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When the three-week meeting of Catholic bishops from all over the world opened in Rome on October 4 to discuss questions on the family, many Catholics feared that it would undermine the Church’s unchangeable moral doctrine, especially since Pope Francis is so intent on reaching out to immoral modern man. However, traditionally minded Catholics have been encouraged by the emergence before and during the Synod of substantial resistance by many Newchurch prelates to any such undermining. Only tomorrow will the Synod’s results be known, but certain things are clear, whatever those results may be.

Firstly, let nobody say that there is nothing Catholic left in the mainstream Catholic Church. Conciliarism may well have infected the faith and morals of many, even most, of its prelates, but to claim that all of them are utterly corrupt is a gross injustice and over-simplification. Obviously a number of them are doing their best to uphold God’s moral law.

Secondly, however, these (in this respect) good men are fighting from a weak position because dogma is the foundation of morals, and with Vatican II the Newchurch abandoned dogma. Dogma founds morals because, for instance, if God, Heaven and Hell (dogma) do not exist, then why should I obey the Ten Commandments (morals)? And Vatican II by its Declaration on Religious Liberty wrecked dogma because if, as it taught, a State must recognize the right of all its citizens to practise in public the religion of their choice, then Jesus Christ cannot be God, because if he is, then the State, coming from God just as much as all the men composing it come from God, can grant no such right to religions denying that he is God, and for it to grant such a right is implicitly to deny that Jesus is God. Thus 50 years before the Synod, Vatican II undermined in advance all subsequent defenders of Christian morals, however decent as men they may be, unless they repudiate Vatican II.

That is why, thirdly, as John Vennari argues (one need not agree with everything he says), the essential trick of those at the Synod seeking to change Catholic morals has been the “turn towards man” underlying all of Vatican II. Here is the trick: “God’s Church is for man. True, God cannot change, but his Law must fit man, and yesterday’s Law no longer fits today’s man. Therefore that Law must be adapted to modern times.” However the Catholic Church was purchased by the Blood of Christ not to pull God down to man, but to raise man up to God, and to provide him through Christ with the means of being thus raised.

And fourthly, as Michael Voris says (one need not agree with everything he says), the Synod has been full of “bishop babble.” This is because many Newbishops will never have been properly taught Catholic doctrine, in fact they may well have learned that there is no such thing as unchanging truth. Thanks to Vatican II their minds are adrift among the morals and anti-morals of all the religions of the world. It can be no wonder then if they are hardly capable of thinking, and if they run loose at the mouth.

And fifthly, as an honourable colleague from the Society of St Pius X says (he has been criticised before now in these “Comments”), even if the Synod were to close tomorrow with entirely Catholic conclusions, still God’s moral law will have been undermined by the mere fact of its having been questioned on major points for a length of time, officially and in public. Moreover this Synod seems sure to rest even true conclusions not on their objective truth, but on the bishops’ vote, so that the liberals can come back next year or the year after, for one vote after another, until they finally get what they want. Today the voting game belongs to them.

Kyrie eleison.