POPE FRANCIS AND THE SYNOD ON THE FAMILY by Mario Pezzi

The complete text of the catechesis by Fr. Pezzi – in both written and oral versions, the latter with spontaneous comments from Kiko - is in the highly detailed account for the internal use of the “live-in.” But this summary is enough to grasp its importance.

It will not be easy for the proponents of innovation in the matter of Catholic marriage to ignore this powerful voice to the contrary.

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POPE FRANCIS AND THE SYNOD ON THE FAMILY

by Mario Pezzi


The famous and criticized report of Cardinal Kasper is in five points, and only one of them deals with communion for the divorced and remarried, all of the others deal with the traditional doctrine of the Church. The pope once said: I am surprised that the press talks only about one point, and does not talk about the others. This is why I invite you not to pay attention to what the newspapers and television say, because everyone is pressuring the pope to be open to the world. Don't fall for it. Many times Father Lombardi has had to respond to the misinterpretation and misuse of the pope’s words.

In this catechesis we will not address the most burning issues, we will leave those to the synod fathers and to the pope, but we will talk about gender ideology, about the Christian family in the light of divine revelation, and finally about “Humanae Vitae” by Paul VI, which has been highly contested and rejected but which Pope Francis has wanted to revive.


GENDER IDEOLOGY


Pope Benedict XVI, on the occasion of his Christmas greetings to the Roman Curia in 2012, made an historic discourse, affirming that today we find ourselves before an epochal change, similar to that which happened at the time of the fall of the Roman empire and the invasion of the barbarian peoples. There is a decline in the foundations of society, of Catholic civilization.

Pope John Paul II himself said at Fatima in 1982: “What was once considered sin has now acquired the right of citizenship."

There have been many attacks against the Christian family in history. The latest virulent attack is represented by so-called "gender ideology."

Powerful lobbies are imposing this ideology as a dictatorship. Among the philosophical roots that have generated this monster that is threatening our families, especially in the schools, is Marxism.

In Marx, the notion that the essence of man is that of being able to create himself is connected to the overcoming of sexual gender and the destruction of the family.

The debate over gender then moved above all to the United States, where the idea that there are two sexes has been completely left behind. Instead of two genders there became five: male, female, gay, lesbian, and transgender. But in keeping with the anti-naturalistic approach, since man can create himself, the figure of 17 genders has been reached. There are even some today who count 51: the more the merrier.

Gender theory also reveals its Gnostic origin. The enemy for gnosis is not sex in itself, but sex as procreative, because producing children means contributing to the creative work of the wicked god.

It has been discovered that radical feminism is intimately connected to satanic worship. When Pope Francis has been asked about this aggression, he has said: it is the fruit of the devil who wants to destroy.

The myth of the transcendence of gender is also found in the Gnostic formulations of Freemasonry, which, at the highest levels of initiation, has the worship of the devil depicted with androgynous characteristics.

Gender theory implies a complete anthropological redefinition of the human essence. Man's attempt to take the place of God.

It has its historical origins in the anti-procreation planning beginning in the 1960’s, with the propaganda for contraception and abortion and the campaign for the use of the RU-486 pill.

When the episcopal conference of the United States adopted the formula "family planning,” the Vatican intervened to have it changed. Because it's misleading. The Christian is not the one who plans.

What does the Church say about this gender ideology? Pope Benedict XVI has said it, citing chief rabbi of France Gilles Bernheim:

“Man calls his nature into question. The manipulation of nature, which we deplore today where our environment is concerned, now becomes man’s fundamental choice where he himself is concerned. From now on there is only the abstract human being, who chooses for himself what his nature is to be. Man and woman in their created state as complementary versions of what it means to be human are disputed. But if there is no pre-ordained duality of man and woman in creation, then neither is the family any longer a reality established by creation. Likewise, the child has lost the place he had occupied hitherto and the dignity pertaining to him. Bernheim shows that now, perforce, from being a subject of rights, the child has become an object to which people have a right and which they have a right to obtain. When the freedom to be creative becomes the freedom to create oneself, then necessarily the Maker himself is denied and ultimately man. The defence of the family is about man himself.”


THE FAMILY IN THE LIGHT OF DIVINE REVELATION


The apostolic exhortation “Familiaris Consortio,” written by Pope John Paul II at the end of the synod on the family in 1980, still remains relevant today. And so does that beautiful post-synodal apostolic exhortation “Sacramentum Caritatis” of Pope Benedict XVI, which says: “The Eucharist inexhaustibly strengthens the indissoluble unity and love of every Christian marriage.”

Because of this, marriage is indissoluble. Pope Francis has clearly said that he is not going to change the doctrine of the Church as they say or as they want to make him say, because what God has united man cannot separate. The Church does not have the power. The conjugal bond is intrinsically connected to the Eucharistic unity between Christ the bridegroom and the Church his bride, a love that has its culminating point in the Cross, the expression of his "wedding" with humanity and, at the same time, the origin and center of the Eucharist.

There is no love without the cross. So "making love," as young people say, is pure falsehood. This is not a matter of love but of concupiscence, of attraction, etc. This is why the Church asks that there be no relations before marriage, because one comes to a certain point at which one is no longer free. I remember that at the beginning of the Way one of us came to say that he had decided to leave his girlfriend. He told Kiko and Carmen that she had threatened to kill herself, and had already made three suicide attempts, and he asked: what should I do? Kiko and Carmen replied to him: tell her she can go ahead and kill herself, God will provide. He left her, she did not commit suicide, and today he is happily married. Blackmail is easy.


RELEVANCE OF “HUMANAE VITAE"


Thanks be to God, Pope Francis inserted “Humanae Vitae” into the pre-synodal questionnaire and asked what the people think about it. It emerged that very many know nothing about it, because the priests have never presented it to them, and many of those who know about it reject it. The only ones who appreciate it are those who make a journey of faith, of Christian initiation. This is the problem, in my view, with this synod: almost no one talks about the necessity of Christian initiation. They talk only about being present for couples, helping them, forming the teachers…

On July 25, 1968 Paul VI, beatified at the end of the synod, published the encyclical “Humanae Vitae” subsequent to the efforts undertaken along with the council fathers.

Here I will cite from a recently published book about that pope, very well documented, prepared by the Paul VI Institute based in Brescia, for the cause of beatification:

“How much mud was slung on that encyclical and on Paul VI by those who wanted to impose their own vision of a liberal-nihilistic world! A deliberate climate of tension had been created a year before, when in April 1967 a document was published by the pontifical commission that John XXIII had instituted in March 1963 and that Paul VI wanted to expand so that alongside the theologians, the composers of the text, there would be the voices of demographers, sociologists, economists, physicians, and a few married couples.

“That document, confidential by nature, was published simultaneously in Le Monde in France, in The Tablet in Great Britain, and in the National Catholic Reporter in the United States. There were clear signs of coordination by a single hand that wanted to present the document as the relation of the majority, maintaining that only four of the seventy members of the commission had criticized the text, something that turned out to be false."

Having created this expectation - as they are again creating it today by saying that Pope Francis will allow communion for the remarried - everyone was expecting Paul VI to approve contraceptives, the pill, to reduce the population. So when the pope gave the final word, that every conjugal act is unitive and procreative, open to life, there was a general scandal, not only in the secular world:

“There was equal incomprehension among many Catholics, including Cardinal Suenens and various famous theologians. To these were added, with words that were disconcerting for their toughness and hostility, eighty-seven theologians of the Catholic University of Washington, the episcopal conferences of Austria and Canada, as well as several thousand German Catholics.

“What is striking is the emphasis given by the mass media to those voices of dissent, compared with the very many endorsements that came from all over the Church and that were, if not silenced, not always correctly reported by the main media outlets. Paul VI did not allow himself to be drawn into the controversy or be overcome by dismay, but exerted himself in giving the correct explanation right away with the audience immediately following the publication of the encyclical, on July 31, when he reiterated that ‘Humanae Vitae’ did not enshrine a negative statement, but was intended to be ‘the positive presentation of conjugal morality for the sake of its mission of love and fecundity, in the light of an overall vision of man, of his earthly and eternal vocation.’”

Pope John Paul II made “Humanae Vitae” the focus of the last fourteen catecheses of his whole cycle on the theology of the body, in 1984.

As for Pope Francis, you know that a few Sundays ago he celebrated the marriage of twenty-four couples. I was very careful to listen to the formula that he used. Because in the ritual of marriage there is the first formula which is the one used by the pope, but there are also others that are not as explicit. It would be interesting to see which one the priests use. Because the first formula says: 

“Are you ready to accept with love the children that God may wish to give you, and to raise them according to the law of Christ and of his Church?”

“The children that God wishes to give you”: I don’t know if all priests say that.

[KIKO: All of this is fine when there are Christian people, but when the people are not Christian they couldn't care less less about all these things. Thanks to God you have listened to us catechists who have told you what the Church says and you have been humble and have not opposed our catechesis with ideas from the newspapers. Carmen once said to the pope, years ago: What is it all about, this obsession in favor of natural methods? It seems that the Church is thinking only about how to limit children. Because in the end this was the thinking, that the Catholic family should have two children, no more. Some even within the Church still have this idea. We said to those of Catholic Action: and afterward, what do you do? After you have two children, how do you continue the conjugal act? Do you use coitus interruptus? Do you use natural methods? Do you use the pill? Everywhere it has been preached that responsible parenthood means limiting births, and the number of children has been left to the conscience of the spouses. This has been preached everywhere. But did the pope say this? No! Responsible parenthood means accepting not to limit the number of children, it means accepting the plan of God. But no one has repeated these things the pope said. Thanks to God you have been saved because you have obeyed us. You have continued to believe that the conjugal act is an act of holiness, a true sacrament. We are happy to see that even our children and grandchildren follow us in this, they have children and they are happy].


THE REASON FOR THE “HONORIS CAUSA” DOCTORATE FOR KIKO


To conclude, I cite the doctorate “honoris causa” conferred on Kiko by the pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family.

In the “Laudatio Academica", Professor José Noriega presented the three reasons why the institute decided to give this recognition, we might say, to the Neocatechumenal Way:

1. “The rediscovery of the fecundity of Baptism for the life of the couple has had one of its most significant fruits in the rediscovery of the holiness of the conjugal act between the spouses. Seeing this as one of the places where God acts, the couples of the Way have wanted to live their love with a singular openness to life, knowing that they are collaborators with God in the generation of persons."

2. “At a time of crisis and disorientation on the part of many, the unreserved acceptance of the prophetic encyclical of Paul VI ‘Humanae Vitae’ on the part of the families of the Way has been an authentic testimony for the whole Church, showing that beyond our fears or difficulties it is possible to live what the Church points out as specific to the way of holiness of the couple."

3. “The families of the Neocatechumenal Way quickly understood and adopted a form of domestic liturgy. In this way the great mission of transmitting the faith to the children has found the proper setting for the testimony of the parents. In the context of a frightful secularization of ‘vast areas of the earth, where the faith is in danger of being extinguished like a flame that no longer has fuel,’ the Way has been able to ‘make God present in a singular form’: I am talking about the great testimony of the families on mission.”

Along the Neocatechumenal Way, in catechesis, we have told you that the family has, so to speak, three altars: the holy Eucharist, the nuptial bed, and the family table where the faith is passed on to the children.

It is good to emphasize that this “Laudatio” refers to all the families of the Neocatechumenal communities, and not only to the families on mission.

As for these latter, for more than thirty years they have been giving their lives often in heroic situations to bear witness to the love of God through their presence and apostolate, in which often their children are the first missionaries who draw the estranged to the Church.

In recent years the Lord has raised up among us the missions “ad gentes”: nuclear families with many children, accompanied and supported by a presbyter, an associate, and a few sisters, which constitute a point of attraction in completely pagan or dechristianized areas. A new form of evangelization for the secularized and pagan world of today.