State-Funded Catholics
At the Register Edward Pentin has the somewhat frightening report of a progressive ‘shadow synod’ being driven from Germany.
A one-day study meeting — open only to a select group of individuals — took place at the Pontifical Gregorian University on Monday with the aim of urging “pastoral innovations” at the upcoming Synod of Bishops on the Family in October.
Around 50 participants, including bishops, theologians and media representatives, took part in the gathering, at the invitation of the presidents of the bishops’ conferences of Germany, Switzerland and France — Cardinal Reinhard Marx, Bishop Markus Büchel and Archbishop Georges Pontier.
One of the key topics discussed at the closed-door meeting was how the Church could better welcome those in stable same-sex unions, and reportedly “no one” opposed such unions being recognized as valid by the Church.
Participants also spoke of the need to “develop” the Church’s teaching on human sexuality and called not for a theology of the body, as famously taught by St. John Paul II, but the development of a “theology of love.”
It’s amazing how little these types of clerics actually know about love, isn’t it? Is love sex? Is love gay sex?
I guess when you spend most of your adult life pleasing false superiors, then later on simply shuttling from one catered event to another, handled by servants and office help; your judgment can get skewed. In Germany if you rise to cardinal, in effect you become a permanent bureaucrat at the top of a state-funded empire with few hard demands upon your leadership or expenses. You also have tremendous leverage.
One Swiss priest discussed the “importance of the human sex drive,” while another participant, talking about holy Communion for remarried divorcees, asked: “How can we deny it, as though it were a punishment for the people who have failed and found a new partner with whom to start a new life?”
Marco Ansaldo, a reporter for the Italian daily newspaper La Repubblica, who was present at the meeting, said the words seemed “revolutionary, uttered by clergymen.”
French Biblicist and Ratzinger Prize-winner Anne-Marie Pelletier praised the dialogue that took place between theologians and bishops as a “real sign of the times.” According to La Stampa, another Italian daily newspaper, Pelletier said the Church needs to enter into “a dynamic of mutual listening,” in which the magisterium continues to guide consciences, but she believes it can only effectively do so if it “echoes the words of the baptized.”
The meeting took the “risk of the new, in fidelity with Christ,” she claimed. The article also quoted a participant as saying the synod would be a “failure” if it simply continued to affirm what the Church has always taught.
Pentin’s revealing piece full of greasy slogans and Leftist organs continues, but it’s safe to say this isn’t the kind of thing Mass-going faithful Catholics subsidize. Dirty churchmen such as these can only be funded with dirty money. Why must we all now be plagued with their abuse?