The next step in eradicating Christ’s instituted priesthood from the Synodal Church is subtly proposed in a final report that was released earlier this week by the General Secretariat of the Synod of Bishops.>The document titled For a Synodal Church: Communion, Participation, and Mission. Study Group No. 4. The Revision of the Ratio Fundamentalis Institutionis Sacerdotalis from a Synodal Missionary Perspective, presented under the banner of forming priests for a “missionary synodal Church,” should raise concerns with those still confusing the Synodal Church with the Roman Catholic Church. What is proposed is not a benign pastoral update or merely a refinement of seminary methodology, but a systematic effort to reinterpret the Catholic priesthood according to categories fundamentally at odds with the perennial doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church. In other words, just another instance of the Synodal Church and its false religion usurping the institutional framework of the Catholic Church.>While the language remains superficially orthodox and carefully avoids explicit doctrinal denials, the cumulative thrust of the document reveals a program of theological reorientation. The priest is no longer primarily presented as one configured sacramentally to Christ the Eternal High Priest, but as a relational functionary emerging “in and from the People of God.” This shift, subtle in wording but profound in implication, strikes at the very heart of the Catholic understanding of the priesthood.

Originally published in Radical Fidelity. Read original article