Synod Off To A Hell Of A Start

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I do mean usage of the word "hell", for that will be the fruit of the proceedings of this synod for some.  Just think!  We're only in the first day!  My friend Carol at "What Did the Pope Really Say?" has an analysis of Pope Francis' homily at the opening Mass.  Read it and pray.

Then we had some of the invited speakers stand before the assembled bishops and celebrate the mortal sin of sodomy being committed by the son of friends.  The Catholic News Service, arm of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, gave an account of the blasphemous talk.  Read it and be appalled: appalled that a gathering of bishops would actually sit through a lecture on the "virtue" of affirming a young man in a mortally sinful lifestyle.  Be appalled that (apparently) not one bishop, that is, a successor to the Apostles, would think to rebuke the speakers for celebrating heinous mortal sin.  Every bishop should have stood in outrage and driven that couple from the stage and into a confessional for daring to preach mortal sin to them.

As I was reading this, I thought this might be slop that one might expect to see in the Not-At-All Catholic Reporter or maybe America.  Why?  It portrayed the sin of sodomy and the dereliction of the man's parents in a sympathetic light.  However, this "ode to sodomy" comes to us courtesy of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.  We all know this synod is all about changing "pastoral practices".  We are getting an unabashed forecast of how the USCCB plans to change "pastoral practices" in the US.  Two lents ago, we at St. John Neumann in Gaithersburg MD  received an even earlier premonition of the same, when Father Guarnizo was punished for rightfully withholding Holy Communion from a flagrantly practicing lesbian.

Speaking of same-sex perversions, guess what else happened today?  The Supreme Court decided not to hear complaints of several states whose same-sex marriage bans were overturned.  That clears the way for same-sex marriage on the civil fronts - just what the Pirolas were trying to do at the Vatican today.  But of course that's just a coincidence!  Right??