The final session in October of the Synod of Bishops ending the Synod on Synodality will have a penitential service, where participants will be asked to confess the following sins:
Sin against peace
Sin against creation, against indigenous populations, against migrants
Sin of abuse
Sin against women, family, youth
Sin of using doctrine as stones to be hurled
Sin against poverty
Sin against synodality / lack of listening, communion, and participation of all
Starting with repentance for sin is always good. We do so in every Eucharistic celebration as we pray the Confiteor. But the above listed sins are too general, even modernist. And the sins would be defined by how we define words such as peace, abuse, poverty, synodality. Unfortunately modernists have different definitions and meanings to oft-used words (see the Appendix on “Liberal Doublespeak” in my book Modernism in the Church Today; for example, the sections on Peace, Preferential Option for the Poor, Synodality).
How about just focusing on well-defined sins as gleaned from the Ten Commandments, or from the culture of DEATH?
Pope Francis says there will be testimonies. One of them will be about the sin of indifference to migration. Now the Pope recently equated kicking out migrants with abortion, saying he does not know which is the greater evil. If he does not know, then I do not trust him to repent and ask for forgiveness on my behalf, as he intends to do.
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