(LifeSiteNews) — The head of the Polish Bishops’ Conference has criticized the Vatican’s upcoming “Synod on Synodality” for using the ideological “language of the U.N.” and promoting “moral relativism.”
Archbishop Stanisław Gądecki of the Archdiocese of Poznań commented on the Vatican synod in a recent interview with the German Catholic newspaper Die Tagespost.
Gądecki said that when he read the synod’s heterodox Instrumentum Laboris (IL), he noticed that the document uses terms like “inclusion, as defined by the U.N.,” which “refers exclusively to the inclusion of non-binary people in society and the recognition of human nature as non-binary.”
READ: Major Synod on Synodality document highlights need to ‘welcome’ polygamists, ‘LGBTQ+ people’
“In a sense, it [the term ‘inclusion’] replaces the notion of sin and conversion in the IL text and is thus part of the ideology of moral relativism,” he said.
“This raises the question: is it appropriate for the Church – in search of a new language for communicating with people today – to adopt terms from the political language of the U.N., behind which there is often an ideology?”
The Polish archbishop noted that “there are more such ideologized terms” in the synod’s IL.
Gądecki said that “the dynamics and the manner” in which the discussions at Francis’ synods are organized “sometimes remind more of the U.N. than of the Catholic Church.”
The Polish prelate addressed the erroneous philosophy at the heart of the demand for female ordinations.
“This is due to the erroneous conviction that only what comes from the Sacrament of Orders is worthy and valuable in the Church; that the laity is valuable only if it has access to the same prerogatives as priests and bishops,” Gądecki explained.
“The focus on power and office rather than on the serving character of the priesthood can lead not only to clericalism but also to the clericalization of the laity under the guise of promoting the laity.”
The bishop explained the two ways to approach societal issues: “The first one starts from theology to look there for the right answer to the questions posed in the social sciences. The second starts with the social sciences and thus faces the temptation to adapt theology to the needs of sociology.”
The Polish prelate said that he “fear[s] that today we have too many reformers who start from sociology” instead of taking theological truths as a basis for their “reforms.”
“Genuine reform comes not from a lack of faith but from an abundance of faith and fidelity,” Gądecki stated.
He warned “that there will be attempts at the synod to question the Catholic teaching on contraception, even though this issue is not directly addressed in the IL.”
The German Synodal Way could lead to schism
When asked about the heretical German Synodal Way, Gądecki said, “Today, unfortunately, there seems to be the largest Church in Germany since the Reformation. There is a great danger that a misunderstood reform of Christianity will once again lead to a schism of the Church that will spread to neighboring countries.”
“It is important to properly understand the meaning of fraternal correction,” he continued. “Some may associate it with the exaltation of one over the other, but we do it with tears. Christ wept over Jerusalem, accompanied by words about the inability to correctly discern the signs of the times.”
Gądecki issued his “fraternal correction” in February 2022 in a letter to the head of the German bishops’ conference, Bishop Georg Bätzing, in which Gądecki criticized the Synodal Way and urged the German bishops to uphold immutable Church teaching on sexuality.