Even though they missed out on the red hat, three of Australia’s bishops remain happy to carry water for the Synod.
One of them is Shane Mackinlay, bishop of Sandhurst, who is representing the Bishops Conference at the Synod in Rome. According to McKinley, Fiducia Supplicans was a direct result of the Synod. He told a press conference that although the Pope didn’t act synodally by issuing the heretical document, that’s fine by him:
“As with many things Pope Francis has done in the last year, he did not wait for the final document. He has already responded to things that were raised in the discussions and in the final report last year.”
This is despite the Pope stating that he would absolutely not be making a decision on same-sex unions before the second Synod sessions.
According to Mackinlay, “Fiducia supplicans is a significant step forward … and then I think those of us from the West are not so surprised that in some other parts of the world it is received differently and has a different kind of priority.”
Yes, it is received differently because ‘in some parts of the world’ the Bishops are actually Catholic! Mackinlay is so popular in Rome that he was elected for the second time as the Oceania representative for the Commission for the Final Document of the Synod – quite the appointment.
Another Synod apparatchik is Archbishop Timothy Costelloe, no stranger to these pages. As Archbishop of Perth and president of the Australian Catholic Bishops’ Conference, Costelloe is completely onboard with the Synod’s agenda of re-imagining Catholicism. He couldn’t hide his enthusiasm for heterodox novelty when he told Vatican News that it was great to have priests, women, and lay people usurping to role of the Bishops by being given full voting rights instead of having a ‘back row seat’.
“It shows us the equality and unity of all. Unity is communion of mind and heart, of spirit and action, and of faith at the service of the Church’s evangelising mission.”
This ‘unity’ is nowhere to be found either at the Synod or outside of it, of course. The persecution of traditional Catholics and the clamouring voices of dissenters from the Faith are evidence of that.
Archbishop Costelloe also explained that the so-called ‘conversation in the spirit’ “serves to free oneself from prejudices. The Synod must convert us from a competitive approach to a spirit of listening because in this way it will be of real and effective help to the Pope.”
He posed a few more rhetorical questions: “Should the Synod office be restructured in favour of the local Churches? If so, how? And could the reports become documents to be published?”
Now, don’t worry too much if you don’t have the answer to these questions. Something tells me that the Synod Fathers (and Mothers) already have the answers – pencilled in from Day 1.
The third Australian Synod mouthpiece is Anthony Randazzo, Bishop of Broken Bay diocese, who seems to have mastered the art of verbally giving with one hand while taking with the other.
One the one hand, Randazzo criticises those who are ‘obsessed’ by the issue of women’s ordination. But look at the reasons he gives as objections to it:
“Those issues become all-consuming and focusing for people, to the point that they then become an imposition on people who sometimes struggle simply to feed their families, to survive the rising sea levels, or the dangerous journeys across wild oceans to resettle in new lands.”
The Catholic Diocese of Broken Bay website reports that while Randazzo has ‘no problem with the topic of women’s ordination being discussed and studied at the Synod’, he thinks it should be poor women and not wealthy, well-educated ones who call for it. What? So now the disobedient notion of ordaining women is only wrong when it is attached to white privilege?
Maybe someone needs to tell His Grace that the Amazonian women are way ahead of the curve. They are already receiving a para-liturgical blessing from their Cardinal before beginning their ‘ministry’ of distributing the Sacraments.
How anyone can think this matter was not laid to rest in the past with an infallible statement is beyond me.
Ecclesiastical Freemasonry 