June 2019
Cardinal Brandmüller: Synod Doc is ‘Attack on the Foundations of the Faith’
Cardinal Walter Brandmüller has firmly criticized the working document of the upcoming Amazonian Synod, saying “decisive points” are “heretical” and that it constitutes an “attack on the foundations of the faith.”
In a June 27 commentary the president emeritus of the Pontifical Committee for Historical Sciences also said the document “burdens” the Synod of Bishops with a “grave breach” of the deposit of faith which he believes will either result in the Church’s “self-destruction,” or reduce her to a “secular NGO with an ecological-social-psychological mandate.”
The German cardinal began his critique, published jointly at LifeSiteNews and Kathnet, by calling it “truly astonishing” that the synod, which takes place in Rome Oct. 6-27, deals exclusively with a region whose population is “just half that of Mexico City.”
He added this leads to “suspicion concerning the true intentions” of the synod, “which are to be implemented in a clandestine fashion.” He also questioned the “understanding of religion, of Christianity, and of the Church” given the basis of the working document, called an instrumentum laboris, published June 17.
‘Declaration of Truths’ Seeks to Affirms Key Church Teachings
Cardinal Raymond Burke and Bishop Athanasius Schneider are among a small group of cardinals and bishops to sign a “declaration of truths” reaffirming key Church teachings at a time they describe as “almost universal doctrinal confusion and disorientation.”
Published on June 10, Pentecost Monday, and entitled “Declaration of the Truths Relating to Some of the Most Common Errors in the Life of the Church of Our Time,” the eight-page document reaffirms the Church’s perennial teaching on a range of key doctrines, from the Eucharist and marriage, to capital punishment and clerical celibacy.
The document is the latest in a series of declarations, filial petitions and corrections from bishops, academics, priests and laity concerned about the ambiguity of teaching and associated confusion that have arisen during the current pontificate.
In an explanatory note, the signatories state the declaration, dated May 31, has been written “in the spirit of fraternal charity” and as a “concrete spiritual help” so that clergy, religious and laity are able to confess “those truths that in our days are mostly denied or disfigured.”
