spirit has in store for this synodaling event.
Either that, or they aren’t really planning on waiting for the Holy Spirit to act at all.
In that case, they will just get out their Holy Spirit ventriloquist’s dummy and speak for it, expecting faithful Catholics to fall into line behind whatever ungodly travesties they come up with.
The pronouncement, “The Holy Spirit says,” should, therefore, not be taken at face value.
Brineyman,
We only know that the Holy Spirit speaks definitively through the Ecumenical Councils due to history.
Synods, on the other hand, don’t claim any such authority of themselves. They only have authority to the degree that they reflect the Ecumenical Councils and Tradition. For anyone to say that a synod is an act of the Holy Spirit merely because it is a synod is arrogant and a megalomaniac
Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich, the synod’s relator general, said in August 2022 that the synod “is not meant to change doctrine, but attitudes.”
I think this is the nub. It’s the equivalent of the mission of higher education for the last 50+ years: take the young people from hard-working homes (and their parents’ tuition money) and twist their minds into knots, so that they return home to attack “the patriarchy,” traditional values, convention, and ultimately truth itself. How many families hardly recognised their children after even a few semesters? Their “attitudes” had been utterly altered.
It was that generation in the pews that shouted down Humanae Vitae with contempt, and has since shown a mocking attitude towards all vestiges of both traditional doctrine and liturgy. First the attitudes, and then the virtual brickbats set on demolishing the very foundations of Holy Mother Church. A very telling statement!
You’ve captured in a nutshell the sorry, misguided experience of my “Baby Boomer” generation, Genevieve, many of whom invoke “personal experience” as the ultimate norm of discernment and authority.
How fortunate – indeed, blessed – believers are to have as grounds for hope Christ’s promise and guarantee that he has overcome the powers of darkness that beset his followers in history, and that he is with his Church always.
Perhaps if they repented of their fallen desires the homosexuals would feel less excluded.
I have no problem if the wish was for further discernment about the sources, psychological, spiritual, physiological, whatever, of such desires, that would lead in an interesting direction and might bear good and lasting fruit. But I don’t think that’s what they are aiming at. Perhaps the Holy Spirit will turn the request in a better direction if there are a few at the synod who have the insight and gumption to take the request and spin it other than the north Europeans would like.
Hey, Mark, what are you suggesting?
That the synod speak to absentee fatherhood, derailment by early sexual experimentation, a unisex and corrupt porn culture, tragic self-rejection because of childhood sexual abuse, an erased distinction between predispositions and acting out an aggressive and tribal lifestyle–or maybe the synod-like ambiguity admitted by the bisexual and conflicted Andre Gide? As portrayed by a biographer:
“[Gide] emphatically protests that he has not a word to say against marriage and reproduction (but then) suggests that it would be of benefit to an adolescent, before his desires are fixed, to have a love affair with an older man, instead of with a woman. . . the general principle admitted by Gide, elsewhere in his treatise, that sexual practice tends to stabilize in the direction where it has first found satisfaction; to inoculate a youth with homosexual tastes seems an odd way to prepare him for matrimony” (Harold March, Gide and the Hound of Heaven, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1952).
Might has well ratify the smoke of Satan by society simply rolling with the oxymoronic gay “marriage” and, then within the Church, stir up a “mess” and bless it!
And write a theological report about keeping in step! Move along folks, there’s nothing to see here.
“No one wants to depart from the Church’s teaching” (Card Grech). Translation, unfortunately we must accommodate the changing values of our world. Clamor for greater discernment of Church teaching on sexuality, pressure from gate crashing [?] ‘invitees’ German Synodaler Weg leaders Bishops Georg Bätzing and Franz-Josef Overbeck prompts the wisdom of Card Hollerich that the Synod “is not meant to change doctrine, but attitudes”. Further wisdom from nuncio Card Christoph Pierre, that “synodality is not a disguise for changing doctrine, but a way of being Church.” Confident in their heresy that we can faithfully believe and in good conscience act otherwise. Gospel Amoris Laetitia says so.
There we have it, the voices of error have exhumed their deathly vapor for the Church to obediently inhale and be damned. If there are any questions please send them. The Vatican is well prepared with stock responses. Resist, and you break your relationship with the Church. Although the question arises, How can the Mystical Body of Christ, the doctrinally faithful loyal to Christ resist itself?
The theme includes a controversial question on “what concrete steps are needed to welcome those who feel excluded from the Church today because of their status or sexuality.”
Do men or women “feel” excluded by virtue of being men and women? Because those are the only two categories of sexuality.
Agree with the need for better discernment as a critical need of our times – a discerment that focuses on the graces of the Immaculate Conception – the blessed event in the life of the human parents of Bl.Mother , whose line was protected and purified for that purpose,which is the history of the Chosen people . The conception of Bl.Mother taking place in a mystical holy manner which would have been our Patrimony too if not for The Fall , to have brougt forth holy children . Making a false god out of carnal passions as the scourge of our times .Holy Father likley has foreseen a need for more balance in the teachings of St.John Paul 11 which many handled in an unintended manner even to the point of negating the fallen aspects , thus having added to the idolisation of sexuality , instead of focusing more on need for sacredness in the realm and not knowing how to help in the struggle for chastity .
Allowing the Holy Spirit to let persons be so immersed in the memory of the Nativity – a mystical event, Lord likley walking out of the womb of The Mother into the hands of the Mother, in a space filled with Light, obscuring all else , like at the miracles of the Red Sea and Jordan , an event without any pain or related mess – may the Holy Spirit surprise The Church with such a gift – after all , there are mystics who go for years without food other than the Eucharist !
The mystery of women not recalling labor pains ,? also meant to recall the graces of the Immaculate Conception as the antidote for the challenges faced in marriages such that , the higher ,super natural Love would enfold the couples often enough in a life of holiness and purity , chastity to be cherished as a blessed gift, persons set free from feeling need for the polluting use of ABCs ; fear about overpopulation to vanish , vocations to abound ; instead of homophobia many who are afflicted in the realm would be delivered of such and their own often subtle , hidden envy and hatred towards parents and others who are seen as standing in their way of the unfulfilled appetites which in turn magnifies the fears and anger and complaints with related efforts to turn things upside down !
O Mary , conceived without sin , pray for us who hace recourse to thee , pray for those who do have recourse to Thee, esp. the enemies of The Church .
May the Holy Spirit bring many surprises into all lands such that the sword of the Spirit would pierce all hardened hearts to help look at each other with her own tender Love as the time of the Reign of the Divine Will . FIAT !
“Holy Father likley has foreseen a need for more balance in the teachings of St.John Paul 11 which many handled in an unintended manner even to the point of negating the fallen aspects , thus having added to the idolisation of sexuality , instead of focusing more on need for sacredness in the realm and not knowing how to help in the struggle for chastity.”
Having read nearly everything by both John Paul II and Francis, I can confidently say, “No, not the case.”
If the Church is going to descend into one gigantic Oprah Winfrey show, I want a new car out of this. As a Catholic I suppose I’m like an audience member. Oprah once had a show where she surprised everyone in the audience with a new car. Let the God of surprises make mine a crimson red Corvette with a pearl white racing stripe.
It does go whizzing by….the boomer imagination in overdrive. I’m going to be looking out for you.
If the Roman church submits to these disgusting changes, I am hopeful the Eastern orthodox church will not. It may be our church of last resort. Certainly a church which gives an OK to homosexuality will not be financially supported by me. Nor, I suspect, by many others. It would seriously be off the track of truth at that point, and everything it teaches will be suspect. One would imagine going in this direction would be impossible after all the sex abuse cases ( mostly homosexual) had forced so many dioceses into bankruptcy. Sadly, it would seem not.
As a same-sex attracted Catholic, I feel comforted and supported by reading comments like the ones on this article that affirm what Sacred Scripture and Tradition has always taught about homosexuality and which I have to battle against every single day, rather than the heretical and false-compassion fueled messages liberals and the Synod are giving off about the subject, which actually make me feel disillusioned, unwelcome and rejected.
Jon, reading your comment was helpful to me. I saw myself in the knowledge that I approach our Savior as a broken, sinful man. The sin is irrelevant; it is knowing how sinful I am that separates me from Christ. It is his grace and mercy that wipes away my sins and, through his perfect sacrifice, I may be enabled to enter into his abode whole and unblemished.
Let all put aside all conversation on the type of sin we each bear, and humbly continue to acknowledge that we have all sinned and seek forgiveness always. Let us commit ourselves to holiness and to righteous living. Let us continually sing the praises of our King and the joy of his love and his mercy.
The Church must change the outdated teachings. It must show its readiness to adapt to the changed situations and times. We are not in 10th century. We must conduct further study to understand more about the LGBTQ persons and their insecurities. The Church must devote more time and energy to study them. The Church never in the past accepted the existence of LGBTQ persons or seriously considered them or accepted them to include in the Church. This policy must end for the Church’s own good.
One way to make the Church more welcoming for anyone would be for priests to be available far more frequently to hear confessions at regular times during a week, and without the need to make special requests. Particular attention should be paid to the hearing of confessions before, rather than after, mass. In this way it may be possible for a habit of receiving communion to grow up to combat future temptations. Ideally, it would also establish a relationship between priest and penitent within which it would be possible to deal with whatever special problems might stand in the way of future progress.
The oldest trick of human rationalization is to take an accepted moral practice and distort it into its exact opposite. When I heard Francis start throwing around his abuse of the word “discernment”, which traditionally means to choose between two goods and seeking the aid of prayer, like a young person making a career decision, I knew Francis was giving license to tell the Catholic world you can do whatever you desire just so long as you convince yourself God gave you His rubber stamp.