NEWS:  December 2, 2013
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Bird’s Eye View of the News

Atila Sinke Guimarães
ANTICIPATING THE RESULTS OF THE VATICAN REFERENDUM   -  Today, December 2, 2013, is the deadline for the Bishops around the world to submit the results of their surveys to the Vatican, so it can prepare the agenda for the 2014 Synod of Bishops, which will be held in October. As it has already been noted on TIA’s website, this consultation is directed straight to the faithful and addresses hot issues related to marriage - pre-marital cohabitation, contraception, Communion for divorced and remarried Catholics, homosexual “marriage,” among other topics.

The questionnaire was devised under the supervision of Archbishop Lorenzo Baldisseri, General Secretary of the Synod, and the answers will be sent to him to be analyzed. Baldisseri was handpicked by Francis to transform the Church Synod into a much livelier organ than it has been so far.

The role of the Synod

Paul VI established the Synod of Bishops (1965) in order to foster democracy in the Church. He intended the Synod to be the Lower Chamber of the Church with deliberative powers, while the Higher Chamber would be the College of the Cardinals. An Assembly of Laymen was also planned to play an important advisory role in the governing process of the Church.

a statue of Paul VI

The Roman Curia prevented Paul VI from establishing democracy in the Church

With these two or three chambers operating, the Pope would become a “constitutional monarch” instead of the King he had been for centuries. Thus, the Church would abandon her essential monarchical structure to assume the airs of a modern republic. (1)

That revolutionary intent of Paul VI met with the inertia of the Roman Curia, which represented thousands of years of monarchical training in Church government. In practice, the Curia managed to “forget” Paul VI’s plan for an influential Lay Corps, maintained the College of the Cardinals with the same functions it always had, and froze the initiative of the Synod of Bishops. The latter became nothing more than a sleepy bureaucratic gathering without any deliberative power.

This healthy monarchical inertia continues to this day, blocking many progressivist plans to reform the Church. Against this obstacle Francis established his outside Council of Cardinals to institute change. The first organism to be reformed, of course, is the Roman Curia, which the Pope is demoralizing as much as he can: “The Curia is the leprosy of the Church,” he recently asserted in an interview to La Repubblica.

To meet the first revolutionary aim for the Synod of Bishops is the task of Archbishop Baldisseri, who, by the way, is also secretary of the mentioned Council of Cardinals.

A sample: the English poll

Baldisseri’s questionnaire was sent to all the Bishops with instructions to obtain the largest number of answers possible. Following these orders, the Bishop Conferences in many countries posted the survey on the Internet to reach more Catholics than it could through any written mailing.

What answers are the Bishops receiving? Since we do not have access to the actual replies to the questionnaire, the only way to surmise their content is to ask if any similar query has been made recently, and then look at those answers. And yes, we have at hand the results of recent polls made among Catholics in England on similar topics. These surveys were directed by Linda Woodhead, professor of sociology of religion at Lancaster University, and were reported by the author in an article published in The Tablet of London (November 9, 2013, pp.12-13).

Three surveys, which polled 1,672 Catholics, were conducted between January and June of this year. I will select the points related to the Bishops’ query.

A preliminary datum: Just  one-third of the Catholics polled attend Mass every week; another one-third attend it once a year; a final third hardly or never attend Mass.

Contraception:
  • Only 9% of Catholics said that they feel guilty when using contraceptives; the number was 12% among the churchgoers.
Pre-marriage cohabitation:
Archbishop Baldisseri

Arch. Lorenzo Baldisseri made the questionnaire and will interpret its answers

  • Only 20% of Catholics felt guilty about living in this situation;

  • Only 25% disapprove of non-married couples raising children;

  • Almost 90% agree that an unmarried couple with children constitutes a family;

  • The same percentage accept the idea that a single-parent household with a child constitutes a family;

  • More than 50% think an unmarried couple without children constitutes a family.
Same-sex couples:
  • 48% of Catholics believe same-sex “marriage” is wrong;

  • Of these, however, only 44% are against the State allowing same-sex “marriage;”

  • More than one third disapprove of same-sex couples raising children;

  • 75% of Catholics believe that a same-sex couple with children constitutes a family;

  • Less than 50% think the same about same-sex couples without children.
According to these polls, there is a marked difference of opinions between Catholics with more than 40 years of age and those who are younger. The older ones still maintain the Church doctrine in many points, especially those older than 60. But the younger do not.

We know that Linda Woodhead may have included biases in the framing of the questions and the conduction of the polls in order to offer a more progressivist picture than the reality. The responses she got make me suspect that her questions were sentimental, inducing the answers she wanted to receive.

Notwithstanding these reservations, no one who follows the growing apostasy in the Church can expect much different responses either in England or in any other country. Thus, generally speaking, the results she presented have the appearance of truth.

Most probably, the Vatican is receiving answers similar percentage-wise to those of the English polls.

Entering the fraud-ridden democratic system

The fact that many episcopates put their questionnaires on the Internet to be accessible to the greatest possible number of Catholics has a fundamental flaw regarding objectivity.

Francis wears a baseball cap

Francis jumped into the modern democratic system only to be stuck in the mud of fraud

The Bishops exposed their final results to a high margin of fraud. Indeed, how was it possible for them to verify that only Catholics were answering their questions? It seems to me that any sworn enemy of the Church - Communism, Freemasonry, Judaism, Satanism, Protestantism, etc. - could have sent thousands of people to answer those questions as if they were Catholics, and no Bishop could verify whether they were or not. Also, the Progressvists themselves could have arranged for their numerous followers to answer the questions multiple times under different e-mail addresses in order to force the poll to move in the direction they wanted.

Thus, in its first steps on the road of democracy, the Vatican chose a path that left itself wide open to fraud. Ironically, this is taking place at the same time the entire West is fed up with the fraudulent democratic elections that are placing communist and socialist tyrants as heads of our countries in order to destroy them. So, the newly “democratic” Vatican of Pope Francis jumped in this swamp only to get stuck in the same mud of fraud.

No doctrinal, but ‘pastoral’ changes

Besides Archbishop Baldisseri, another shining star of the “synodality” (or democratization) to be applied to the Church is Arch. Bruno Forte. He will be the secretary of the coming Synod being prepared by Baldisseri.

In a press briefing held November 5, 2013, Forte emphasized the “pastoral slant” of the questionnaire and the decisions the Church will make based on its answers. He said: “It is not, therefore, a matter of debating doctrinal questions, but rather … how to effectively proclaim the Gospel of the family in the times we are living, characterized by a clear social and spiritual crisis.” (National Catholic Reporter, November 22, 2013, p. 8)

In other words, we will see “pastoral” measures that will show more and more Church tolerance toward immoral and anti-natural behaviors. At the same time, the Vatican will “guarantee” that no change is being made in doctrine.

It will be another manifestation of hypocrisy and contradiction between theory and practice in Catholic Morals, so frequent in these post-conciliar times (check here, here and here).

  1. I present in detail the plan to destroy the monarchical character of the Church and how it has been executed in my book Animus Delendi I, chapters III and IV.
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