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(LifeSiteNews) — A Spanish bishop warned that the Synod on Synodality’s first phase has included proposals that do not come from God.

Demetrio Fernández, the bishop of Córdoba, Spain, addressed problems of “discernment” he has observed in the Synod on Synodality in his weekly pastoral letter, originally reported on by ACI Prensa, Catholic News Agency (CNA)’s Spanish-language news partner. 

Fernández cautioned that while the synod has “stirred up the waters of the Church,” it cannot now “invent” a new mission.

“It is the Holy Spirit who speaks in us. And here’s where the ambiguity can come in, because there is no lack of people who confuse the Holy Spirit with their own strange ideas,” wrote Fernández, according to CNA.

While some “erratic proposals” have been dismissed in the first phase of the synod, Fernández accused others, which have been “proposed by a small minority and immediately included in the concluding documents,” of “lacking the most elementary discernment.”

The prelate therefore called for discernment using the Word of God as a guideline to “test the spirits to see if they come from God or from the evil one.”

Fernández said that departing from Tradition, which includes Magisterial Church teaching, “is erratic, it is condemning oneself to sterility. The Holy Spirit cannot now come to tell us something contrary to what he has said on previous occasions.” 

He advised that the synod must look “at what the Church has done everywhere and always throughout the centuries.”

According to CNA, Fernández specified topics of concern in the synod, writing that “it makes no sense now to contradict” the Church’s doctrine on a celibate, male-only priesthood, the blessing of same-sex unions, abortion, and euthanasia.

Fernández emphasized that the Catholic Church does not make decisions according to a democratic process reflecting the will of “the people”: “The synods and assemblies are not to contradict what the Spirit says to his Church as if the Church were a civil parliament, which changes the laws at the demand of the voters,” he said.

He suggested that just as the Holy See has warned that the heretical German “Synodal Way” is not binding on the bishops and faithful, and does not oblige “new approaches to doctrine and morals,” neither should the Synod on Synodality be considered binding.

“What is happening at the Synod of the Church in Germany, and that the Holy See has warned that it ‘doesn’t have the power to oblige the bishops and the faithful to adopt new forms of government and new approaches to doctrine and morals’ ought to be applied to the whole Church,” Fernández said.

“Synods and assemblies. May God help us in these moments of turbulence in society and also in the Church,” the bishop added.

Spain has been the site of some of the most controversial proposals thus far in the Synod on Synodality, with the Archdioceses of Barcelona and Zaragoza having called for the consideration of optional priestly celibacy and the inclusion of women in the priesthood.

A number of traditional Catholic commentators have already warned of false doctrine promulgated by the Synod. Matt Gaspers, managing editor of Catholic Family News, warned that the Synod would be “a mishmash of confusion and heresy,” and UK author and commentator Deacon Nick Donnelly told LifeSiteNews of “fundamental error” in the Synod documents, and the subsequent “danger of proclaiming a false and worldly message instead of the Gospel of Christ.”

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