Just as I predicted — but to no one’s great surprise — Francis got what he wanted from the Synod on Youth and Blah, Blah, Blah. At the very beginning of the Final document’s 25,000 words, 55 pages and 167 paragraphs of blah, blah, blah, made available to the Synod Fathers only in Italian, read to them aloud before they were rushed into voting on the Synod’s last day, we read the following (translations by LifeSite News)
- It is important to clarify the relationship between the Instrumentum laboris and the Final Document. The former is the unitary and synthetic reference framework that emerged from the two years of listening; the second is the fruit of the discernment carried out and brings together the generative thematic nuclei on which the Synod Fathers concentrated with particular intensity and passion. We therefore recognize the diversity and complementarity of these two texts….
There we have it: the Instrumentum Laboris (IL), with its incalculably destructive reference to “LGBT youths” who “decide to create homosexual instead of heterosexual couples and, above all, would like to be close to the Church” (¶ 197) is now to be considered “complementary” to the Final Document, even though the Synod Fathers, led by the fiercely resistant African bishops, refused to permit incorporation of the term “LGBT” in the Final Document itself. Recall that Cardinal Lorenzo (‘the Book Thief”) Baldisseri, the Synod’s Secretary General, falsely claimed that the “LGBT” reference in the IL was merely carried over from the final document of the preparatory meeting of “young people” before the Synod, when in fact it appears nowhere in that document.
The likely next step in this scam will be for Francis to rubber-stamp the Final Document — to which, no doubt, will be appended the IL as a “complementary” text, and then declare the entire mass of verbiage part of the “Magisterium of the Successor of Peter” according to his own novel declarations in Episcopalis Communio.
Just to make certain the idea of “LGBT youth” is smuggled into the fake Magisterium that Francis has concocted, the following additional verbiage appears in the Final Document in connection with a misleading reference to a declaration by the CDF (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith) under John Paul II:
“150. There are questions concerning the body, affectivity and sexuality which require a deepened anthropological, theological and pastoral elaboration, to be carried out in the most appropriate ways and at the most appropriate levels, from the local to the universal. Among these, those relating in particular to the difference and harmony between male and female identity and to sexual inclinations emerge. In this regard the Synod reaffirms that God loves every person and so does the Church, renewing its commitment against all discrimination and violence on a sexual basis. It also reaffirms the decisive anthropological relevance of the difference and reciprocity between man and woman and considers it reductive to define the identity of persons solely on the basis of their ‘sexual orientation’ (CONGREGATION FOR THE DOCTRINE OF FAITH, Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons, October 1, 1986, no. 16).”
Note the phrase “It [the Synod]… considers it reductive to define the identity of persons solely on the basis of their ‘sexual orientation’,” citing the CDF document. But the CDF completely rejected any role of “sexual orientation” in a person’s identity, declaring that “the Church… refuses to consider the person as a ‘heterosexual’ or a ‘homosexual’ and insists that every person has a fundamental Identity: the creature of God, and by grace, his child and heir to eternal life.” The Final Document, dishonestly citing the CDF instruction (approved by John Paul II), now falsely implies that “sexual orientation” is part of one’s identity even if not solely what defines it. The homosexual camel now has its nose under the tent.
At the conclusion of the Synod, Francis uttered the now routine nonsense that this sham was a work of the Holy Spirit: “We have made the document, we have studied it, we have approved it. Now the Holy Spirit gives us the document to work in our heart… It was the Spirit at work here.”
I will have much more to say on the Final Document in subsequent columns and on the pages of Catholic Family News. For now, suffice it to say that only one word describes the claim that this sham of a Synod, a product of human connivance and human error, is a work of the Holy Ghost. The word is blasphemy.
Chris Ferrara