CNA Newsroom, Jun 7, 2024 / 16:45 pm (CNA).
A Dutch bishop has described the Vatican’s Fiducia Supplicans declaration, which permits nonliturgical blessings of homosexual couples, as an attempt to “make peace with a secular society.”
However, Auxiliary Bishop Rob Mutsaerts of the Diocese of ’s-Hertogenbosch in the Netherlands warned: “Peace at the expense of morality and truth” is a “most merciless peace imaginable.”
“God loves everyone. He loves all sinners, but he hates your sins. He fervently hopes that you will return to him, just as he hoped for the prodigal son’s return. He wants nothing more than for you to share in his love,” Mutsaerts wrote in a foreword to a new book that attacks the declaration.
Titled “The Breached Dam: The Fiducia Supplicans Surrender to the Homosexual Movement,” the book was written by José Antonio Ureta and Julio Loredo de Izcue.
Both authors are affiliated with the Tradition, Family, and Property Association. Ureta, in particular, has been a vocal critic of Pope Francis’ pontificate in recent years.
Mutsaerts has published outspoken posts on his blog, “Paarse Pepers” (Purple Peppers), since 2019. Previous posts have included sharp criticism of the Amazon synod, Pope Francis’ apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia, and “cancel culture.”
In his foreword, the Dutch prelate accused Fiducia Supplicans of not addressing “the moral dimension of the relationship,” instead being more “in tune with the current zeitgeist” that fails to acknowledge that “mercy exists because sin exists.”
“Is everyone welcome? Certainly. But not unconditionally. God makes demands. The entire Bible could be summed up as a call to repentance and a promise of forgiveness. One cannot be separated from the other. Everyone is welcome, but not everyone accepts the invitation,” the 66-year-old Mutsaerts wrote.
Published just before Christmas 2023, Fiducia Supplicans has received mixed reactions and produced deep division among Catholic bishops worldwide.
While supporters have welcomed the document, critics of the controversial decree have raised different concerns, including an alleged lack of synodality and even an attempt at “cultural colonization” in Africa.
Despite clarifications by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, the decree also caused a rift with the Coptic Orthodox Church.
Pope Francis has publicly responded to some questions raised about Fiducia Supplicans.
In an Italian TV talk show in January, the pope underlined that “the Lord blesses everyone” and that a blessing is an invitation to enter into a conversation “to see what the road is that the Lord proposes to them.”
“The Lord blesses everyone who is capable of being baptized, that is, every person,” Francis repeated.
Asked if he “felt alone” after Fiducia Supplicans was met with some resistance, the 87-year-old pontiff said: “Sometimes decisions are not accepted.”
“But in most cases, when you don’t accept a decision, it’s because you don’t understand.”
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I’d say Bishop Mutsaerts understands perfectly.
The perfect comment on this story. Thank you, Cleo.
Bergoglio’s Dark Vatican must be opposed in all of its heresies and lies.
As everyone else has noted, this is the perfect comment on that article. Thank you.
Another Dutchman, Fr. Werenfried van Straaten, founder of Aid to the Church in Need, said it this way: “no peace without justice, and no justice without truth.”
Europe should declare a Jubilee Year. Why? Because a Catholic bishop has spoken out about the lies inherent in that document, “Fiducia supplicans.” Christ said that heaven would rejoice at the return of one sinner out of one hundred who’d returned. So should the Church in Europe rejoice over one bishop who teaches the Truth.
Bishop Mutsaerts understands perfectly, as does Cardinal Eijk and a number of other Dutch bishops who are a trend in what was previously considered a progressive nation. Zeitgeist is the spirit being invoked by the Vatican as well as typifying the mind of our Western world.
Dear Pontiff Francis:
Christ forbids the ideology of idolatry, pederasty, sodomo-filia, and I understand why Christ forbids them.
“But in most cases, when you don’t accept a decision, it’s because you don’t understand.”
-Wow! This pope definitely sets new standards in clericalism.
Hey, what’s to “understand”?
Coming soon to your very own neighborhood?: facsimile deacons (non-ordained deaconesses), within a facsimile (c)hurch-within-a-Church, assigned to spread facsimile blessings to a fluid range of facsimile unions (“irregular couples”)– logically to include polygamy and, even more inclusively, such James Martinesque self-validating “experiences” as binocular-goggled (a “couple” of lenses!) virtual-reality sex.
Muhammad received his revelation from the angel Gabriel, Joseph Smith his from the angel Moroni, and now the forwardist-tribe from the angel Tucho and a synodalized Holy Spirit!
“What’s in your wallet,” or in-basket, or whatever?
Touche!
“In most cases, it’s because they don’t understand.” What are the other cases Francis? Is it because we are sane enough to understand there are evil consequences of pretending evil doesn’t exist in culturally sanctioned categories of evil?
What kind of “understanding” fails to understand that there is more evil to be considered in evil behavior than the troubling feelings of guilt? Is ameliorating the troubled souls of sinners all that matters while the cost of such requires ignoring victims? All the victims, including the damage the sinners do to themselves? Is your pretend care more important to you than the victims you fail to understand and refuse to think about?
An additional thought: Pope Francis, do you not understand that guilt, which you have at times described as a frivolous burden, carried forth from an unenlightened Church, to be discarded, is a gift from God?
We read: “‘Asked if he “felt alone’ after Fiducia Supplicans was met with some resistance, the 87-year-old pontiff said: ‘Sometimes decisions are not accepted’.”
“Decisions”?
Here’s another un-accepted piece–about “decisions” that pretend to replace morality:
“A separation, or even an opposition, is thus established in some cases between the teaching [!] of the precept, which is valid and general, and the norm of the individual conscience, which would in fact make the final decision [only a ‘decision’ and no longer a ‘moral judgment’!] about what is good and what is evil. On this basis, an attempt is made to legitimize so-called ‘pastoral’ solutions [!] contrary to the teaching of the Magisterium, and to justify a ‘creative’ hermeneutic according to which the moral conscience is in no way obliged, in every case, by a particular negative precept [‘Thou shalt not…”]” (St. John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, 1993, n. 56).
Did Christ “decide” pastorally to bless the prostitute only after she first decided to stand beside probably one of her accusers? And then suddenly give the irregular couple–as a “couple”–a pastoral, “informal, non-ecclesial, and spontaneous” facsimile-blessing?
Or, likewise, decide to bless not one but, indifferently, both the criminals on Calvary, again as a “couple”? Or, the woman at the well only when she returned with all of her interchangeable five “husbands”–to be pastorally blessed as an expanding sequence of irregular “couples”…
Or ultra-irregular “throples,” soon to be expanded to group marriages of four or more. Not multiple wives, but multiples of all varieties. Are there termination points of “blessings?” Can Satan, were he to take human form, receive a “blessing?” After all, we might give him credit for something. He probably does work hard.
Wait a minute. He is not from Africa, and we have been told by the Vatican that not being a team Feducia Supplicans player is purely an African thing. Is he allowed to say that or is this cultural appropriation?
In this insane world (stop the world, I want to get off), he likely will be accused of exactly that, and worse, and maybe even from high atop the thing.
Pope Francis has no problem telling us we don’t understand, or that we will go extinct as he also said about Catholics who disagree with his radical pastoral opinions. He also demotes those who point out his lack of orthodoxy and promotes open dissenters in our own Church. What were Catholics thinking when we had antipopes in our own history? Was any Catholic back then allowed to question what was going on or were they forced to live in denial by the peer Catholic groups around them?
Praying that Cardinal Eijk and other Dutch Bishops will continue to defend Auxiliary Bishop Mutsaerts from being “accompanied” by this pontificate. Same for Auxiliary Bishop Athanasius Schneider. The lonely Ordinaries in Puerto Rico and Texas were offered up to this pontificate for a lack of collegiality, as if the Church was a corporation and not the Body of Christ.
Glad the Faith still burns in that microcosm of the modern world, The Netherlands!!!