(Article by Raymond Wolfe republished from LifeSiteNews.com)
With his recent elevation of San Diego’s Cardinal Robert McElroy, Pope Francis has now appointed half of all cardinal electors from the United States. His four other American cardinals share McElroy’s decidedly liberal bent: Cardinal Joseph Tobin of Newark, New Jersey; Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago; Cardinal Wilton Gregory of Washington, D.C.; and Cardinal Kevin Farrell, the prefect of the Dicastery for the Laity, Family and Life.
The five men, mostly little-known bishops before the Francis papacy, are now among the most powerful in the Church, boasting a long list of curial appointments and control over two of the most prominent sees in America. Each of them has alleged connections to ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, whom Pope Francis reportedly consulted on episcopal appointments. Any of them could be the next pope.
In addition to their newfound influence, the Pope’s liberal American cardinals have a radical agenda that aims at nothing less than revolution in the Church. Their vision, much of it rooted in Francis’ controversial apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia, includes dismantling the Church’s understanding of sin and conscience, overhauling Catholic teaching on homosexuality and the family, entrenching LGBT activism within the Church, and shielding homosexual abusers while crushing the faithful Catholic priests and laity who stand in their way.
The cardinals apparently see a major opportunity in Pope Francis’ Synod on Synodality, which Cardinal Gerhard Müller, the former prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, recently described as a “hostile takeover of the Church.”
They won’t prevail over the Bride of Christ, of course. But for now, they’re doing what they can to mold the Church – and millions of souls – according to their anti-Catholic, pro-LGBT designs. Below is an in-depth look at their perverse agenda.
Cardinal Cupich’s Amoris Laetitia revolution
At the center of the cardinals’ agenda is Amoris Laetitia, which underpins their homosexual activism, dismissal of doctrine, and push to give Communion to unrepentant adulterers and homosexuals.
Cardinal Cupich in particular has promoted Amoris Laetitia as a revolution in Catholicism that changes the Church’s centuries-old understandings of conscience, doctrine, and sin.
The Chicago cardinal immediately saw Amoris as a “game changer,” including for how the Church deals with two of liberals’ major obsessions: homosexuals and divorced couples living in “public and permanent adultery.”
In a lecture at Cambridge’s Von Hügel Institute in 2018, Cupich presented Amoris Laetitia as a “new paradigm of catholicity” that he said forces a “paradigm shift” in the Church.
According to Cupich, this “shift” involves a new understanding of conscience in which people can “discern” that God is calling them to remain in sin, or, in Cupich’s euphemistic wording, “at some distance from the Church’s understanding of the ideal.”
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Cardinal Cupich delivers a lecture on Amoris Laetitia as a “new paradigm of catholicity” (Credit: Von Hügel Institute for Critical Catholic Inquiry/YouTube)[/caption]
He cited highly controversial paragraph 303 of Amoris Laetitia, which claims that conscience can recognize that a situation is “objectively” wrong but that God does not necessarily require someone to avoid it due to a “concrete complexity of one’s limits.”
“In other words, the voice of conscience, the voice of God … could very well affirm the necessity of living at some distance from the Church’s understanding of the ideal,” Cupich said. “It is hard to overstate the significance of this hermeneutical shift.”
Indeed, in Cupich’s view, Catholic doctrine – “the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints” – is now apparently defective and secondary to so-called “self-revelation.”
Traditional teachings can no longer “preemptively be applied” to people’s “particular challenges” after Amoris Laetitia, Cupich said. The Church’s whole ministry must be transformed into “accompaniment” of individuals as they “discern” for themselves how to act, even if that means contradicting Catholic teaching.
Communion for sodomites and adulterers
For Cupich, these principles pave the way for a sacrilegious agenda that includes giving Holy Communion – the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Jesus Christ – to known sodomites and adulterers who come to the “decision” in their conscience that God is impossibly calling them to live in sin and profane Him in the Eucharist.
Asked how he would “accompany” divorced and remarried couples seeking the sacraments, Cupich responded, “If people come to a decision in good conscience, then our job is to help them move forward and to respect that. The conscience is inviolable and we have to respect that when they make decisions, and I’ve always done that.”
He took the same approach to homosexuals: “I think that gay people are human beings too and they have a conscience. And my role as a pastor is to help them to discern what the will of God is by looking at the objective moral teaching of the Church and yet, at the same time, helping them through a period of discernment to understand what God is calling them to at that point.”
Cupich expressed a similar position upon the release of AL and later affirmed that he would not deny either the sacraments or Christian burials to unrepentant homosexuals. “It’s not up to any minister who is distributing the Eucharist to make a decision about a person’s worthiness or lack of worthiness. That’s on the conscience of those individuals,” he has said.
A liberal renegade for decades, Cupich doesn’t care that his “revolution” contradicts Catholic tradition and canon law. As canon law still makes clear, and as Pope St. John Paul II reiterated in Ecclesia de Eucharistia, those who have been “obstinately persevering in manifest grave sin are not to be admitted to Holy Communion.” Homosexual acts are most certainly “manifest grave sin,” as is adultery. The Catechism of the Catholic Church specifically notes, echoing St. John Paul II in Familiaris Consortio, that the divorced and remarried “cannot receive Eucharistic communion” without complete continence.
In fact, John Paul II’s landmark encyclical on moral teaching, Veritatis Splendor, almost exactly describes and condemns Cupich’s “paradigm shift,” rejecting attempts “to legitimize so-called ‘pastoral’ solutions contrary to the teaching of the Magisterium, and to justify a ‘creative’ hermeneutic according to which the moral conscience is in no way obliged, in every case, by a particular negative precept.” (56) Such a position attacks “the very identity of the moral conscience” and “diverges” from the tradition and teaching of the Church, the saintly pope declared.
Not just Cupich’s revolution
But Cardinal Cupich’s heterodox Amoris Laetitia revolution isn’t just his. The rest of Pope Francis’ American cardinals share his great interest in Amoris Laetitia and have aligned themselves with his interpretation of it.
Besides Cupich, the Pope’s other U.S. cardinals have overwhelmingly embraced giving Holy Communion to adulterous couples and homosexuals who reject chastity.
In 2018, Cardinal Farrell joined Cupich to organize a series of conferences on Amoris Laetitia at dissident Catholic colleges across the U.S. that featured talks by Cardinal Tobin, then-Archbishop Gregory, and then-Bishop McElroy. The conferences followed an Amoris Laetitia seminar organized by Cupich in 2017 that was attended by Farrell, Gregory, and McElroy.
In an address at Villanova University in 2018, Tobin echoed Cupich’s Von Hügel speech, praising Amoris Laetitia as a “paradigm shift” like the Second Vatican Council. McElroy, perhaps Cupich’s closest ideological ally, launched a diocesan synod about Amoris Laetitia within months of the document’s release in 2016. He’s made no secret about his desire for revolution as well, and recently called for a “transformation” of the Church and changes to “reformable doctrine.”
Besides Cupich, the Pope’s other U.S. cardinals have overwhelmingly embraced giving Holy Communion to adulterous couples and homosexuals who reject chastity.
Farrell slammed then-Philadelphia Archbishop Charles Chaput in 2017 for saying that divorced and remarried couples could not receive Communion without sexual continence. McElroy has also endorsed a “pathway of conscience” for adulterers to “discern” whether “God is calling them to return” to the Eucharist. Gregory and Tobin have hinted at similar stances.
Regarding active homosexuals, McElroy has insisted that he, like Cupich, would not deny them the sacraments or Christian burials. That approach “is the appropriate policy that I would hope the priests would observe,” he told the dissident National Catholic Reporter. “Our fundamental stance has to be one of inclusion in the church.”
Moreover, Tobin, McElroy, and Gregory have all presided over or personally approved LGBT-themed Masses where homosexuals and their sex partners receive Communion.
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Fr. Alexander M. Santora of Our Lady of Grace & St. Joseph promotes his annual “Pride Mass” (Credit: @padrehoboken/Twitter)[/caption]
Cardinal Tobin welcomed an “LGBT pilgrimage” at his cathedral as one of his first acts as archbishop of Newark. The New York Times reported with delight:
But Cardinal Tobin’s welcome to Mass on May 21 has been the most significant of such recent gestures, because of the symbolism of a cardinal welcoming a group of gay Catholics, some of whom were married to same-sex spouses, to participate in the Sacrament of Holy Communion at the center of a cathedral, no questions asked.
“I am Joseph, your brother,” he told the assembled homosexuals at the “pilgrimage,” which was organized by a man in a same-sex “marriage.” Tobin has since approved annual “Pride Masses” celebrated by a dissident priest, Fr. Alexander Santora.
As archbishop of Atlanta, Gregory said Mass for and hosted retreats of Fortunate Families, a pro-LGBT organization founded by activists who reject Catholic teaching on chastity and sodomy.
In 2016, McElroy presided over an LGBT-themed Mass featuring a national drag queen activist who spoke at the event and presented McElroy and his auxiliary bishop (now the bishop of Phoenix) with awards on behalf of a drag queen group.
There’s apparently no shortage of such Masses in Chicago. Cardinal Cupich allows weekly liturgies hosted by an archdiocesan group, AGLO, that affirms LGBT “identities and orientations.” Rotating priests say Mass each Sunday at a Methodist church for the Chicago chapter of DignityUSA, yet another dissident LGBT group.
In June, two homosexuals gave a “Gospel reflection” promoting their sodomitic lifestyle during Mass at Old St. Patrick’s Church in Chicago. The priest who invited them to speak doesn’t appear to have faced penalties and is still listed as a pastor there.
Attacking Catholic teaching on homosexuality
Blaspheming the Eucharist and trying to dismantle Catholic moral theology are unfortunately only the beginning of Cupich and his fellow cardinals’ perverse agenda: They also want an overhaul of Catholic teaching to legitimize homosexuality and so-called “LGBT families.”
The cardinals have repeatedly voiced their antipathy toward Catholic doctrine that homosexual acts and desires are “disordered” and want those teachings changed to something more “inclusive.”
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Cardinal Tobin calls Catholic teaching on homosexuality “very unfortunate” in a 2019 NBC interview (Credit: Complicit Clergy/YouTube).[/caption]
Cardinal Tobin has sharply condemned the Church’s recognition of homosexual behavior as “intrinsically disordered” – a teaching which Sacred Tradition has “always declared.” Tobin blasted that terminology as “very unfortunate language” in a 2019 interview. “Let’s hope that eventually that language is a little less hurtful,” he said.
Cardinal McElroy has attacked the same teaching as “very destructive language that I think we should not use pastorally,” telling the Jesuit America magazine that the Church must instead refer to sodomy with “inclusive, embracing” terms.
Cardinal Gregory has made similar remarks: “The language that the Church uses in speaking of [homosexuals’] sexual orientation is often unwelcoming and condemnatory,” he has said, apparently referring to Catholic teaching that the inclination to sodomy is “objectively disordered.” He further criticized the “severity” of the Church’s “moral language” about homosexuality for allegedly suggesting “that certain members of the Church are superior to others.”
Under Cardinal Farrell, the Dicastery for the Laity, Family and Life has increasingly become a platform for such views. Earlier this year, the dicastery invited Aaron Bianco, a well-known homosexual activist in a same-sex “marriage” and former employee of Cardinal McElroy, to speak at a Vatican conference on Amoris Laetitia. Bianco predictably rebuked Catholic teaching on sexuality and blasphemously claimed that the homosexual orientation comes from God.
Cardinal Cupich, for his part, agrees that the Church should embrace the propaganda terms of the LGBT movement. Homosexuals and gender-confused people, he said, “should be called the way that they want to be called rather than us coming up with terms that maybe we’re more comfortable with.” Cupich specified that “the terms gay and lesbian, LGBT, all of those names that people appropriate to themselves, should be respected.”
After Cupich removed a conservative priest, Fr. Paul Kalchik, from his parish for burning a “pride” flag, the Archdiocese of Chicago refused to say whether the left-wing prelate upholds Church teaching that sodomy is intrinsically disordered.
The cardinals’ views are notably similar to those of the German “Synodal Way,” which demands a “reevaluation” of doctrine on homosexuality and affirms the homosexual orientation as equal to “any other sexual orientation.”
The family under attack
In addition to their attacks on Church teaching against homosexuality, the Francis cardinals have shown their disdain for the Catholic understanding of the family (one man and one woman, married and raising children) and have conflated same-sex relationships with authentic families.
Even before the “Synodal Way,” Cardinal Cupich laid the groundwork for a radical doctrinal shift on the family, again based on Amoris Laetitia.
The “accompaniment” called for by Pope Francis in AL should “inform and shape doctrinal development,” Cupich declared in his Von Hügel lecture. “Doctrine can develop as a result of the Church’s merciful accompaniment of families,” he added, describing this “revolutionary” principle as the “linchpin” of Amoris Laetitia.
Cupich took a shot at the family in the same speech, claiming that “God’s self-revelation” is present among people who don’t “meet the Church’s marital ideals.” He had previously affirmed that homosexuals can be “good parents” and later praised “many positive elements in same-sex relationships.”
The Magisterium actually couldn’t be clearer that same-sex unions are not and cannot ever be families.
At the Vatican’s Youth Synod in 2018, a group moderated by Cupich directly challenged the Church’s emphasis on the traditional family and asserted that “there are many other forms of family other than the nuclear family or the extended family.” The Church should even “accept and even honor” a “family unit” at odds with Catholic teaching, the group suggested.
Cardinal Tobin has also claimed that the Church “is moving on the question of same-sex couples,” and Cardinal McElroy has commended what he has called “loving and familial relationships which enrich the lives” of homosexuals. McElroy’s 2016 synod on Amoris Laetitia called for “embracing LGBT families” as part of “a spirituality of family life which is deeply inclusive.” The San Diego bishop, long at the front line of leftism in the Church, has endorsed same-sex adoption for decades.
Before last year’s World Meeting of Families, the undersecretary of Cardinal Farrell’s dicastery made clear that it too supports “LGBT families” “in the spirit of Amoris Laetitia.” Farrell has hinted at his approval of homosexual unions and recently stated that the Church “doesn’t speak about civil unions” or “other forms of marriage” besides sacramental matrimony when teaching on marriage.
The Magisterium actually couldn’t be clearer that same-sex unions are not and cannot ever be families: “There are absolutely no grounds for considering homosexual unions to be in any way similar or even remotely analogous to God’s plan for marriage and family.”
The cardinals and Fr. James Martin
In their quest to revolutionize the Church’s approach to homosexuality, the Pope’s American cardinals have found a key ally in celebrity priest and Vatican consulter Fr. James Martin, S.J.
The five cardinals, in fact, have all crucially promoted Martin’s pro-LGBT movement and fueled it with their high-level support.
Martin’s heterodoxy is extreme and well-documented: Among other things, the infamous priest has encouraged same-sex “marriages,” insisted that Catholics should “reverence” them as “loving acts,” suggested that Catholic doctrine on the sinfulness of homosexual acts is not “authoritative” and that chastity is not required of homosexuals, and urged homosexuals to kiss during Holy Mass. Like his cardinal allies, Martin has challenged Catholic teaching that homosexuality is “disordered,” as in his pro-LGBT book Building a Bridge, and wants the Church to recognize same-sex unions as “families.” Cardinal Müller has condemned Martin’s activism as nothing short of “heresy.”
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Cardinal Farrell, Cardinal Tobin, and then-Bishop McElroy endorse Fr. James Martin’s Building a Bridge (Credit: HarperOne)[/caption]
When Fr. Martin released Building a Bridge in 2017, establishing himself as a major LGBT activist in the Church, top Vatican cardinals blasted him for obscuring the truth about the grave evil of homosexuality. Cardinal Robert Sarah, then the prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship, identified Martin as “one of the most outspoken critics of the church’s message with regard to sexuality” in a critique of the book.
But at the same time, Farrell, Tobin, Gregory, and McElroy wrote glowing recommendations of Building a Bridge, giving it the appearance of orthodoxy and undercutting Cardinal Sarah and Fr. Martin’s other conservative critics.
Catholic writer Brian Williams noted at the time that Martin “is only one man” but that his writings “carry much more weight” because of the prelates’ endorsements. “They are favored sons of Rome. Each of them. And everyone knows it. Most of all their brother bishops,” he observed. “While we are right to condemn the ‘LGBT ministry’ of men such as Fr. James Martin, it is also important to understand who is really responsible for this revolution.”
Cardinal Cupich has heaped praise on Martin as well and, along with Gregory, personally invited him to speak in his archdiocese. “I wanted to make sure that I affirmed what [Father Martin] was doing,” Cupich said in 2017, as Martin faced growing backlash from conservative Catholic leaders and institutions. “I wanted to let him know that I supported him.”
Cardinal Farrell’s dicastery later invited Fr. Martin as an honored speaker – alongside Cupich – at the 2018 World Meeting of Families (WMOF), where Martin gave a speech demanding normalization of homosexuality in parishes. The WMOF drew heavily on Amoris Laetitia.
In recent years, Martin has amassed hundreds of thousands of online followers, regularly toured Catholic schools across the country, and even starred in a documentary produced by Martin Scorsese about his dissident “ministry” – in no small part thanks to his friends in the College of Cardinals.
Entrenching homosexual culture in the Church
Though the cardinals have agitated for doctrinal change, it may not be happening as quickly as they would like, as Cardinal Tobin has suggested. In the meantime, they’re entrenching their agenda in the Church in other ways, including by cultivating LGBT activism within their dioceses and letting homosexuals infiltrate the priesthood despite the Vatican’s ban.
Soon after taking control of the Diocese of San Diego, McElroy named homosexual activist Aaron Bianco as his “LGBT ministry” coordinator and installed him in a parish where he led youth outreach and parish programs, spread dissident propaganda, and targeted faithful Catholics. The parish has continued the LGBT activism that Bianco started since he left.
McElroy also publicly backs ordaining homosexuals as priests as long as they say that they’ll be celibate. The Vatican formally prohibits ordaining men who “present deep-seated homosexual tendencies or support the so-called ‘gay culture,’” but McElroy has ignored Vatican directives about homosexuality before.
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Cardinal McElroy (far right) celebrates Mass with Cardinals Gregory (far left) and Cupich (center) (Credit: SDCatholics/YouTube)[/caption]
Tobin, like McElroy, hired an avowed LGBT activist for a major diocesan position. In a bombshell 2018 report by Catholic News Agency (CNA), six anonymous priests of the Archdiocese of Newark testified to an ongoing homosexual “subculture” under his leadership. The cardinal had made headlines earlier that year for accidentally tweeting a romantic text around the time that he housed an Italian actor in his rectory.
In Gregory’s Atlanta, after a priest was caught in a homosexual affair, Gregory restored him to active ministry three years later while allowing Fr. Henry Gracz, his “spiritual guide” for abuse victims, to march in “pride” parades and go to homosexual clubs. Gracz’s parish, the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, hosted a “meet-up” for New Ways Ministry, a Vatican-blacklisted LGBT group, while Gregory served as archbishop. It currently advertises a “pride” parade and an “LGBTQIA+” potluck.
Gregory’s record hasn’t been much better in Washington, where several parishes, including the Biden family’s Holy Trinity Church, proclaim the false gospel of LGBT ideology.
The Chicago archdiocese has been a hotbed of LGBT activism under Cardinal Cupich.
As bishop of Dallas, Farrell promoted and protected a priest, Fr. Arthur Mallison, involved in an infamous pornographic website for homosexual priests. Farrell left Mallison in active ministry until parishioners created a media firestorm. In 2016, Farrell endorsed a Dallas-area LGBT organization associated with New Ways Ministry over the Church-approved apostolate Courage to the indignation of local Catholics.
And in Chicago, when a priest “came out” as a “proud” homosexual, Cardinal Cupich allowed him to continue as a parish priest, though Cupich immediately ousted Fr. Kalchik. He also has yet to take action against a “married” lesbian campus ministry director at a prominent Chicago Catholic high school.
Indeed, the Chicago archdiocese has been a hotbed of LGBT activism under Cardinal Cupich. AGLO, the archdiocesan LGBT group, has promoted blatant homosexual obscenity in recent years, and Old St. Patrick’s operates another dissident “LGBTQ+ ministry” at one point led by a man in a same-sex “marriage.” New Ways Ministry lists 14 “LGBTQ-friendly parishes” in Chicago and several more in the surrounding area.
In 2017, 2018, and 2019, Gregory, McElroy, and Cupich gave back-to-back keynote speeches at annual conferences of the Association of U.S. Catholic Priests (AUSCP), a network of liberal priests that has encouraged ordaining homosexuals and women.
Unsurprisingly, the cardinals also do virtually nothing to satisfy their “grave obligation” to ensure adherence to the Catholic faith in institutions – particularly schools – in their dioceses. Nominally Catholics universities in San Diego, Chicago, Washington, and New Jersey aggressively promote abortion, LGBT ideology, and even satanism with no repercussions.
Those institutions, moreover, continue to enjoy the patronage of the same prelates supposed to hold them accountable. One of the worst offenders, Chicago’s Loyola University, recognizes student groups that advertise drag queen shows and “pride” parades. But Cupich still chose it as the location for a conference earlier this year with Tobin and other liberal prelates. The University of San Diego pays for “sex change” surgeries and abortions, but McElroy has been happy to speak and celebrate Mass there nonetheless.
Protecting abusers, punishing the faithful
While promoting pro-LGBT activists and clerics, the cardinals have all covered up or dragged their feet on homosexual and pederastic abuse:
- Cardinal Cupich waited weeks to remove a seminary rector caught with homosexual child pornography and didn’t report him immediately to police, giving the priest time to discard evidence. Afterward, Cupich helped obstruct sex abuse reform at the U.S. bishops’ 2018 conference with now-disgraced Cardinal Donald Wuerl.
- Cardinal McElroy covered up allegations of pederastic abuse by a priest in his diocese, according to accusers and lawyers, in addition to McElroy’s other abuse scandals.
- Cardinal Gregory was held in contempt of court for failing to release the records of a since-laicized priest accused of abusing numerous boys and a girl, and withheld documents about the priest from a civil review board. A jury later awarded one of the priest’s male victims $6 million.
- Cardinal Farrell served as auxiliary bishop and vicar general to ex-Cardinal McCarrick while McCarrick was archbishop of Washington. The two even shared a residence together. Farrell has insisted that he was “shocked” by the revelations of McCarrick’s serial abuse – a claim that priests and observers have found hard to believe. Farrell, formerly a prominent member of the Legionaries of Christ with alleged ties to the order’s predatory founder, has also been criticized for mishandling of clerical abuse in Dallas, including for failing to report an abusive priest to law enforcement after removing him from ministry.
- Cardinal Tobin has faced criticism for withholding information about predatory priests and leaving them in active ministry. The archdiocese has reportedly kept credibly accused priests off of its official list. After 2018 CNA report, it revealed that one priest identified by CNA as an alleged abuser was later deemed “fit for ministry.”
The cardinals’ sympathy toward LGBT activists and frequent leniency on homosexual abuse makes a sharp contrast with their approach to conservative Catholics and Latin Mass devotees in particular.
Cupich and McElroy have strenuously denied that homosexuality is linked to the clerical abuse crisis, despite evidence that the vast majority of priestly abuse in recent decades (and a massive amount of abuse in their dioceses) has been perpetrated against young, largely adolescent, males. For Gregory and Tobin, too, the problem isn’t homosexuality but “clericalism.”
The cardinals’ sympathy toward LGBT activists and frequent leniency on homosexual abuse makes a sharp contrast with their approach to conservative Catholics and Latin Mass devotees in particular.
Since Pope Francis announced restrictions on the traditional liturgy last year, Cardinals Cupich, Gregory, and McElroy have vaporized several flourishing Latin Mass parishes against the cries of Catholic families. Cupich, a longtime opponent of traditional worship, well went beyond Francis’ restrictions, banning the Latin Mass on Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost and requiring written permission to celebrate Mass ad orientem. Gregory adopted a similar policy despite overwhelming opposition from his clergy and the pleas of a recently widowed mother of seven.
At the same time, the Francis cardinals have taken aim at orthodox priests, including Chicago’s Fr. Kalchik and Fr. Richard Bu?, San Diego’s Fr. Richard Perozich, and Newark’s Fr. Peter West. Cardinal Cupich last year ordered all priests in Chicago to get the abortion-tainted COVID-19 injections or face “disciplinary action.” No religious exemptions were granted.
Synodality: The end game?
The cardinals’ means to achieve their broader revolutionary goals is apparently “synodality,” another fixation of the Francis papacy and the theme of the Pope’s Synod on Synodality.
Synodality is Pope Francis’ “long-game” to remake the Church and “will require changes on how we do and are church,” Cardinal Tobin claimed last year. He slammed Catholics critical of the approach as guilty of “heresy.”
According to Cardinal McElroy, “synodality demands sustained and unrelenting action” to effect “transformation” in both the Church and society. The Pope’s synodal process, McElroy has said, seeks “nothing less than a recasting of the culture of the church that will endure for generations.” “The deposit of faith is not an inert and abstract body of teaching,” he ominously wrote.
Cupich has ambitious hopes for synodality as well and has described it as a “reform” that “penetrates throughout the Church”:
A process that merely changes policies, even if it is the fruit of the finest acts of collegiality, is not enough. It is the conversion of men and women throughout the entire Church — parents and priests, catechists and religious, parish leaders and bishops — and the conversion of ecclesial cultures on every continent that we must seek.
In his Von Hügel lecture, he defined a “genuinely synodal Church,” as one with “no hierarchical distinction between those with knowledge and those without,” or, in other words, one in which laity shape doctrine.
Their views align closely with those of Pope Francis and Synod leadership. The Pope has described the goal of the Synod on Synodality as creating “a different Church,” and top synodal officials have indicated that it may lead to significant changes to the Church’s teaching and structure.
The Newark archdiocese’s synodal report also highlighted calls for doctrinal change, including on contraception, LGBT ideology, and women’s ordination. Reports from Chicago and San Diego included hostility to Catholic teaching on sexuality, and the synodal report of the Archdiocese of Washington appeared to describe LGBT households as “families.”
Cardinal Müller has condemned the Synod as an attempt at the “destruction of the Catholic Church.” The success of the initiative and those behind would mean “the end” of Catholicism, the German cardinal starkly warned in a viral interview this month on EWTN’s The World Over.
He stressed in recent remarks to LifeSiteNews that heretics and dissidents won’t win in the end, however. “Jesus will defeat all errors in the Church,” Cardinal Müller said.
But in the meantime, he lamented, “so many individuals can lose their faith.”
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