Bishops Irresponsible

The names of the Bishops in each of the synodical groups is to be witheld "to show forth the spirit of the Synod, which is a spirit of communion".

The duty of bishops when they are gathered together in councils or synods is, above all, to bear open witness to the Deposit of Faith which, handed openly down through the Apostles, they and their respective churches have each received, so as to teach it authoritatively and openly, each of them from his own cathedra. By these means, the world will know, from the open harmony of all the successors of the Apostles, what Christ's truth is.

When the Bergoglianists tried a dodge like this once before, Cardinal Mueller protested. He declared, so very rightly, that the People of God had the right to know what their Bishop was teaching.

I am having trouble thinking of anything more corrupt and corrupting than this crude attempt so to manage gatherings of bishops that they can be manipulated into consenting to error, or appearing to do so.

The history of Councils established criteria by which it could be known whether conciliar deliberations and decisions are to be regarded as valid. Blessed John Henry Newman, characteristically, visited this area of historical theology in the nervous aftermath of Vatican I (Ker pp 654sqq).

Since a 'synod', even if backed by a pope, clearly has less authority than an Ecumenical Council, we need to revisit this topic now. All the more so because of the preposterous recent Bergoglianist claim that synodical statements, provided the pope likes them, come to us with the guarantee of the Petrine Magisterium.

Has Newman's phrase for the ultrapapalists of his own time "an aggressive insolent faction" ever been more true than it is in the context of today's realities? But Newman also wrote "We have come to a climax of tyranny". I find this both sobering and curiously comforting. Today, with its woes, is not the first time that the Catholic Faith has been under lethal attack from a corrupt hyperpapalist establishment. God has always sent an Athanasius or a Newman.