“Feelings” “Emotions”
and “Desires”
Is this what the Synod on Synodality is based upon?
Can it Really Be This Banal?
In a word
— given the very first question proposed to the “participants” — the
answer is,
“Yes.”
And not, “Yes,
sadly so” — for the aptly abbreviated SOS appears to be,
in its first days, little more than a badly dated “Encounter Group”
from the Woodstock generation (Jorge’s generation) that conceived it.
It has begun with what appears to be, for all practical purposes, an
ecclesiastical “Sensitivity Training” session setting out the parameters
for all subsequent sessions.
They will not be
concerned with critical and substantive issues affecting the lives of
Catholics in an increasingly hostile world, nor will they address the
state-sponsored suppression of the religious liberty of Catholics world-wide,
still less the deep state’s infringement on the free expression of Catholics
in the public forum — employing all its prosecutorial assets to subdue
the expression of genuine Catholicism — nor the apparent immunity
granted to militantly secular groups that denigrate, diminish, and destroy
what is uniquely Catholic. Neither will it attempt to redress the persecution
of traditional Catholics by the regime of the “progressive” deep-Church
of left-liberal bishops and cardinals — a fact which the Vatican resolutely
refuses to recognize, even while it instigates it. This burlesque called
the Synod on Synodality is merely an organ of the disaffected
ecclesiastical apparatus that unquestionably initiated it to promote
its own liberal agenda.
Let us consider
only the first question (we will be exploring the others as well) submitted
to the “participants”:
Question 1:
We presume that
this is not a gratuitously salacious question. Why, we must ask, would
our emotions and feelings, our … arousals … be
of any significance to the state and mission of the Church in the world
today… and all its members?
Is this really what the Catholic Church should
be attending to
?
My
desires and emotions, my feelings and my arousals?
... instead of the salvation of my immortal soul? The inappropriately
intimate language used is almost startling. In fact, the question
could be lifted right out of an erotic novel:
“let’s talk about our desires,
explore our feelings, delve
into our emotions … and see
if they arouse us.”
Indeed, the
word “arousal” in used twice in two succeeding sentences!
Just as the author of Heal me with your Mouth, the Art of Kissing,
by
Cardinal Victor Fernández is understood to be, in large part, “credited”
with the infamous and scandalous Exhortation Laudato Si,
The Joy of Love — a title unquestionably borrowed
from the widely known and erotic 1962 illustrated manual The Joy
of Sex, by Alex Comfort — it is not difficult to see the same
mind at work in these opening questions.
It would be absurd
to suppose that there is no collaboration whatever between Francis and
his close friend and advisor, whom he recently appointed to a post far
beyond his native capacity. The Dicastery for the Doctrine of the
Faith has always been a post requiring the deepest intellectual
credentials as well as the most profound Catholic faith, neither of
which is exemplified in Fernández. He is decidedly pedestrian in his
résumé and certainly not sterling in his faith. But … he is “tight”
with Jorge, his fellow-countryman. and has always counted on him in
an imbroglio when his own resources have been depleted. This alone
says much about both Bergoglio and Fernández and the common vision they
share.
Unfortunately, it
says even more about this “Synod”
that they have conceived and collaborated in. And it does not bode well
for the Church which, as a result of the decisions, policies, and agenda
of Francis and his collaborators in de-Catholicizing the Church, has
brought it to the brink of schism.
“Synod on Synodality”
Part 2:
“What
Constitutes a “Synod on Synodality?”
Geoffrey K. Mondello
Editor
Boston Catholic Journal
