Theology of the Bawdy: Francis appoints Sodomy Supporter to lead Vatican Synod Retreat in October

Spiritual preparation for the Synod…

Theology of the Bawdy: Francis appoints Sodomy Supporter to lead Vatican Synod Retreat in October


Dominican friar Timothy Radcliffe knows how to blaspheme…

In October of this year the Vatican will hold another one of its infamous “synods”, that is, a meeting with a large number of “bishops” chosen from around the world to spend three weeks listening to boring lectures, reading boring lengthy documents, and then discussing the stuff with their colleagues before collaborating to produce a final document for Francis to use in his post-synodal “Apostolic exhortation”.

This year, the theme of the synod is — wait for it — synodality. In other words, it is one gigantic church meeting about church meetings. The whole circus will be hosted by the apostate from Buenos Aires, Jorge Bergoglio (aka ‘Pope Francis’), who keeps lobbying against a “self-referential church”. Good to know.

The synodal process began back in 2021, and it involves various phases or stages. Some months ago the Vatican released the working document for the continental stage:

Just the other day, on Jan. 15, Francis announced that before the Roman phase of the synod in October, there would be an ecumenical prayer vigil in the Vatican’s St. Peter’s Square, which he tasked the indifferentist ecumenical Taizé community with organizing. The result is the initiative Together – Gathering the People of God, for which a web site has been launched now:

The vigil is scheduled for Sep. 30. Of course this ecumenical undertaking would not be possible without Vatican II’s heretical understanding of the nature and unity of the Church providing the theological underpinnings. Here are some refreshers on how Vatican II ecumenism contradicts orthodox and timeless Roman Catholic doctrine:

Yesterday, Jan. 23, the Vatican held a press conference to provide more details regarding the pre-synod ecumenical vigil. The briefing was presided over by the Jesuit “Cardinal” Jean-Claude Hollerich of Luxembourg, whom Francis appointed Relator General of the Synod, and it included also “ecumenical representatives from various Churches and ecclesial communities”:

Hollerich made such impressive statements as: “The journey of synodality undertaken by the Catholic Church is and must be ecumenical, just as the ecumenical journey is synodal.” Turning to the Protestants, “His Eminence” said: “We need you. We need you in order to be really on the path of conversion” (italics given).

Toward the end of the press conference, Hollerich made a frightful announcement. Vatican News reports:

At the conclusion of Monday’s press conference, Cardinal Hollerich once again took the floor, in order to announce another unprecedented synodal initiative of Pope Francis: following the Ecumenical Prayer Vigil, the bishops and other participants in the General Assembly will retire for a three-day retreat on the outskirts of Rome in preparation for their deliberations.

“So,” he said, “we start with prayer, with listening to the Spirit.”

Cardinal Hollerich explained that the retreat will take place from Sunday, 1 October, through Tuesday, 3 October, and will be led by Dominican Father Timothy Radcliffe, at the invitation of Pope Francis.

(Christopher Wells, “Synod: Ecumenical Prayer Vigil will emphasize ‘unity of the Church'”, Vatican News, Jan. 23, 2023)

What’s shocking about this is not that the Modernist prelates will go on retreat, but that Francis has appointed Timothy Radcliffe, O.P., to be the retreat master.

If we take even a cursory look at who that man is and what sort of theology he offers, very quickly it will become evident that although the appointment is shocking, it is not really surprising.

‘Fr.’ Timothy Peter Joseph Radcliffe, O.P., was born in 1945 and entered the Dominicans in the latter half of the 1960s. He was ordained a priest in the doubtful Novus Ordo rite of ordination in 1971, for which reason we do not recognize him as a valid priest. (Doubtful sacraments must be treated as invalid in the practical order.)

Theologically, Radcliffe was educated by the notorious Dominican Fr. Yves Congar (1904-1995), whom the saintly and strictly orthodox Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange (1877-1964) battled from the beginning. From 1992 to 2001, Radcliffe served as Master of the Order of Preachers, that is, he was the Dominican Superior General — an absolutely sickening thought, considering what we must now discuss.

Radcliffe is known as an outspoken supporter of homosexuality. In an article published on Jan. 23, 2023, the English Modernist rag The Tablet put it this way: “In 2015, [Radcliffe] was appointed as a consulter to the then Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace and is known for his pastorally sensitive approach to gay and lesbian Catholics, including support for same-sex civil unions.”

Let’s look at some examples (we are indebted to information provided by Life Site for some of these finds).

We begin with an article from 2006, which reported on the English Dominican giving a lecture in Los Angeles:

On the subject of the church and homosexuality, Radcliffe called for the church to “stand with” gay people.

“We must accompany them as they discern what this means, letting our images be stretched open,” he said. “This means watching ‘Brokeback Mountain,’ reading gay novels, living with our gay friends and listening with them as they listen to the Lord.”

Even when we feel that gay people are moving in the wrong direction, he said, we must “walk with them.”

(John L. Allen, Jr., “The Word from Rome”, National Catholic Reporter, Apr. 7, 2006)

Did you get that? According to “Fr.” Radcliffe, you’re supposed to expose yourself to sexual filth — specifically the unnatural kind — out of compassion for, or solidarity with, sodomites. Because “walking together” and all that. Can we imagine the Dominican friar suggesting a similar course of action with regard to racists, for example? Fat chance!

But there’s more from the above-linked report: “Radcliffe called for compassion for various constituencies, including sexually abusing priests, whom he described as ‘the lepers of the modern church, the unclean whom we fear to touch’.” Maybe we’ll just leave that uncommented.

In 2015, the Rev. Radcliffe said that homosexuals should not be banned from the priesthood; instead, “homophobes” should be. That is reminiscent of the Mexican Novus Ordo bishop José Raúl Vera López, also a Dominican. In 2013, he claimed that people who oppose homosexuality aren’t right in the head. Talk about insanity!

It should comes as no surprise that Radcliffe values “creativity” over Tradition, and in 2012 he wrote that “committed love of people of the same sex … should be cherished and supported, which is why church leaders are slowly coming to support same-sex civil unions. The God of love can be present in every true love” (The Tablet, Mar. 10, 2012, p. 4). No doubt Radcliffe is an expert in immoral theology.

Let’s fast-forward to 2019. In his book Alive in God, Radcliffe relates:

When I visited the noviciate [sic] of the English Dominicans in 1965, wondering whether this might be my life, I was delighted when one of the friars talked of how the sacraments bless the dramas of our physical life: birth and death, eating and drinking, sex and health. There is nothing ethereal about the sacramental life. It is down to earth, like our God.

(Timothy Radcliffe, O.P., Alive in God: A Christian Imagination [London: Bloomsbury Continuum, 2019], pp. 281-282)

A man who can assert something so stupid as there being “nothing ethereal” about the sacraments obviously has not the faintest idea about the supernatural life. His faulty observation reflects what is perhaps the main problem with the Novus Ordo religion: the loss of the supernatural.

Naturalism is everywhere in the Vatican II Sect, and its highest act of worship, the Novus Ordo Missae (‘New Mass’ of Paul VI), expresses that very well because it is mundane, pedestrian, commonplace, insipid. It is but a meal at a table, under felt banners, presided over by a liturgical social worker who prays to God in the same language with which he orders pizza. Wearing horrible vestments and giving trite homilies, his performance is accompanied by insufferable music. No wonder Radcliffe sees in this but the sacramental blessing of earthly “eating and drinking.”

Indeed, there is nothing heavenly or supernatural about the “Eucharistic celebration” of the Vatican II religion — quite in contrast to the august Sacrifice of the Altar, the Holy Catholic Mass:

Perhaps we should mention that Radcliffe’s book Alive in God prominently features on its cover Henri Matisse’s 1910 painting Dance, which consists of five nude people, both male and female, dancing in a circle while holding hands. Incredibly edifying, no?

That Radcliffe believes in the theory of (macro) evolution should go without saying, of course. In the same book, right after informing us of the supposed “down-to-earth-ness” of the sacraments, he writes:

Through the millennia of evolution [the human body] became the embodiment of an openness to offer and receive love and so is a fit dwelling for Absolute Love. It is as if all those millennia of human evolution, as we became upright, able to look at each other eye to eye, our faces softening to become expressive of joy and sorrow, able to smile and laugh, our hands able to touch each other with sensitivity, all lead not just to us, homo sapiens, but to a fit home for the God who is love to be with us.

(Radcliffe, Alive in God, pp. 282-283)

So the English Dominican believes that what determines one’s fitness for welcoming the Eternal God is determined by the natural state of the body rather than the supernatural state of the soul. According to him, what makes God able to dwell in one is the ability to smile, to look someone in the eye, to touch another; rather than having an intellect to know God, illuminated by divine Faith, and a will to love Him, inflamed by divine charity, along with hope, which connects both.

As Pope St. Pius X told us, for the Modernist theologian “God is immanent in man” (Encyclical Pascendi, n. 19), and that is apostasy. The distinction between nature and grace is practically obliterated in such a theology. There is no room for original sin, and consequently no need for a Redeemer. God dwells in all people in virtue of their humanity: “The feared stranger bears ‘the human form divine’, an image of God, whatever their faith or lack of it”, Radcliffe writes further (p. 283). The result of this false theology has been extremely visible in the “pontificate” of Jorge Bergoglio.

Now, ladies and gentlemen, we have left the worst for last. Some things are so awful and disgusting that one does not really know how to expose them in a modest way. Therefore, please receive our apologies in advance — we have no choice but to quote the actual words of this shameful Dominican. Prepare yourself for some sickening blasphemous ideas!

The ideas are presented in an Anglican publication known informally as the “Pilling Report” (full text here). In 2013 Radcliffe had participated in a ecumenical working group on human sexuality, and the report summarizes what was discussed. In article n. 258, the publication relates that “Fr Radcliffe proposed a Eucharistic sexual ethic that started with Jesus’s gift of his body at the Last Supper”. For Radcliffe, “sexual intercourse [is] ‘mutual generosity’ – the complete gift of the body to the other person” (n. 259).

But then the disgraceful theologian gets into homosexuality. The following words are given in quotation marks, meaning they were uttered verbatim by “Fr.” Radcliffe:

‘How does all this bear on the question of gay sexuality? We cannot begin with the question of whether it is permitted or forbidden! We must ask what it means, and how far it is Eucharistic. Certainly it can be generous, vulnerable, tender, mutual and non-violent. So in many ways I think it can be expressive of Christ’s self-gift.’

(Timothy Radcliffe, quoted in Report of the House of Bishops: Working Group on Human Sexuality [London: Church House Publishing, 2013], p. 77, n. 266.)

As you reel from this shocking blasphemy, remember that in 2015 “Pope” Francis appointed this individual to serve as a consultant to the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, and now he has invited him to be retreat master to prepare numerous “Catholic bishops” for a 3-week event in the Vatican that is meant to shape the entire Novus Ordo Church going forward. What could possibly go wrong?

Radcliffe’s blasphemous garbage is rooted in the personalist “Theology of the Body” of that incredible “saint”, Karol Wojtyla, also known as “Pope” John Paul II (1920-2005), which in turn is rooted in phenomenology:

The Rev. Pietro Leone exposes the errors of the Theology of the Body in Appendix A of his 2015 book The Family Under Attack, pp. 205-218 (Purchase of this book through Amazon link benefits Novus Ordo Watch).

Among the fruits of the Theology of the Body we can include Victor Manuel Fernandez’s 1995 book Heal Me With Your Mouth: The Art of Kissing, a man whom Francis wasted no time in appointing “archbishop” back in 2013, mere weeks after his own election. Also, let’s not forget the explicit sex education program for teenagers the Vatican launched at World Youth Day in 2016.

The foul sin of sodomy, which is one of only four that cry to heaven for vengeance, is gradually becoming more and more accepted in the New Church. Note well, we are talking about acceptance, not merely about toleration. Here are some examples with more information:

Radcliffe is among the lowest of the low, to put it kindly. Novus Ordo priests who practice sodomy are bad enough; but the likes of Timothy Radcliffe are so much worse because not only do they approve of the vice, they blasphemously “theologize” it and make a spirituality out of it.

No wonder ‘Pope’ Francis chose him.

Image sources: Blackfriars Hall Oxford / Amazon
Licenses: fair use

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