BRUSSELS (LifeSiteNews) — The bishops of Belgium have proposed female deacons and married priests as top priorities they wish to see discussed at the upcoming session of the Synod on Synodality this coming fall in Rome. The proposals, which are nothing new among liberal bishops, are widely understood among faithful bishops as capitulations to a worldly mindset that rejects both the Church’s male hierarchy and consecrated celibacy.
The proposals come in response to a 2023 instruction by the Vatican that bishops’ conferences throughout the world send comments and reflections on the synthesis report issued at the end of the synod’s first session last October.
Consequently, the Belgian bishops issued a document proposing a “reexamination” of Church doctrine and practice that essentially conforms to the demands of the world. Asking what society, rather than the Gospel, teaches, the Belgian bishops claim that the modern notion of “gender equality” and “the importance of equal opportunities for men and women” requires that the Church “re-read” her Tradition, opening up “pastoral responsibilities” and “a recognized ecclesial (ministry).”
“The question arises as to whether women can also be admitted to the ordained ministry of the diaconate,” they wrote, asking Rome for “the green light for bishops’ conferences or continental episcopal assemblies to take certain measures.”
“Assigning increasing pastoral responsibility to women and the ordination of women to the diaconate should not be universally obligatory or forbidden,” they declared.
READ: Cardinal McElroy: Synod could end link between diaconate and priesthood to allow ‘female deacons’
The push for women deacons has advocates in liberal Cardinals Blase Cupich, of Chicago, and Robert McElroy, of San Diego. The proposal runs contrary to the teaching of the Church that the sacrament of Holy Orders, in all its degrees, the episcopacy, the priesthood, and the diaconate, can only be validly conferred on men because masculinity is part of the very matter and signification of the sacrament, by which the one ordained is configured to Christ as priest and head of His bride, the Church. This universal teaching was affirmed by Pope John Paul II and further clarified by the CDF.
Pope Francis has also affirmed the Catholic teaching that female deacons and female ordination of any kind is not possible, stating that “holy orders are reserved for men.”
READ: Fr. Murray tells Raymond Arroyo ‘women deacons’ would be ‘serious moment of heresy’
In their document, again taking modern culture as their point of departure, the Belgian bishops also proposed a lifting of the obligation of priestly celibacy, a much-touted agenda item of liberal prelates, many of whom are suffering a shortage of vocations. Instead of calling for greater fidelity to Catholic doctrine, morals, and Tradition as a way of drawing men to follow Christ in the priesthood, the Belgian bishops called for greater lay inclusion within the Church’s pastoral ministry and for the option of married priests.
“We ask that priests and deacons assume their pastoral responsibilities within teams in which lay people also have their place and their task,” they wrote. “We ask that every bishops’ conference or continental episcopal assembly may take certain measures in view of the priestly ordination of ‘viri probati.’ The priestly ordination of ‘viri probati’ should not be universally obligatory or forbidden.”
The push for married priests (“viri probati”) featured also during the Amazon Synod, with Cardinal Robert Sarah and then-Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI publishing a book strongly defending the Latin Church’s practice of priestly celibacy as coming from Christ and the Apostles and expressing the mystery of Christ’s priesthood as bridegroom and head of the Church, His mystical spouse.
In 2018, Sarah, then prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, condemned the viri probati proposal, saying, “The plan, again advanced by some, to detach celibacy from the priesthood by conferring the sacrament of the Order on married men (“viri probati”) for, they say, ‘pastoral reasons or necessities,’ would have serious consequences, in fact, to definitively break with the Apostolic Tradition.”
Sarah reiterated the same condemnation in 2019, at the time of the Amazon synod. He declared, “If by a lack of faith in God and by an effect of pastoral short-sightedness the Synod for the Amazon were to decide on the ordination of viri probati, the fabrication of ministries for women and other such incongruities, the situation would be extremely serious.”
On Saturday, February 17, the Vatican confirmed the dates for the second session of the Synod on Synodality, which will take place in Rome October 2-27, with Pope Francis last week appointing to the General Secretariat of the Synod advisers who advocate for female deacons.
This is not the first time the bishops of Belgium have publicly embraced heterodox teaching or practice. In December of last year, a number of notoriously heterodox bishops from Belgium, known as the Flemish bishops, published a joint statement through their pro-LGBT ministry praising the Vatican’s December document which gives approval to priests to bless homosexual “couples.”
READ: Belgian bishops publish enthusiastic statement in support of blessing homosexual ‘couples’
“Within the faithful LGBTI+ world, the recent statement by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, Fiducia Supplicans, is seen as a huge step toward the recognition of faithful and lasting homosexual relationships. You are fully accepted as an LGBTI+ person and can even now additionally have your relationship blessed,” read the statement published by the bishops on December 22, which was written by the region’s pro-LGBT ministry “Contact points for Homosexuality & Faith.”
Furthermore, last September, in an interview with the Belgian daily news outlet La Libre Belgique, Bishop Johan Bonny of Antwerp, Belgium – who has voiced strong support for same-sex “blessings” – said he thinks there are certain circumstances in which euthanasia is morally acceptable, thus contradicting the perennial and infallible teaching of the Catholic Church.
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