In a post at LifeSite News Julia Meloni reports on Cardinal Brandmuller’s opinions about the working document preparing for the upcoming Amazon synod:

Today, we face an Amazon synod that, as Cardinal Walter Brandmüller puts it, “intends, above all, to help implement two most cherished projects that heretofore have never been implemented: namely, the abolition of priestly celibacy and the introduction of a female priesthood—beginning with female deacons.”  In the lead-up to the synod, Pope Francis has forebodingly praised the radical work of Bishop Fritz Lobinger, who seeks to ordain married “elders” for the “whole Church.”  By vastly outnumbering regular priests with these married elders, Lobinger hopes to proliferate “group-conducted” Masses celebrated by “the bank manager, the bus driver, the carpenter.”  Lobinger openly admits that some existing priests will ultimately be granted exceptions to marry, and he has repeatedly suggested that his “community-based” model of the priesthood will pave the way for women’s ordination.

Is this just rad-trad scare tactics? Are the liberals still worming their way into the workings of the church to bring in women priests and married priests by stealth? Meloni comments further on the motivation for this: it is eventual church unity with the Protestants.

Pope Francis has thus chosen a synodal muse who embodies the aspirations of the “ante-pope” and leader of the St. Gallen mafia, Cardinal Carlo Martini.  At a 1999 synod, Martini announced his “dream” of using “synodality” to solve, among other things, the “shortage of ordained ministers,” the “role of women” in the Church, and the “need to revive ecumenical hopes.”  In Night Conversations, his later blueprintfor the Francis pontificate, Martini praised the ordination of married men, the idea of “deaconesses,” and other churches’ agenda to ordain women.

As he explained:

In Canterbury during the nineties, I visited Archbishop Dr. George Leonard Carey, then Primate of the Church of England.  His church was suffering tensions because of the ordination of women.  I tried to give him courage to take a risk that could also help us treat women more fairly and understand how things might develop further.  We should not be unhappy that the Protestant and Anglican churches ordain women and are thereby introducing something important into the arena of wider ecumenism.

In Edward Pentin’s 2015 book The Rigging of a Vatican Synod?, Cardinal Brandmüller prophetically outlined the revolution’s arc and its connection to radical ecumenism.  As he put it:

Communion for the divorced and ‘remarried’ [comes] first.  Then abolition of priestly celibacy, second.  Priesthood for women is the ultimate aim, and lastly unification with the Protestants.  Then we will have a national German church, independent from Rome.  Finally, together with all the Protestants.

More shock, horror scare tactics from the old guard–rigid and disapproving of all change?

I’m afraid my own experience of the church in England and the USA does not give cause for optimism. I can remember a conversation with a Vicar General of a diocese in England. He explained how he thought there were too many priests in England and Wales. He had been out in Peru where the priest shortage was much more acute and thought it was wonderful how the lay people “did church” without a priest. They had the sacrament once a year. That was okay. Then he said what the real ambition was. With great enthusiasm he said, “Some of us are actually discouraging new vocations–especially among the young men who cannot catch this wider vision–so with fewer priests we will have to move over to the model in Peru where parishes are run by the lay people. Bishops will appoint a lay leader who could be a man or a woman suitably qualified. They will do everything. They will have communion services instead of Mass and the priest will come to consecrate some hosts once a month or so.”

Really. Quite apart from the magical approach to the sacrament, this high ranking priest was basically saying, “If we can’t have women priests we’d rather have no priests.”

Catholics who follow the historic faith should realize that this radical agenda is not a figment of the imagination. It is an agenda that has been running behind the scenes for fifty years now. This explains why some Catholic leaders are not so worried about women priests in the Anglican Church or about same sex marriage or married priests. They are for these things and follow the same line given by the Anglicans that they are the pioneers and what they do eventually Rome will follow. I’ve heard them say it to my face, “We Anglicans are simply pioneers in these matters. We had the liturgy in the vernacular first. It took you 500 years to catch up, but you will eventually also have married priests and women priests.”

Polite smile. Sip of sweet sherry.

This reveals what I call “artificial ecumenism”. The progressives are unified in their commitment to the secular, humanist agenda. They perceive this as the path to “church unity”. But there can be no unity unless there is truth, and unity without truth is based on a lie. It is the artificial ecumenism of the World Council of Churches–a man made organization stuck together with expensive meetings, concordats, instruments of unity, pacts, agreements and lots and lots and lots of meaningless, sentimental blather which has nothing to do with the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.

In contrast, on the ground it has been my experience that there is far more of an ecumenical spirit between true Catholics and true Protestants who genuinely believe the Bible and the essential truths of the Nicene Creed. When I am with my Baptist and Evangelical brothers and sisters working in a pro life cause, working with the poor, standing up to the politically correct bullies and essentially defending and living the prayerful life of the gospel I am experiencing true, joyful, spirit filled unity in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit.

We don’t have many official meetings of the leadership. Our theologians rarely get together and have discussions. We do not have regularly scheduled meetings seeking ways forward in ecumenical partnership. We do not have any illusions about our differences. Our denominations or organizations are not going to merge. We’re not going to have full communion. We realize there are historical, theological, cultural and liturgical boundaries.

But at the very heart of the matter we also realize that we are brothers and sisters in Christ and there is an invisible bond between us that is greater than any planned, organizational structures for unity.

Therefore I have always distrusted the official efforts at ecumenism. They are really instruments of appeasement. Not only are both parties at the table trying to appease one another, by compromising their beliefs they are also appeasing the world. They’re doing the church unity thing with human effort, with human enterprise, with human ideas and cleverness. It’s all on paper and at the higher echelons of power where nothing is real and nothing but talk about ideas and when they are going to have their next meeting.

In the meantime in my parish in the poor part of town where we have the homeless, drug addicts, prostitutes, gangs and drop out kids we have this terrific free church Christian called Pastor Johnson. He runs “Church Without Walls”. He goes in to the flophouse hotels and the drug dens on Sunday mornings, sets up a folding table, hands out the hymn sheets and does church. He’s not a Catholic, but we work with him and we help to fund his work as we can. And he sends folks to our Mother Teresa House–a drop in and referral center for the needy. We pray together and we work together.

And for my money that’s not artificial ecumenism. It’s authentic ecumenism.