September 12, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) – Cardinal Raymond
Burke and Bishop Athanasius Schneider are calling on Catholics to pray and
fast to combat the “serious theological errors and heresies”
they identify in the controversial working document for the impending Amazon
Synod.
Burke and Schneider released an eight-page statement warning
of six such heresies contained in the document, or Instrumentum Laboris,
which is the source for discussion by the Synod of Bishops taking place
in Rome October 6-27.
They encourage a 40-day crusade of prayer and
fasting beginning on September 17 and ending on October 26, the day before
the synod concludes.
“The theological errors and heresies, implicit and
explicit in the Instrumentum Laboris of the imminent Special Assembly of
the Synod of Bishops for the Pan-Amazon, are an alarming manifestation of
the confusion, error and division which beset the Church in our day,”
the two prelates say in the statement.
“It is our duty to make the faithful aware of some
of the main errors that are being spread through the Instrumentum Laboris,”
they stated, adding that the working document is “long and is marked
by a language which is not clear in its meaning, especially in what regards
the deposit of faith (depositum fidei).”
The prelates’ statement calling for the crusade of
prayer and fasting is dated September 12, and covered in a report from Edward
Pentin of the National Catholic Register.
Burke, patron of the Sovereign Order of Malta, and Schneider,
auxiliary bishop of Astana, Kazakhstan, are both well-regarded among Catholics
for their steady defense of the faith despite all but continual attacks
directed at them for upholding it.
They encourage Catholic clergy and laity to “pray daily at least one
decade of the Holy Rosary and to fast once a week” during the crusade.
Pray to combat theological errors
and heresies
They ask that the prayer and fasting be directed
toward the intention “that the theological errors and heresies inserted
in the Instrumentum Laboris may not be approved during the synodal assembly.”
Additionally, they ask “particularly” for prayer that Pope Francis,
“in the exercise of the Petrine ministry, may confirm his brethren
in the faith by an unambiguous rejection of the errors of the Instrumentum
Laboris.”
The synod’s Instrumentum laboris was released in June and draws heavily
from Francis’ encyclicals Evangelii Gaudium and Laudato si.’
Will the synod undermine Church
teaching?
The Synod and its working document have been
criticized over a number of issues, which Burke and Schneider lay out in
their declaration, supporting their arguments with Church documents, the
Catechism, and Scripture.
Titled Amazonia, New Paths for the Church
and for an Integral Ecology, the document and synod, it is feared, will
be used to undermine Church teaching in a number of areas and to advance
radical ideas incompatible with Catholic doctrine.
There are also general concerns over some
of the document’s authors and others overseeing or otherwise influencing
the synod with regard to fidelity to Church teaching.
“Various prelates and lay commentators,
as well as lay institutions, have warned that the authors of the Instrumentum
Laboris…have inserted serious theological errors and heresies into
the document,” state Burke and Schneider.
‘Heretical’ and an ‘apostasy’
Cardinal Walter Brandmüller, one of the
two remaining dubia cardinals, issued a stiff critique of the Instrumentum
Laboris in June, terming it “heretical” and an “apostasy”
from Divine Revelation. Brandmüller called on Church leadership to
“reject” it with “all decisiveness.”
‘False teaching’
In a statement this past July Cardinal Gerhard
Müller, former Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the
Faith (CDF), denounced the Instrumentum Laboris as well for its “radical
u-turn in the hermeneutics of Catholic theology” and for its “false
teaching.”
Müller said that same month that the Amazon Synod is “a pretext
for changing the Church.”
An ‘apostasy’
In an interview last month Burke had said
the Instrumentum Laboris is an “apostasy.”
Asked if the document may become “something definitive or authoritative
for the Church,” Burke responded, “It cannot be. The document
is an apostasy. This cannot become the teaching of the Church, and God willing,
the whole business will be stopped.”
Burke and Schneider also ask Catholic to pray
for the intention that Pope Francis “may not consent to the abolition
of priestly celibacy in the Latin Church by introducing the praxis of the
ordination of married men, the so-called ‘viri probati’, to
the Holy Priesthood.”
‘The Church has no authority
whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women’
The threat to priestly celibacy by way of
the synod is of great concern to Catholics, along with an attempt to establish
a female “diaconate,” regarded widely as a strategy to push
for women “priests” – an impossibility given the Church
has no authority to ordain women as Christ chose only men as his apostles.
In his 1994 encyclical Ordinatio Sacerdotalis,
the late Pope Saint John Paul II affirmed Church teaching on the matter,
stating, “I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to
confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively
held by all the Church's faithful.”
The working document suggests discussion of
a married priesthood with the priest shortage in the Amazon as rationale.
The list of errors
Among the errors listed by Burke and Schneider
is “implicit pantheism” which identifies God as one with the
universe, or regards all gods on the same level.
“The Magisterium of the Church rejects
such an implicit pantheism as incompatible with the Catholic Faith,”
they state.
The second error identified is that “the
pagan superstitions of the Amazon tribes are an expression of Divine Revelation
deserving an attitude of dialogue and acceptance on the part of the Church.”
The third concerns the document’s advance
of “Intercultural dialogue instead of evangelization.”
“The Instrumentum Laboris contains the
erroneous theory that aboriginal people have already received divine revelation,
and that the Catholic Church in the Amazon should undergo a ‘missionary
and pastoral conversion,’” Burke and Schneider write, “instead
of introducing doctrine and practice of universal truth and goodness.”
They further add, “the Instrumentum
Laboris says also that the Church must enrich herself with the symbols and
rites of the aboriginal people.”
“The Magisterium of the Church rejects
the idea that missionary activity is merely intercultural enrichment,”
they say.
And fourth, Burke and Schneider list, “An
erroneous conception of sacramental ordination, postulating worship ministers
of either sex to perform even shamanic rituals.”
Fifth, the prelates say that in keeping with
“its implicit pantheistic views, the Instrumentum Laboris relativizes
Christian anthropology, which recognizes the human person as made in the
image of God and therefore the pinnacle of material creation (Gen 1:26-31),
and instead considers the human a mere link in nature’s ecological
chain, viewing socioeconomic development as an aggression to ‘Mother
Earth.’”
And lastly they say the working document puts
forth “a tribal collectivism that undermines personal uniqueness and
freedom,” that is, along with the other errors, rejected by the Magisterium.
All Catholics must be informed and
pray
Burke and Schneider write that no one is excused
from “being informed about the gravity of the situation and from taking
appropriate action for love of Christ and of His life with us in the Church,”
and that “all the members of Christ’s Mystical Body, before
such a threat to her integrity, must pray and fast for the eternal good
of her members who risk being scandalized, that is led into confusion, error
and division by this text for the Synod of Bishops.”
The prelates invoke the Blessed Mother’s
intersession along with that of other Catholic missionary saints to protect
Pope Francis and the bishops taking part in the Amazon Synod from “the
danger of approving doctrinal errors and ambiguities, and of undermining
the Apostolic rule of priestly celibacy.”
