(LifeSiteNews) — A new international Catholic lay initiative is calling on bishops to defend the Catholic faith against the confusion of the “synodal process” in response to the heterodox Vatican declaration Fiducia Supplicans.
The initiative Pro Ecclesia Universalis (PEU) wants to bring “together organisations and other groups of lay Catholics whose aim is to defend the unity of the Catholic (Universal) Church in the face of the synodal process of Her disintegration.”
The group criticizes Pope Francis’ world Synod, stating that it “leads to increasing confusion among the faithful.”
PEU, which originated in Poland, names the heterodox Vatican declaration regarding homosexual “blessings,” Fiducia Supplicans, as a sign that the Church “has entered a phase of major doctrinal and moral crisis.”
The initiative also condemned the Synod’s attack on the hierarchical structure of the Church: “An essential element of the synodal process of disintegration of the Church is the deconstruction of the hierarchical order. As a result, the successors of the Apostles, i.e. the bishops, can no longer effectively pass on the deposit of faith.”
Therefore, the initiative’s primary goal is to help and encourage local bishops to defend the Catholic faith. PEU published a booklet entitled “The Responsibility of Bishops for the Universal Church in Times of Confusion” as a guideline for how a bishop should act in our times.
“[W]e want the study ‘Responsibility of Bishops for the Universal Church in Times of Confusion’ to inspire personal meetings between representatives of our initiative and local bishops, in order to prompt them to take action defending the hierarchical order in the Church and protecting the faithful from doctrinal confusion,” PEU’s website states.
The initiative names the following conclusions of its 34-page analysis in its booklet:
- A diocesan bishop should guard the unity of the whole Church;
- When a situation of proclaiming an error occurs in a different particular church than his own a bishop is obliged to react;
- The concealment of heresy that has arisen in another part of the universal Church is tantamount to a consent to a manifestation of this error in his own diocese;
- An intervention when the integrity of the deposit of faith was violated, both in his own diocese and in the forum of the universal Church is a bishop’s responsibility resulting from the mandate given by Christ himself;
- The list of situations requiring an intervention is quite extensive and assuredly requires a reaction to situations of preaching a thesis starkly contradictory to the deposit of faith or a thesis which is dubious or ambiguous.
“Through the publication and dissemination of our booklet, we wish to support all the hierarchs of the Universal Church who care about the salvation of the faithful entrusted to them and who publicly defend them against the spread of errors, even as they originate from the Throne of St. Peter,” the authors of the initiative stated.
Several Catholic organizations from around the world have joined Pro Ecclesia Universalis, including LifeSiteNews. Other supporters of the initiative, include the Polish Collegium Intermarium University, the Polish Ordo Iuris Institute for Legal Culture, TFP (Tradition, Family, Property) New Zealand, the U.S. company Sacred Heart Media, as well as several other European institutes.