Cardinal Juan Sandoval Íñiguez, member of Dubia Brothers 2.0, recently spoke with ACI Prensa, part of the EWTN / CNA media group. During the interview, Sandoval stressed that the Synod of Bishops has no real authority.
“Doctrinal authority resides in the pope or in the worldwide episcopate together with the pope,” he stated correctly.
So, when Sandoval says, “The Synod does not have doctrinal authority … and the danger is that they give it to it,” it would seem rather obvious that the “they” to which he refers is actually a “he” (unless Bergoglio has gone tranny).
He went on to say that “the concern is that the [current] synod is going to deviate somewhat doctrinally.”
“But,” he cautioned, “there are lines that are always very clear, have been very clear in the faith and in the Tradition of the Church.”
Those very clear lines – the same that mustn’t be crossed – are what one might call “essential matters of doctrine.”
Evidently, Sandoval does not realize that “the general purpose of the Synod of Bishops” as established by Paul VI was “to facilitate agreement, at least on essential matters of doctrine,” as if those lines had not already been well and truly drawn.
In other words, it should never come as a surprise to anyone to see any Synod of Bishops “deviating somewhat doctrinally.” That is exactly what the Synod was instituted to do.
According to Paul VI, the inspiration for the Synod of Bishops was, of course, the Second Vatican Council, a gathering that likewise proceeded to behave is if what once was considered very clear in the faith and in the Tradition of the Church was suddenly rendered not only unclear, but flat out wrong and, therefore, in need of correction (e.g., with respect to religious liberty, ecumenism, interreligious relations, etc.).
As I recently wrote (As if the Council never truly closed), the role of the Synod of Bishops is precisely to continue the endless conciliar process of innovation, re-examining nearly every conceivable Catholic teaching on faith and morals in light of the so-called “signs of the times.”
As if what has been stated thus far is not made obvious enough by observation alone, one need only listen to the words of those operating on the inside of the revolution, the conciliar church’s own spokespersons, as recorded in their most prominent journals.
For example, in an article published today in the Jesuit publication, La Civilta Cattolica, Giacomo Costa, S.J., a consultant to the General Secretariat of the Synod, makes no bones about the gathering’s raison d’être.
The Synod is, according to Costa, “A dynamic revival of the Second Vatican Council.”
And how is the Council itself best understood?
Vatican II has been the “common road” that has enabled the Church to achieve unity in diversity and to carry out its own constant reform.
“Constant reform” is Council-speak for endless innovation, the hallmark of every heretical and schismatic endeavor.
Costa writes:
The title of Synod 2021-24, “For a Synodal Church. Communion, Participation, Mission,” makes clear that its theme centers on the identity of the Church, its way of proceeding and its mode of proclaiming the Good News of the Gospel to the men and women of our time.
Costa, like all faithful [sic] men-of-the-Council, speaks as if “the identity of the Church” is a puzzle as yet unsolved, with Holy Mother Church and her faithful perplexed as to who she is and why she was established.
Bear in mind, Vatican Council II convened not even two decades after Pope Pius XII had promulgated the Encyclical Mystici Corporis Christi, wherein he expounded with great clarity upon “The doctrine of the Mystical Body of Christ, which is the Church” (Art. 1).
“The true Church of Jesus Christ is the One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic and Roman Church” (cf Mystici Corporis 13), the Holy Father Pius XII reiterated in the plainest terms possible.
And yet, as Costa pointed out in the opening paragraph of his essay:
In a famous speech delivered on December 4, 1962, Cardinal Léon-Joseph Suenens asked, “How do you see yourself?” He was suggesting that the Second Vatican Council address this question to the Church and then frame an answer. The context was the discussion of the schema De Ecclesia, which would give rise to the dogmatic constitution Lumen Gentium.
Even more famous than the Suenens’ question were the Council’s answers. Among them:
The one Church of Christ, constituted and organized in the world as a society, subsists in the Catholic Church (cf LG 8).
In one fell swoop, Vatican Council II rejected the Church’s ancient and immutable ecclesiology, whereby it is understood that the one Church of Christ is the Catholic Church and only the Catholic Church.
Emboldened by having done so, the revolutionaries felt justified in declaring that Christ Our Lord uses the communities of the schismatics and heretics “as means of salvation” (UR 3). Thus, and by many other acts, did the Council join their ranks, eschewing the mission of converting the world to Christ as given to the Church by the Risen Lord Himself in favor of a perpetual journey of self-reflection, novelty-seeking, and accommodation.
As such, the conciliar church and its leaders, quite unlike the Holy Catholic Church, will always be engaged in navel-gazing exercises, like the Synod, whereby they ask of themselves over and over again, “How do you see yourself?”
As Costa admits in all candor, “It is a question that cannot be answered once and for all.”
In other words, the leaders and followers of the conciliar church cannot and never will be satisfied with the answer du jour.
The premise heading into the present Synod on Synodality is the undefined (and eminently undefinable notion) that we see ourselves as a Synodal Church!
Just as Giacomo Costa suggested, however, though this declaration will likely hold sway for a certain period of time, apart from the conciliar church’s utter demise, it too will be subject to re-evaluation in light of future signs of the times.
In Mystici Corporis, Pope Pius XII saw fit to repeat the ecclesiological insights of the Saints and Doctors:
As Bellarmine notes with acumen and accuracy, this appellation of the Body of Christ is not to be explained solely by the fact that Christ must be called the Head of His Mystical Body, but also by the fact that He so sustains the Church, and so in a certain sense lives in the Church, that she is, as it were, another Christ. The Doctor of the Gentiles [St. Paul], in his letter to the Corinthians, affirms this when, without further qualification, he calls the Church “Christ,” following no doubt the example of his Master who called out to him from on high when he was attacking the Church: “Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?” Indeed, if we are to believe Gregory of Nyssa, the Church is often called simply “Christ” by the Apostle; and you are familiar Venerable Brethren, with that phrase of Augustine: “Christ preaches Christ.”
Though it’s hardly necessary for most regular readers of this space, please allow me to conclude by connecting a few dots.
Given that the Church is, and has always been looked upon as, another Christ, it only stands to reason that she, like her Founder, is the same yesterday and today and forever (Hebrews 13:8).
So, what are we to say of a church that is mired in a never-ending identity crisis, ever unsure of how it sees itself, intent upon looking for answers – not to Christ – but to the modern world, the exigencies of which are, by their very nature, constantly changing?
Clearly, such a church is not the Church of Christ, the One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic and Roman Church. It is, in other words, a cheap and unconvincing imposter, just like its current leader and head, Jorge Bergoglio.
This being so, you will not find me wringing my hands and fretting over the Synod on Synodality, as are the franchisees of Trad, Inc. and their naïve customers. Neither will you find me praying and fasting for the preposterous intention that the Synod may “remain” faithful to the true doctrine. How can it “remain” that which it never was, nor intended to be?
No, my prayer for the Synod is that it will be so unfaithful that Trad, Inc. will either be forced to abandon its current business model or will go broke for lack spiritually blind followers.
