Synodal Onslaught Continues with Cardinal’s Shocking Statements about Priesthood and Spanish Archdiocese Legitimizing Heresies
What we are witnessing, therefore, is not a collection of isolated excesses, but a single, integrated and carefully manufactured crisis.
In recent years, the Catholic world has become saturated with a new ecclesial vocabulary. Words such as listening, dialogue, participation, and above all synodality are presented as signs of renewal and maturity, as though the Church had only now discovered the value of consultation and communal discernment. Yet behind this benevolent language, many of the faithful see the satanic charade for what it is. What is increasingly at stake is doctrinal substance. Truths once received as settled are quietly reintroduced as open questions, and realities once understood as sacramental are reframed as sociological constructs.
In the light of this, this week’s Award for Most Blatant Promotion of the New False Religion is shared by Fillipino Cardinal Pablo Virgilio David and the Archdiocese of Madrid.
These two most recent incidents make the pattern unmistakably clear. The first is the so-called Convivium process launched by the Archdiocese of Madrid. The second is the theological vision of synodality articulated in the aftermath of the Consistory by Cardinal Pablo Virgilio David, as reported approvingly by The Catholic Herald, particularly with regard to authority, priesthood, and the notion of acting in persona Christi. The faithful must realize that these are not disconnected episodes. They are two expressions of a single ecclesial trajectory, one providing the practical experiment, the other the theoretical justification. Together, they reveal a coordinated assault on the Catholic understanding of Holy Orders, hierarchy, and the immutability of the deposit of faith.
The Convivium initiative was presented as a “journey” of “reflection” and “participation” intended to gather the voices of clergy, parishes, consecrated life, and various ecclesial groups within the Archdiocese of Madrid. On the surface, such consultation appears uncontroversial as the Church has always encouraged prudential listening. What renders Convivium unprecedented though is not that it listened, but what it chose to circulate officially as the fruit of that listening.
According to documentation reported by Infovaticana, the Archdiocese distributed a preparatory working document synthesizing more than eight hundred pages of responses. Within this synthesis, certain proposals were highlighted under the disarming heading of “peculiar proposals.” Among them were assertions advocating optional celibacy, a so-called “temporary priesthood,” and, most tellingly, even references to “future women priests.” These were not framed as errors, misunderstandings, or positions incompatible with Catholic doctrine. They were simply presented as noteworthy contributions within a legitimate ecclesial process.
This detail is of cardinal importance. The Church does not operate in a neutral space. When a diocesan authority collects, organizes, and disseminates statements within an official process, it confers upon them an implicit legitimacy. The claim that such ideas will not ultimately be debated misses the point entirely. To include heresy without condemnation is already to normalize it. The faithful are catechized not only by what is taught explicitly, but by what is treated as discussable. In this way, doctrine and revelation is subtly reduced to opinion.
This method is by now tragically familiar. It follows precisely the script of the German Synodal Path, where dissenting positions were first gathered without correction, then presented as the “voice of the People of God” and finally leveraged as moral pressure against the universal Church. In Germany, proposals once described as exploratory eventually hardened into demands: women’s ordination, the blessing of same-sex unions, the restructuring of ecclesial authority. Madrid’s Convivium is not an isolated misstep but a smuggling in of a proven strategy.
At the universal level, the theological framework that renders such processes plausible is being articulated with increasing clarity. Enter Cardinal Pablo David as Exhibit A. His reflections on synodality after the recent Consistory, offer a revealing example. In his remarks, synodality is grounded in “co-responsibility in mission,” with the assertion that the Church “is not Church if we are not in mission.” While superficially compelling, this formulation is nothing but synodalese and subtly inverts Catholic ecclesiology. The Church does not exist because she is on mission; she is on mission because she exists as the Mystical Body of Christ, constituted through apostolic succession and sustained by the sacraments. Mission flows from ontology, not the reverse. Once mission becomes the organizing principle, authority is justified pragmatically rather than sacramentally, and ministry becomes functional rather than ontological.
This inversion becomes even clearer in the repeated denunciation of “clericalism,” a term now invoked and abused with remarkable elasticity. Cardinal David describes clericalism as a mentality arising from ordination itself, suggesting that ordained ministers assume they are meant to “give direction” to the Church. Yet giving direction is precisely what bishops and priests are ordained to do. Their authority is not self-generated, nor delegated from below, but conferred by Christ through the sacrament of Holy Orders. To portray ordination as a structural liability is rebellion disguised as humility and a strategy from the pit of hell.
The most theologically serious claim, however, lies in Cardinal David’s assertion that the ordained do not have a “monopoly” on acting in persona Christi, since Christ includes both head and body and all the baptized share in His dignity! This statement is shocking in the level of confusion it contains and promotes. The Church has always distinguished clearly between the common priesthood of the faithful and the ministerial priesthood, not merely in degree but in essence. Only the ordained priest acts in persona Christi capitis, in the person of Christ the Head, when he offers the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and absolves sins. This is not a metaphorical participation shared equally by all the baptized, but a specific sacramental configuration.
Once this distinction is blurred, the proposals emerging in Madrid cease to appear shocking. If acting in persona Christi is broadly shared, why not women priests? If priesthood is functional, why not temporary? If authority is collective, why not co-governance? The so-called peculiarities of Convivium are not aberrations. They are the logical pastoral consequences of a theology that dissolves sacramental ontology into ecclesial sentiment. And so, the diabolical dots are connected.
60 years of post-conciliar collapse in vocations, discipline, and reverence was caused by an abandonment of tradition and doctrine, and now synodality is the hammer the enemies of Christ use to finally pulverize what is left of the Catholic Faith.
What we are witnessing, therefore, is not a collection of isolated excesses, but a single, integrated and carefully manufactured crisis. In Madrid, heresy is normalized as dialogue. In synodal theology, authority is reframed as an obstacle. In pastoral language, doctrine is reduced to opinion. In sacramental theology, priesthood is reduced to function. You do not need a degree in theology to grasp what is going on.
The Church does not need a temporary priesthood, a consultative magisterium, or a synodal reinvention of doctrine. She needs bishops who guard the deposit of faith rather than curate conversations, priests who know they act in persona Christi capitis, and faithful who refuse to accept that revealed truth is negotiable. To call heresy a peculiarity is already to surrender ground. And history leaves no doubt where such surrender leads: confusion among the faithful and the loss of souls.
Our Lady, Co-redemptrix, pray for us…
Our Lady, Mediatrix of all Graces, pray for us…
Viva Christo Rey!
Also Read:
Ten Reasons Why Cardinal Roche’s Document is Only Good for Lining Your Parrot Cage With
All Christian Life Is Posited on Acceptance of Reality
Why the Consistory Is Officially Just Another Synodal Dumpster Fire — A Short Overview
Video: Radical Fidelity Sits Down With Kokx News & WM Review to Discuss the Future of TLM
“The poison was never forced — it was offered gently, until you forgot it was poison at all”
Mark Twain(?)
As you suggest the Church seems to have no limit to buzzwords. You mention listening, dialogue, participation, communal discernment, journey, reflection. Let's add marginalized, peripheries, special gifts, and always "the Spirit." Words with real meaning, but not as the Church now uses them.