Devolved Authority for Diabolical Division

Following the Pope’s statement about his intention to decentralise authority from Rome to the Episcopal Conferences, many faithful Catholics see a dangerous weakening of the entire Church.

When I trained in counselling the tutors would ask us to assess one another in role play (and later in real sharing between ourselves) so that we could tell the ‘counsellor’ where they were good or bad in their use of skills and theory. Taking the non-judgemental ideology seriously I would describe the ‘counsellors’ interventions as ‘helpful’ or ‘unhelpful’ rather than ‘good’ and ‘bad’. I apply this to my comments on Pope Francis too, since we cannot read his soul and cannot know his motivation; we can only judge his actions as good/helpful or otherwise -and one has to say they are ‘otherwise’. In fact the idea of devolved authority is downright damaging to the unity of the Church and to the integrity of Doctrine, and as such can be pleasing only to the devil, Freemasons, Communists and catholics who have lost their faith in Divine Revelation and the Church and wish to see the Church become a  house divided, which cannot stand (Mk.3v25).

The way Our Lord determined to preserve the unity of the Church was through the Petrine Ministry; the Rock (Matt.16v18) who was to confirm the brethren in the Faith (Lk.22v32) as their supreme shepherd (Jn.15v15-17), so when Francis speaks of decentralising authority he cannot complain if he is described as doing the enemy’s work. Devolution to national Churches is not however, a new thing; it began many decades ago and we were softened up for it by the abandoning of Latin as the universal language in favour of diverse national languages. Truly, IMHO, the loss of Latin was the writing on the door to disunity. Today, Francis is trying to open that door. Let us pray that the Holy Ghost, working through orthodox Bishops, priests and laity will enlighten him and remind him that he does not own the house of God; that he is merely its caretaker, and that his responsibility is to defend the holy edifice, not hand it over to the enemy.

Make no mistake about it, devolution will destroy the Church. Not only will Truth be abandoned in favour of ‘local circumstances’ (localised relativism of areas or groups of persons such as adulterers, active homosexuals and paedophiles) but even practical day to day unity will be broken as English, American, Australian and the rest of the Anglophone world determine their own translation (paraphrases) of the Roman liturgy -if they agree to use it at all.

Truly, the idea of devolving authority to Episcopal Conferences is pure Protestantism, even when the idea comes from Rome herself.