By Fr. Gerald E. Murray
The Catholic Church is accustomed to attacks against its teaching. The history of heresies throughout the centuries reveals the incessant efforts of those who seek to replace Catholic doctrine with various errors. What the Church has only recently begun to grow accustomed to is attacks against its teaching coming from some of its own shepherds, especially the incessant pronouncements emanating from the office of the Synod of Bishops.
The latest imposition from the Synod is the recently published full endorsement of the homosexual lifestyle in the Final Report of Study Group Number 9: «Theological Criteria and Synodal Methodologies for the Shared Discernment of Emerging Doctrinal, Pastoral, and Ethical Issues».
This report attempts to discard the Catholic teaching on the inherent immorality of homosexual acts—and the disordered nature of the homosexual inclination—by stigmatizing said teaching as the expression of an obsolete «paradigm» in which one can no longer trust to communicate God’s will to his people.
The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines paradigm as «a philosophical and theoretical framework of a scientific school or discipline within which theories, laws, and generalizations, as well as the experiments performed in their support, are formed». Describing Catholic teaching using the analogy of a framework upon which theories and experiments are arranged degrades it from the realm of truth to being just one possible approach to presenting God’s revelation. Jesus said: «I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life» (Jn 14:6). Is that a paradigm that needs improvement?
The report includes two appendices, which are testimonies in the form of interviews. Two Catholic men (the first Portuguese, the second American), each proudly describing himself as married to a man, even though the Catholic Church teaches that such a thing is impossible. Why would the Synod of Bishops publish interviews with men who reject the Catholic teaching on the nature of marriage, inspired as it is by the Holy Spirit, as part of its effort to discern the action of the Holy Spirit in the Church today?
Report Number 9 gives us the answer: the Synod considers so-called homosexual marriage to be an open question:
Finally, in listening to the Word of God lived in the Church, it is necessary to address with parresía the currently recurrent question of whether one can speak of «marriage» in relation to persons with same-sex attractions, equating their relationship to heterosexual conjugal union without recognizing the differences. These include, primarily, the evident impossibility of procreation per se linked to sexual difference, with respect to which medically assisted procreation techniques pose additional difficulties.
Even worse, Report Number 9 considers that all of Catholic teaching is subject to change:
The mission of the Church is not a matter of abstractly proclaiming and deductively applying principles that are established in an immutable and rigid manner, but of fostering a living encounter with the person of the Risen Lord Jesus, coming into contact with the lived faith experience of the People of God in its personal and social relevance, in relation to the various situations of life and the multiple cultural contexts. Only the fruitful tension between what is established in the doctrine of the Church and its pastoral practice and the life practices in which what is established is verified, in the exercise of personal and community life in the light of the Gospel, expresses the generative dynamism of Tradition: against the temptation of sterile and regressive ossification of principles and statements, of norms and rules, regardless of the experience of individuals and communities.
Can «the lived faith experience of the People of God» override the doctrine of the Faith? Welcome to the ecclesiastical embrace of «liquid modernity», in which metaphysical realism is discarded and the dictatorship of relativism and subjectivism submits everything to redefinition.
What is at stake, as is clearly understood, is the overcoming of the theoretical model that derives praxis from a «packaged» doctrine, «applying» general and abstract principles to the concrete and personal situations of life. The task, therefore, is to rediscover a fruitful circularity between theory and praxis, between thought and experience, recognizing that theological reflection itself proceeds from experiences of «good» inscribed in the sensus fidei fidelium.
The Synod has become the officially sponsored agent of destruction of Catholic doctrine by the Holy See, which is scorned and discarded as deductively established immutable and rigid principles—sterile, regressive, and ossified statements—as «packaged» doctrines that are nothing more than abstractions and theories.
In their place, we need to listen to «concrete and personal life situations» because «theological reflection itself proceeds from experiences of ‘good’ inscribed in the sensus fidei fidelium (sense of the faith of the faithful)».
The testimony of the American homosexual Catholic man (Jason Steidl, author of LGBTQ Catholic Ministry, Past and Present, whose photograph appeared on the cover of The New York Times with his «husband» being blessed by Fr. James Martin, S.J. the day after the publication of Fiducia supplicans), gives a clear idea of where the Synod believes theological reflection based on personal experience will lead the Church:
My sexuality is not a perversion, a disorder, or a cross; it is a gift from God. I have a happy and healthy marriage and I am flourishing as an openly gay Catholic. It has taken years of prayer, therapy, and an affirming community to get here, but I thank God for my sexuality and my situation in life… Being an LGBTQ Catholic is not easy, and many days I hurt from the damage the church has caused. But I also have hope. I have witnessed a conversion during Pope Francis’s papacy at the local and universal level of the church, and I hope to help build the Body of Christ that reflects Jesus’s ministry of healing and inclusion.
The Synod’s office has decided to publish the statement of a homosexual lifestyle activist who says: «I know many priests who have been attacked for their support of LGBTQ people… they are hit by the arrows of hatred from homophobia». Is this statement an example of the «sense of the faith of the faithful»? Or a repudiation of Christ’s Faith in favor of immorality?
This destructive subversion sponsored by the Vatican must end now. Souls are in danger from the scandalous false teachings propagated by the Synod. Pope Leo needs to strengthen the brothers in the Faith by putting an end to this poisonous betrayal of God’s truth.
About the Author
Rev. Gerald E. Murray, J.C.D., is a canon lawyer and pastor of St. Joseph Church in New York City. His new book (with Diane Montagna), Calming the Storm: Navigating the Crises Facing the Catholic Church and Society, is now available.