Is Satan leading the Synod?

One of the major ploys of Satan is to take a truth and distort it. In Eden he took the truth that we are made in God’s image and likeness and twisted it to have Adam and Eve seek likeliness to God in the espousing of absolute autonomy: “You can be like God and know right from wrong”. In presenting autonomy to Adam as likeness to God, Satan had Adam follow a lie into suffering and death. Today, Satan is taking the truth that God is merciful to have us accept not simply the sinner but the sin.

Let us be brutally honest: from reports coming from the Synod, many at the highest levels of the Church seem to have been deceived by Satan; they are advocating ‘new directions’ outside of Gospel truth. Having taken on board modern, person-centred psychology in which “what is right for me is right” reigns, they are ditching Gospel Truth as ‘rigid’ and ‘lacking in mercy’, yet the mercy they talk of is one which means not judging the act or situation –which is a false mercy, for true mercy judges the act in order to save the person.

Sadly, Francis is not calling them back but seems to be encouraging their new direction, hinting that their idea of mercy is the work of a ‘God of surprises’. In reality, they are not asking us to be surprised by God; they are asking us to ignore God and His Divine Law. Francis has likened those who defend The Faith to those who wished to stone the woman caught in adultery; he implies they have no understanding of God’s mercy and are like the rigid doctors of the law. But they do understand mercy; they have read that Gospel passage to the end where Our Lord warns to woman, ‘go, and sin no more’.  If this Synod continues to focus on only half of the Gospel; on mercy without repentance and amendment of life (which we all have to engage in) it preaches a distortion of the Gospel and does the work of Satan. Those who promote this false mercy are steering toward the wide road that leads to perdition, and taking souls with them. To be sure, Francis can be read as upholding the Faith, but he does appear to engage in double-speak as a matter of course, for while he affirmed doctrine in his homily at the opening Mass of the Synod, he still asked the Synod Fathers to be surprised by God and allow the Holy Spirit to lead us into new ways of living out the Faith (labelled as mere ‘disciplinary changes’). The man-in-the-street, however, can see the idiocy and danger of saying we believe one thing yet doing another: “I believe in gravity, but I wish to fly and believe I can fly, so jumping of the Dome of St Peter’s will not harm me”.

Here is a surprise for those advocating a new style of mercy: nothing is impossible to God. A ‘No-thing’, a contradiction, is impossible to God. God cannot draw a square circle, and He cannot unite Himself to sin either. What we need from this Synod is not ways of admitting those in objectively sinful situations to the Holy of Holies, but ways to help marriages and the family stay a stable and strong light in this God-forsaking world. As this Synod progresses we faithful Catholics are called to act as in the days of the Arian Crisis and raise our voices in favour of orthodoxy. As Edmund Burke said, ‘all that is required for evil to flourish is that good men do nothing’. Let us be faithful instruments of the Holy Spirit, who protects the Deposit of Faith given by Christ. Let us raise our voices in defence of The Truth so that Satan does not hoodwink the prelates of the Church and lead them -and us- astray.