Friday 9 October 2015

Is Satan leading the Synod?

One of the major ploys of Satan is to take a truth and distort it. In Eden he took the truth that we are made in God’s image and likeness and twisted it to have Adam and Eve seek likeliness to God in the espousing of absolute autonomy: “You can be like God and know right from wrong”. In presenting autonomy to Adam as likeness to God, Satan had Adam follow a lie into suffering and death. Today, Satan is taking the truth that God is merciful to have us accept not simply the sinner but the sin.

Let us be brutally honest: from reports coming from the Synod, many at the highest levels of the Church seem to have been deceived by Satan; they are advocating ‘new directions’ outside of Gospel truth. Having taken on board modern, person-centred psychology in which “what is right for me is right” reigns, they are ditching Gospel Truth as ‘rigid’ and ‘lacking in mercy’, yet the mercy they talk of is one which means not judging the act or situation –which is a false mercy, for true mercy judges the act in order to save the person.

Sadly, Francis is not calling them back but seems to be encouraging their new direction, hinting that their idea of mercy is the work of a ‘God of surprises’. In reality, they are not asking us to be surprised by God; they are asking us to ignore God and His Divine Law. Francis has likened those who defend The Faith to those who wished to stone the woman caught in adultery; he implies they have no understanding of God’s mercy and are like the rigid doctors of the law. But they do understand mercy; they have read that Gospel passage to the end where Our Lord warns to woman, ‘go, and sin no more’.  If this Synod continues to focus on only half of the Gospel; on mercy without repentance and amendment of life (which we all have to engage in) it preaches a distortion of the Gospel and does the work of Satan. Those who promote this false mercy are steering toward the wide road that leads to perdition, and taking souls with them. To be sure, Francis can be read as upholding the Faith, but he does appear to engage in double-speak as a matter of course, for while he affirmed doctrine in his homily at the opening Mass of the Synod, he still asked the Synod Fathers to be surprised by God and allow the Holy Spirit to lead us into new ways of living out the Faith (labelled as mere ‘disciplinary changes’). The man-in-the-street, however, can see the idiocy and danger of saying we believe one thing yet doing another: “I believe in gravity, but I wish to fly and believe I can fly, so jumping of the Dome of St Peter’s will not harm me”.

Here is a surprise for those advocating a new style of mercy: nothing is impossible to God. A ‘No-thing’, a contradiction, is impossible to God. God cannot draw a square circle, and He cannot unite Himself to sin either. What we need from this Synod is not ways of admitting those in objectively sinful situations to the Holy of Holies, but ways to help marriages and the family stay a stable and strong light in this God-forsaking world. As this Synod progresses we faithful Catholics are called to act as in the days of the Arian Crisis and raise our voices in favour of orthodoxy. As Edmund Burke said, ‘all that is required for evil to flourish is that good men do nothing’. Let us be faithful instruments of the Holy Spirit, who protects the Deposit of Faith given by Christ. Let us raise our voices in defence of The Truth so that Satan does not hoodwink the prelates of the Church and lead them -and us- astray. 

10 comments:

  1. This is a clear and courageous reflection.

    Thank you Father; and may God bless you for publicly speaking the truth in love.

    Love from Alan and Angeline

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  2. You are right Fr Gary, the servants of the Truth, at this Synod, now consider themselves the masters of it. Consecrated men from below discussing and dialoguing with the Truth that comes to them and world from above. Wow! And, these servants of the Master and his Bride even entertain, under the guise of mercy and compassion voting on it. These consecrate servants need to be taught that the faith is not shaped by what they think or believe to be reasonably or pastorally possible, but by what God has made possible through, with and in Christ.

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  3. Well said, Fr. What I find difficult to comprehend is that men who have been raised to the rank of the episcopate or higher, seem to think that the same Holy Spirit who inspired the words of Scripture found in Matt 5 and Matt 19 etc. will subsequently change His mind about what is true and lead the Church in a totally different direction.

    Christ's teaching was just as counter-cultural then as it is now. The sins we are tempted to do now are exactly the same as they were tempted to do then. Doesn't this belief in a "God of surprises" who can do a 180 degree flip in His commandments to us reflect a very immature, anthropomorphic understanding of God? It is the kind of faith one might expect to see in a 5 year old - not a man.

    If God can permit us to have leaders who are so easily fooled by Satan in such basic ways, it seems we are being gravely punished indeed. Can this madness get any worse?

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  4. Something we don't hear is that God gives graces with every Sacrament, Marriage included. Marriage is presented as impossible to 'live.' Surely this is false? We have gone a very long way from the truths of our Catholic Faith.

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  5. I hope there are many many more priests like you father. I know we are going to be small in number. Saddly the general public and many catholic faithfull are ignorant of what is happening in the world and to our faith.... to them we are going to seem like the bad guys and the schismatics but it is rome who are seperating themselves from the true faith. I dont think God accepted Pope Benedict XVI resignation

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  6. I have decided to wait until the end of the Synod to comment. Mark you there is unlikely to be any "end " as such . After all time as well as Gradualism is amongst the main weapons of the Modernist Heretics. They have been at after all since before Leo XIII, more than 150 years.

    Having said that, of course Satan is behind all attacks on the One , Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church

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  7. If it walks like a duck...

    Anything that comes from this Synod that is in direct contradiction to what is written in the Bible and/or spoken from the lips of Christ or violates the 6th and/or 9th Commandments any Catholic who knows their Faith can't really be expected to follow along, can they??? The Bible is revealed Truth, can the Synod really change all that???

    I fear many Faithful Catholics are going have to make a choice - God or Man - if the German Episcopate and the company of Kasper & Marx LLC get their way.

    God, please help us!

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  8. Great clarity. It's time to raise you to the episcopacy!

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    Replies
    1. He is more likely to be excommunicated.

      Frankie and Vinny's has no table for Fr Dickson, or I suspect most of his readers.
      He and we will be tolerated for a while. But certainly not promoted.

      (my very impolite reference to Vinny may not be obvious to anyone outside England &Wales, and relates to Cdnl Vincent Nichols. Frankie. unfortunately you all know).

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  9. This was written over a hundred years ago:

    “The Newer Vainglory”
    Two men went up to pray; and one gave thanks,
    Not with himself - aloud,
    With proclamation, calling on the ranks
    Of an attentive crowd.

    "Thank God, I clap not my own humble breast,
    But other ruffians’ backs,
    Imputing crime - such is my tolerant haste -
    To any man that lacks.

    For I am tolerant, generous, keep no rules,
    And the age honours me.
    Thank God, I am not as these rigid fools,
    Even as this Pharisee."

    (Alice Meynell)

    You are so right about truth being corrupted and twisted. Secular humanism has entered the blood stream of the Church and is poisoning it. Faithful Catholics have to fight this disease.

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