September 2019
Cardinals Burke and Brandmüller Say Amazon Synod Challenges Deposit of Faith
Two cardinals have sent letters to fellow members of the College of Cardinals, raising concerns about the working document for an upcoming synod of bishops on the pan-Amazonian region.
“Some points of the synod’s Instrumentum laboris seem not only in dissonance with respect to the authentic teaching of the Church, but even contrary to it,” Cardinal Walter Brandmüller wrote to fellow cardinals in an Aug. 28 letter obtained by CNA.
“The nebulous formulations of the Instrumentum, as well as the proposed creation of new ecclesial ministries for women and, especially, the proposed priestly ordination of the so-called viri probati arouse strong suspicion that even priestly celibacy will be called into question,” the cardinal wrote.
Liberation Theologians Push to Overthrow Catholic Doctrine at Amazon Synod
A group of aging priests and theologians associated with Latin American “liberation theology” who are involved in the preparation for Pope Francis’ upcoming “Pan-Amazon Synod” have produced a document arguing for the overthrow of Catholic doctrine in a variety of areas, LifeSite has learned.
The document, called “Towards the Pan-Amazonian Synod: Challenges and Contributions from Latin America and the Caribbean,” was produced in April of this year as a result of a meeting in Bogota, Colombia, by theologians from two organizations promoting liberation theology: “Amerindia,” and “REPAM.” The synod’s working document refers explicitly to the Bogota meeting as part of the preparatory process for the synod. It can be found here in its original Spanish.
German Cardinal Warns About Country Entering Into ‘Schism’
Cardinal Rainer Woelki, the archbishop of Cologne, describes in a new interview his recent visit to the United States, his impressions, and his many conversations with Catholics during his trip. Speaking to the local diocesan newspaper, Kirchenzeitung Köln, Woelki says that he feels “encouraged” by his visit in the U.S., but that also many people showed their concern about the developments in Germany.
“Everywhere I was confronted with concern about the current developments in Germany,” he explains. “In many encounters, the concern was palpable that the ‘synodal path’ leads us onto a German separate path [“Sonderweg”], that we, at worst, even put at risk the communion with the Universal Church and become a German national church.” “Nobody can want this,” Woelki adds, “and so we should take seriously this warning.”
Many of those with whom he spoke in the U.S. “shook their heads” when seeing “that we in Germany seem to be ready willfully to change the deposit of the Faith as it has been entrusted to us, because we demand it so loudly,” the German prelate stated.
Cardinal Woelki’s interlocutors in the U.S. spoke “openly” about the “fear that thereby, it could come to a schism within the Universal Church or even to a schism within the Church in Germany.”
