It is is not official church teaching, he says.

It is a way for bishops to listen to the local church's concerns.

The working document ( also called the Instrumentum Laboris) "isn't a document of the synod, it is for the synod," Hummes told journalists.

"It is the voice of the local church, the voice of the church in the Amazon: of the church, of the people, of the history and of the very earth, the voice of the earth," he said.

Hummes and Cardinal Lorenzo Baldisseri, secretary-general of the Synod of Bishops, responded to a journalist's questions about criticisms against the synod and its working document.

The Vatican-based synod, which began on Sunday and will continue for most of this month, will focus on "Amazonia: New paths for the church and for an integral ecology."

In June, German Cardinal Walter Brandmuller published an essay in which he accused the synod's working document of being heretical.

This is because it refers to the rainforest as a place of divine revelation, he wrote.

He also criticized the synod for its plans to get involved in social and environmental affairs.

Other critics, U.S. Cardinal Raymond Burke and Auxiliary Bishop Athanasius Schneider of Kazakhstan, voiced similar accusations in a released on 12 September.

In this, they cited "serious theological errors and heresies" in the synod's working document.

In response, Baldisseri said, "if there is a cardinal or a bishop who does not agree, who sees that there is content that does not correspond (to church teaching), well then, in the meantime I would say that it is necessary to listen and not judge because it isn't a magisterial document."

Baldisseri explained while he believes everyone should be free to express their disagreement, he also thinks it is inappropriate "that a judgment should be made about a document that isn't a pontifical document.

"This is just a working document that will be given to the synod fathers," he said.

"And that will be the basis to begin the work and build the final document from zero. It's also known as a ‘martyred document.'"

Hummes said the synod's working document arose from the church's desire to listen to the local church in the Amazon.

"The church didn't do it for the sake of doing it to only ignore them," he daid.

"No! If it was done, it was so that (the church) could to listen to them. This is the synodal path: to seriously listen."

Source

• Catholic News Service
• Image: America Magazine

According to Brandmüller's essay, the synod's recently-published preparatory document "burdens the Synod of Bishops, and finally the Pope, with a grave breach with the depositum fidei, which in its consequence means the self-destruction of the Church or the change of the Corpus Christi mysticum into a secular NGO with an ecological-social-psychological mandate." Read more

The Archdiocese of Palermo has published the formal decree concerning Minutella's "latae sententiae" excommunication.

In canon law, once certain crimes are committed, they are punished latae sententiae, or "automatically," by force of the law itself.

According to the Code of Canon Law, those who are excommunicated are forbidden from:

• participating in the Eucharist or other ceremonies of worship celebrating the sacraments or sacramentals and receiving the sacraments;
• exercising any ecclesiastical offices, ministries, or functions or placing acts of governance.

The notification of the decree of excommunication issued in regard to Father Alessandro Maria Minutella, published by the Archdiocese of Palermo, says:

"On November 13, 2018, Father Alessandro Maria Minutella was notified of the Decree of August 15, 2018 (Prot. No. 046/18) by which the Archbishop Corrado Lorefice DECLARES the excommunications latae sententiae, which the same priest has incurred for the crime of heresy and for the crime of schism, as required by canon law (cf. can.1364 §1 CIC), with all the consequences arising from the same measure."

In 2015 Archbishop Michele Pennisi of Monreale issued a public warning to the faithful that they risked "grave danger to their souls" by listening to Minutella.

He said Minutella was suspected of manipulating parishioners with his prophesies and "seriously posed a risk to the genuine popular devotion to the Madonna, angels and saints."

Minutella, who says he thinks Pope Francis an antipope and claims to have communications with angels, saints and Our Lady, describes his preaching as the "true" Catholic doctrine.

He says anyone who follows Francis is a heretic.

Source

• The Washington Post
• Vatican News
• Image: Gloria TV

He says they will be excommunicated from the church.

Brandmüller is one of the four "dubia" cardinals who has repeatedly asked Pope Francis to provide doctrinal clarity about some elements of Amoris Laetitia.

He was responding to comments by German politician Annegret Kramp-Karrenbaue.

Kramp-Karrenbaue, who is the General-Secretary of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), told the Die Zeit newspaper on 10 May: "It is very clear: women have to take positions of leadership in the church."

She also said although she hoped for the ordination of female priests, a more realistic goal might be to concentrate on a "female diaconate."

Brandmüller says the question of female priests was authoritatively ruled out by Pope John Paul II.

In his opinion, the persistent demand for female priests, celibacy, intercommunion and remarriage after divorce will not bring about a revival of Catholics as is expected.

He notes that the German Evangelical Church - "where all these demands have already been actually fulfilled" - shows that "such demands have had the effect of emptying out the churches."

He also reminded Kramp-Karrenbauer (who is widely regarded as the frontrunner to succeed Angela Merkel as German Chancellor) that the Catholic Church is not "a human institution" but a community of those who believe in Jesus Christ, and it is "founded through the Sacraments."

Brandmüller pointed out that the Church lives according to the "forms, structures and laws as given to her by her Divine Founder about which no man has power [to change] - also no pope and no council."

He commented that it is "astonishing" that certain themes were being kept alive within the German Church.

In his view they are "always the same: female priesthood, celibacy, intercommunion, remarriage after divorce. Just recently there has been added the Church's ‘yes' to homosexuality."

Source

• Catholic Herald
• The Tablet
• Image: OnePeterFive

In a new book, Augustinian Fr Gabriel Daly examines the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith's 2012 silencing of Fr Tony Flannery and its suspending him from ministry.

Flannery, a Redemptorist, had written in "Reality" journal that Jesus didn't intend the kind of system that is the modern Catholic Church.

"I no longer believe that the priesthood, as we currently have it in the Church, originated with Jesus," Flannery wrote.

Daly told The Tablet, however, that these views "are both theologically and historically unexceptionable".

"His attackers have simply failed to reckon with his qualification ‘as we currently have it in the Church'."

Daly added that it was "abundantly clear" that today's Catholic Church is very different from the gathering of disciples around Jesus.

His new book, The Church: Always in Need of Reform, will put the case for reforming the CDF and will discuss the "meaning of reform in the light of some theological principles and insights".

It is due to be published later this year.

Daly said the CDF seems intent on claiming that everything in today's Church is consonant with the will and intentions of Jesus.

"I can do no more than point out that this cannot be historically true," he said, adding that much depends on one's interpretation of development.

Flannery wrote on his website that the CDF's former prefect Cardinal William Levada once told him during a visit to Ireland that he was "formally in heresy".

But his order has received no notification of this, he wrote.

Flannery stated there is no justification for banning him from ministry, adding that his order is afraid to stand up to the CDF, even though "Pope Francis has created the climate in which this is very possible".

In 2012, former Irish president Mary McAleese labelled as "dreadful" the way the CDF treated Flannery and several other Irish priests who had been investigated.

Sources

• The Tablet
• Tony Flannery.com
• Irish Examiner
• Image: Catholic Ireland

Contrary to what many believe, the Spanish Inquisition did not target Protestants or people who had been Jewish or Muslim from birth. Rather, it was concerned with the issue of heresy and apostasy in Spain. According to the Catechism, "Heresy is the obstinate post-baptismal denial of some truth which must be believed with divine and catholic faith, or it is likewise an obstinate doubt concerning the same; apostasy is the total repudiation of the Christian faith." (CCC 2089) In the 1300s there were many Jews in Spain who had converted to Catholicism, called "conversos," who were believed to have committed apostasy by returning to the practice of Judaism. James Michener points this out in his book Iberia:

"So far as I was able to ascertain, no Jew was ever executed by the Inquisition. If a man under investigation could say simply, ‘Yes, I'm a Jew and have never been otherwise,' his gold and silver were confiscated and he was banished from Spain, but he was in no way subject to the Inquisition and certainly he was never burned. The Jews who did suffer, and in the thousands, were those who had at one time been baptized as Catholics, had been legal Catholics and had committed apostasy by reverting to Jewish practices. These were rooted out with great severity, but when they were burned, it was as Catholics, not as Jews."(1) Continue reading

Sources

• Vassallomalta
• Image: Firmus et Rusticus

In his short tenure as pope, despite what many see as a conservative ideology in matters of faith, he has already taken some admirable stands on major issues. Having grown up poor, he has condemned world leaders for their failure to take care of their poorest citizens, calling for stringent market controls, which have been supported by leaders as diverse as Chancellor Merkel and U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders. He recently asserted that atheists are worthy of redemption. According to some reports, he has also supported the use of contraceptives, a long-standing controversial issue within the Church.

For all the criticism faced by the Catholic Church for being a ‘backwards ideology,' there is a great deal to admire, even if I find myself not always agreeing - their adamant pro-life stance alongside their equally prominent stands against war and the death penalty, show a strong regard for human life. It is also easy today to forget the longstanding tradition of great artwork that the faith has inspired, Michaelangelo, Botticelli, DaVinci, or the Church's significant contributions to the sciences, supporting the studies of Roger Bacon, of Copernicus, and Mendel.

Also significant and largely overlooked, are their positions on protecting the environment and the theory of evolution, which the Church fully supports, upholding that the teachings of science are fully compatible with their theology. Continue reading

Sources

• James Sullivan in The Clyde Fitch Report
• Image: The Telegraph