The Third Synodal Assembly of the Italian Church marked a historic turning point in its pastoral approach to LGBT people. With approval of the Synodal Path’s summary document, “Yeast of Peace and Hope,” the Italian Episcopal Conference (CEI) overwhelmingly approved proposals that represent an unprecedented openness toward homosexual and transgender people, promoting their recognition and support within ecclesial communities. The document reads: “May the CEI support with prayer and reflection the ‘days’ promoted by civil society to combat all forms of violence and demonstrate solidarity with those who are hurt and discriminated against (Days against gender violence and discrimination, pedophilia, bullying, femicide, homophobia and transphobia, etc.)” For more on the document, see here.

Echoes of an ancient story

Writing around A.D. 379 in his dialogue Adversus Luciferianos (“Against the Luciferians,” ch. 19), St. Jerome (Eusebius Jerome) reports that during the Council of Rimini (Ariminum, 359 AD), under pressure from Emperor Constantius II, the majority of Western bishops signed a compromise formula that resulted in Arianism, the heresy that denied the full divinity of Christ. This led to the sudden dominance of Arianism in the Church, which Jerome describes with astonishment and regret in the famous phrase: Ingemuit totus orbis et miratus est se Arianum esse (The whole world groaned and was amazed to find itself Aryan).

Jerome describes how the bishops, who had begun the Council with optimism, realized only later how they had succumbed to heresy. The same astonishment is felt today when hearing news of the approval of “Yeast of Peace and Hope.” If, in Jerome’s time, the Church was astonished to find itself Arian, today the Church is not surprised to find itself flirting with LGBT ideology.

The Structure of the Synodal Assembly

The Synodal Assembly is the central body of the Synodal Path of the Churches in Italy, launched by the CEI in 2021, in harmony with Pope Francis’s Synod on “The Synodal Church: Communion, Participation, and Mission.” It is a process that engages the entire People of God for a more dialogical, missionary, and participatory Church, through diocesan listening, shared reflection, and ten-year pastoral orientation.

By CEI rules, the composition of the Assembly ensures a balance between hierarchy, laity, and ecclesial figures. CEI members include all Italian bishops (approximately 220-230, including the cardinals), who constitute the binding decision-making nucleus. Each diocese has two to five representatives, mostly lay persons along with priests, religious, and deacons, appointed on the basis of population. The laity are the most numerous (for example, 442 out of 957 in the second assembly).

The National Committee has approximately 50-60 members, including the Presidency, two representatives for 16 ecclesiastical Regions (male and female), representatives of organizations such as the Pope Paul VI Conference, religious figures, universities, theological associations, and socio-cultural entities. Total participants number approximately 950-1,000 (46% lay people, 26% priests, 18% bishops, and the remainder among religious, deacons, and cardinals).

Given the presence, indeed the overabundance, of lay people (more than double the number of bishops) in the Synodal Assembly, the approved document is not a magisterial text, at least according to canon law and theological criteria, and yet it will de facto and substantially change Church teaching. For a theologian, the text will not have the magisterial authority it requires, but it will, in fact, produce the same effects as a document much higher on the scale of authority of Church documents. It is, however, a document approved by the CEI, given the presence of all the bishops.

The Contradictions of Prayer

Praying for the success of initiatives like anti-homophobia days, Gay Pride parades, and so on seems intrinsically absurd. How can we protect children in schools from LGBT propaganda or stop “Drag Queen Story Hours” if the Church says it has committed itself to praying these events be as successful as possible? LGBT Pride is a movement and series of annual events promoted by civil society that celebrate the identities, diversity, and rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and other sexual orientations and gender identities (LGBTQ+). It is a public demonstration that promotes awareness, acceptance, equality, and the fight against gender discrimination and homo/transphobia.

An inkling of all this presented during discussion of the Zan bill. Alessandro Zan introduced legislation in the Italian Parliament to designate LGBT categories as protected under anti-discrimination law, impose enhanced penalties for “hate crimes,” establish a National Antihomophobia Day, and require schools to “educate” in these areas. It passed the Chamber of Deputies but appears stuck in the Senate. My friends and I approached a bishop to raise his awareness of the dangers of the bill. He claimed unfamiliarity (sic!) with the issue and directed us to another bishop, the secretary of a regional Episcopal Conference supposedly more suitable because he was an expert on moral issues. When we met him, to our surprise he confidently told us that the bill proposed by Deputies President Boldrini needed to be supported. This was because, in his opinion, it was more serious than Zan’s (sic!), as it had been proposed by a serious person, the head of the chamber.

The Italian Church, which should be proclaiming, “But from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female; for this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no man put asunder” (Mark 10:6-9), today finds itself supporting — indeed praying for — initiatives like the LGBT Pride Parade. The Italian Church seems to have lost its theological compass, a Church sailing without a precise direction, with clerics “tossed to and fro and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the craftiness and shrewdness of deceivers, into deceit” (Eph 4:14; see also Jude 1:10-13). It seems we are in the presence of an Italian Church that has discarded two thousand years of teaching of the universal Church, preferring to be in step with the times rather than timeless truth, the transient to eternity, ideology to truth, the nihilistic proposals of others to full humanity, earthly life to eternal life.

The Church of Absence

The Italian Church no longer seems to be a Church that primarily proclaims the Presence of Him who frees us from sin, but a Church that supports initiatives that proclaim the absence of sin; a Church that supports initiatives that promote gender ideology; a Church that supports initiatives that nihilistically preach the nonexistence of truth; a Church that supports forces that preach the fluidity of gender identity.

Instead of having the Gospel as its fundamental mission, inviting people to turn from sin, shouting from the rooftops, “Repent and believe in the Gospel” (Mk 1:15), we find ourselves faced with an Italian Church increasingly concerned with trash separation and recycling, energy conservation, and the UN 2030 Agenda. A Church that talks a lot about everything but less and less about God.

How can a Church that no longer speaks of sin, and even prays for the success of social initiatives that deny it, explain figures like St. John the Baptist, who was beheaded for condemning King Herod Antipas’s illegal marriage to Herodias? How can it explain the martyrdom of St. John Fisher (the only English bishop to take a stand) and St. Thomas More, also beheaded for refusing to follow King Henry VIII’s orders to swear fealty to the monarch as supreme head of his invented new Church of England, given that the Pope, head of the Catholic Church, refused to grant the king a divorce from Catherine of Aragon so he could marry Anne Boleyn?

Future prospects

How curious, we have the Italian Church first supporting assisted suicide and now LGBT initiatives. What will be its next triple somersault in the current pastoral equestrian circle? What will be the next frontier? Direct euthanasia? Catechism classes featuring drag queens to illustrate all possible sexual identities? Will priests invite the faithful to participate in Gay Pride parades with rainbow flags and necklaces? At this point, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to muster the energy to imagine things in the face of the creative and generative minds of the Italian clergy, who use pastoral care as a weapon of mass distraction from the truth.

Failure of the Mission

Mario Adinolfi, speaking about the approval of the Synod document, ironically cites a film by Verdone in which a father scolds his priest son, shouting, “You don’t even remember the basics of the profession!” A fitting irony. Poor deluded priests, bishops, and cardinals who believe they can fill their churches by embracing dubious causes. Ultimately, they will increasingly find themselves with empty churches, empty pews of absentees, and desolate environments. In so doing, they will witness a failed mission because theirs is increasingly distant from that commanded by Jesus Christ: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:19-20).

Repetita iuvant

The story of Saint Athanasius teaches us that fidelity to truth comes at a price. Athanasius was persecuted, even exiled, for resisting the dominant Arianism of his era, though he ultimately found himself on the winning side — because Truth wins. So today the faithful who remain steadfast in the Church’s traditional teaching will certainly face the ostracism of political correctness and woke culture, both outside and even within the Church. As Church history reminds us, truth prevails over error, no matter how much the latter may claim the world.