Twenty Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time
April 2, 2025 Column Father De Celles
OCTOBER: THE ROSARY AND RESPECT LIFE. October is dedicated to both the Rosary and Pro-Life. So this month, pray the Rosary, especially for the Pro-Life cause.
Respect Life. As we have seen, the defeat ofRoe v. Wade has not ended the battle for Life. The forces for Death are taking advantage of tactical missteps by Pro-Lifers in the last year and redoubling their efforts and lies to promote the murder of innocent unborn babies. So we must renew our Pro-Life efforts unabated to defeat laws and candidates supporting abortion.
Life Chain Today. Today, as in the past, over 100 St. Raymond parishioners will join other local pro-lifers lining up on the sidewalk of Franconia Road in front of Key Middle School from 2:30 to 3:30 PM to simply stand peacefully and quietly praying, maybe holding a sign, as a public witness to our respect for the dignity of human life. Please join in. Parking is available at the school, and Pro-Life signs will be available.
Synod on Synodality, Part II. The second session on the Vatican’s Synod on Synodality begins this Wednesday, October 2, and continues throughout the month of October in Rome. The day before, October 1, the participants will take part in a “Penitential Celebration” in presided over by Pope Francis, where there will be public repentance of some very interesting sins, including: “Sin against creation….against migrants…Sin of using doctrine as stones to be hurled…Sin against synodality / lack of listening, communion, and participation of all.”
As you know, I’m a synodal skeptic in general, so I’m particularly interested in hearing more about the “sin against synodality,” especially since no one has actually given an authoritative cogent definition of “synodality.” So I found particularly thought provoking an excellent article by the brilliant Cardinal Gerhard Müller, former Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, recently published on kath.net. Here are some excerpts:
“At the beginning of the Synod on Synodality, which is no longer just a synod of bishops, but a mixed assembly that by no means represents the entire Catholic Church, there is to be a celebration with an act of penance that culminates in repentance for sins newly invented (by humans!).
“Sin is, in its intention, man’s turning away from God and turning to created goods that are worshipped in his place or in material form like pagan idols. We can also sin against our neighbor if we do not love him for God’s sake as ourselves. This also includes selfish exploitation of the earth’s natural goods that God provides to all people as a basis for life. Therefore, we can also sin if we use raw materials, money and data exclusively for our own benefit and to the detriment of others…
“Representatives of the Church of Christ…should act better than its prophetic critics like John the Baptist, who risked his head and said to Herod: “It is not lawful for you…”. Christ died for our sins and reconciled us with God through his cross and resurrection so that we can live well together in peace and love with our neighbors. God our Father gave us the Decalogue and his Son proclaimed the Beatitudes of the Sermon on the Mount so that in his light we can recognize and do what is good and avoid what is evil.
“The catalogue presented with alleged sins against the Church’s teachings, which have been misused as projectiles, or against synodality, whatever one may understand by that, reads like a checklist of woke and gender ideology, somewhat laboriously disguised as Christianity, apart from a few misdeeds that cry out to heaven.
“To deceive the gullible, there are also misdeeds that every Christian should take for granted. Those who are naive may be blinded by the arbitrary compilation of real sins against one’s neighbor and the justified criticism of theologically absurd inventions of those involved in the synod.
“But there is no sin against the teaching of the Church, which is supposedly used as a weapon, because the teaching of the apostles states that salvation is to be found in no one other than the name of Christ (Acts 4:12). And that is why Luke (Lk 1:1-4), for example, wrote his Gospel so that we can be convinced of the “trustworthiness of the teaching” in which we have been instructed in saving faith in Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God. And Paul describes the task of the bishops as guarantors of the traditional teaching of the apostles (1 Tim 6). The teaching of the Church is not, as some anti-intellectuals in the episcopate, who like to invoke their pastoral gifts because of their lack of theological education, believe, an academic theory about faith, but the rational presentation of the revealed word of God (1 Peter 3:15), who wants all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth through the one mediator between God and men: the man Christ Jesus, the Word of God his Father made flesh (1 Timothy 2:4f).
“There is also no sin against a form of synodality that is used as a brainwashing tool to discredit so-called conservatives as yesterday’s men and disguised Pharisees, and to make us believe that the progressive ideologies that led to the decline of the Churches in the West in the 1970s are the completion of the reforms of Vatican II that were supposedly stopped by John Paul II and Benedict XVI. The cooperation of all believers in the service of building the Kingdom of God is in the nature of the Church as the People of God, the Body of Christ and the Temple of the Holy Spirit. But one cannot relativize the episcopal office by basing participation in the Synod of Bishops on the common priesthood of all believers and a papal appointment, thereby implicitly pushing aside the sacramentality of the ordained ministry (the order of bishop, priest, deacon) and ultimately relativizing the hierarchical-sacramental constitution of the Church of divine right (Lumen gentium 18-29), which Luther had denied in principle.
“Overall, the great agitators of the synodal paths and the rampant synodalism are more concerned with acquiring influential positions and implementing their un-Catholic ideologues than with renewing faith in Christ in people’s hearts. The fact that church institutions in formerly entirely Christian countries are crumbling (empty seminaries, dying religious orders, breaking up marriages and families, mass resignations from the church – several million Catholics in Germany) does not shake them to the core. They stubbornly continue to pursue their agenda, which amounts to the destruction of Christian anthropology, until the last person turns off the lights and the church coffers are empty….”
Oremus pro invicem. Fr. De Celles