Joke of the Day: There’s this Synod…

The Holy See has produced a Preparatory Document for the 2018 Synod of Bishops on the theme “Young People, the Faith and Vocational Discernment.”

Those looking for a mortification opportunity will find a careful read of this 11,000+ word tome more than sufficient. For the rest of you, I’ve taken the bullet and am offering here the following overview.

First, let’s not be naïve: If we learned anything in 2014-2015, it’s that the “God of Surprises” and his merry band of modernists already have an outcome in mind, and come Hell or high water, they aim to achieve it.

The entirety of the preparatory process is really just an exercise in propaganda designed, not to prepare the bishops for the Synod, but to prepare the rank and file for the Bergoglian garbage they’re going to be fed at its conclusion.

In fact, they practically admit as much in the text:

“The document, therefore, is not exhaustive, but serves as a kind of guide to encourage further discussion, whose fruits will be available only at the conclusion of the Synod.”

Even so, there are some noteworthy observations to be made by reviewing the Preparatory Document as they give us further insight into the degree to which present day Rome is utterly disinterested in the actual mission of the Church.

The document states that the Synod is being charged with examining how the Church “can lead young people to recognize and accept the call to the fullness of life and love.”

And how, pray tell, will the bishops go about achieving this sappily worded task?

By renewing its commitment to the Divine Commission given by Christ the King; baptizing and teaching everything whatsoever that He commanded?

No, that won’t do!

Rather, the Synod intends to “ask young people to help her in identifying the most effective ways to announce the Good News today.”

The document continues:

“By listening to young people, the Church will once again hear the Lord speaking in today’s world.”

And here you thought it was the Church that speaks in the Lord’s name to all peoples, old and young!

Incidentally, if you’re assuming that “young people” here refers to adolescents and college-age persons, you are most certainly mistaken, as we are informed:

“In the following pages, the word ‘youth’ refers to persons who are roughly 16 to 29 years old.”

That’s right; 29 year old “youth.”

As preposterous as that is, it’s actually a step in the right direction given that World Youth Day is billed as “a pilgrimage experience targeted to those ages 16 to 35.”

Seriously folks, it is entirely obvious that these people are detached, not just from the mission of the Church, but from reality itself.

For these men of the Council where phenomenology ruled, “reality” is rather personal and even fluid; its essence defined in terms of encounter and experience.

As such, one can hardly be surprised when the document states that “gender determines different perceptions of reality.”

In other words, the idea of objective reality is passé in modern day Rome, which, of course, only makes sense given that Jesus Christ is the fullness of truth and they have little genuine interest in His affairs.

If all that has been said isn’t both predictable and pathetic enough, the Captains of Newchurch that wrote this document went on to suggest that the Church needs to listen, not only to Catholic youth, but to the practitioners of all sorts of false religions:

“It should not be overlooked that many societies are increasingly multi-cultural and multi-religious … [The situation] can provide for increased possibilities for fruitful dialogue and mutual enrichment.”

In case it wasn’t clear enough already, the reason these fools are looking to other religions for enrichment is simple; thy are dyed-in-the-wool modernists, who steadfastly believe in what Pope St. Pius X described as “vital immanence.”

As the Holy Father tells us:

The modernist believes that the first actuation of religion is due to a certain necessity or impulsion; originating in a movement of the heart, which movement is called a sentiment. In the religious sentiment one must recognise a kind of intuition of the heart which puts man in immediate contact with the very reality of God. They assert, therefore, the existence of a real experience, and one of a kind that surpasses all rational experience. What is to prevent such experiences from being met within every religion? And with what right will Modernists deny the truth of an experience affirmed by a follower of Islam? With what right can they claim true experiences for Catholics alone? (cf Pascendi 7, 14)

It is for this reason that the men in Rome struggle with the very idea of objective reality and eschew the mission of teaching truths that are in no way subject to experience.

By contrast, they are sincerely committed to creating a program designed merely to excite the emotions:

“The search for ways to reawaken courage and the impulses of the heart must necessarily take into account that the person of Jesus and the Good News proclaimed by him continue to fascinate many young people.”

And please, don’t let the Divine name-dropping fool you.

Remember, these men are so dialed into Jesus that they’re looking to Jews, Muslims and perhaps even Wiccans for “enrichment,” and they’ve already admitted that they need the advice of “young people” in order to discover how to announce the Good News effectively.

Bottom line; they have no interest in the Gospel. They’re modernists; it’s all about feelings and emotions. The document goes on:

“To believe is to listen to the Spirit and, with all one’s powers of mind and emotion, to dialogue with the Word, who is the Way, the Truth and the Life (cf. Jn 14:6) and to learn to trust in the Word, ’embodying It’ in the concrete instances of everyday life, in moments when the cross is encountered and when one experiences the joy in seeing the signs of resurrection, just as the ‘beloved disciple’ did. This challenge must be faced by each Christian community and the individual believer. The place for this dialogue is the conscience.”

Where, one wonders, is the teaching Church in all of this? (HINT: Start your search somewhere around 1958 or so.)

Just as one might expect, His Humbleness is quoted in various places throughout the document.

For instance:

“‘Recognizing’ [one’s vocation] concerns how life’s happenings, the people one meets, and the words one hears or reads affect the interior life, namely, the various ‘desires, feelings and emotions’ (Amoris Laetitia, 143) … The stage of ‘recognizing’ focuses on the ability to listen and on one’s feelings and emotions … The Spirit of God works in the heart of every man and woman through feelings and desires that are bound to ideas, images and plans.”

Always with the feelings and emotions, these modernists!

Here’s another good one:

“Human freedom, despite the fact that it always needs to be purified and perfected, never loses the fundamental capacity to recognize the good and carrying it out. ‘Human beings, while capable of the worst, are also capable of rising above themselves, choosing again what is good, and making a new start, despite their mental and social conditioning’” (Laudato Si’, 205).

Nonsense. Apart from grace, man has not the capacity to recognize the good and carry it out.

And we’re the Neo-Pelagians!

The document continues:

“Interpreting desires and inner movements requires an honest confrontation, in light of God’s Word, with the moral demands of the Christian life, always seeking to apply them in the concrete situation that is being experienced.”

Again, note the modernist focus on “inner movements.”

As for the “moral demands of the Christian life,” that almost sounds Catholic until you realize that Amoris Laetitia tells us everything we need to know about the impact “concrete situations” have on said demands according to these characters.

Naturally, the fear among those who still harbor a sensus Catholicus is that the Synod is really intended as a means of paving the way for changes to the priesthood; e.g., abandoning or otherwise revising the discipline of celibacy.

The text of the Preparatory Document doesn’t give us much in this regard, but it does raise a number of red flags indicating that the “God of Surprises” has something up his sleeve.

“Promoting truly free and responsible choices, fully removed from practices of the past, remains the goal of every serious pastoral vocational programme.”

There has been a bull’s eye on the “practices of the past” since 13 March 2013. As such, one cannot be surprised that the document goes on to caution against “passively respecting norms.” It also stresses the necessity of “abandoning the rigid attitudes,” and get this:

“… leaving behind a framework which makes people feel hemmed-in; and ‘going out,’ by giving up a way of acting as Church which at times is out-dated.”

Yeah, that tradition thing sure is stifling!

There’s more in the text that stands out, but at this I think we’ve tortured ourselves quite enough for one sitting.

In the end, the men in Rome, to quote the immortal words of Dennis Green (fans of the NFL know who he is), “are who we thought they were!”

They are modernists. Change is coming. The Synod is a joke, and the punchline has likely already been written.