Cardinal-Elect Timothy Radcliffe Reveals the Synod’s Revolutionary DNA

Fr (soon to be Cardinal) Radcliffe is a major heretic on sexual morality being a major supporter of the evil LGBTQ+∞ agenda in the Church.

From The Remnant

By Robert Morrison 

Most faithful Catholics fortunately have little reason to know much about Fr. Timothy Radcliffe, even though Francis recently named the pro-LGBTQ Dominican priest on the list of Cardinals to be created at the December 8 consistory.

 

However, it is worth examining Radcliffe’s October 21 meditation delivered to the participants on the ongoing Synod on Synodality because it offers us one of the most honest and accurate statements of what is truly going on in Rome today. We can get a clear picture of how the Synodal Church differs from the Catholic Church by considering five themes from his meditation: freedom, Yves Congar’s role, Vatican II, nonsensical contradictions, and the long game.

Freedom. Radcliffe began his meditation by emphasizing the concept of freedom:

“We are about to embark on our last task, to consider the final document, amend and vote on it. Today we prepare ourselves to exercise this weighty responsibility. How are we do so?

With freedom! . . . Freedom is the double helix of the Christian DNA. First of all, it is the freedom to say what we believe and to listen without fear to what others say, in mutual respect. This is freedom of the children of God to speak boldly, with parrésia (e.g. Acts 4.29), as the disciples boldly declared the good news of the Resurrection in Jerusalem. Because of this freedom, each of us can say ‘I’. We do not have the right to keep silent. This freedom is rooted in a deeper freedom, interior freedom of our hearts as we discover the decisions that are taken. We may be disappointed with the decisions of the Synod. Some of us will consider these to be ill-advised or even wrong. But we have the freedom of those who believe that, as St Paul wrote to the Romans, ‘God works all for the good of those who love him’ (Romans 8.28).”

We cannot simply believe whatever we choose to believe, as Francis and Radcliffe would have us do — we must believe what the Catholic Church teaches.

So this freedom “is the double helix of the Christian DNA,” composed of freedom to “say what we believe,” as well as an interior freedom to trust in God’s Providence. But this is not the true meaning of Christian freedom. We cannot simply believe whatever we choose to believe, as Francis and Radcliffe would have us do — we must believe what the Catholic Church teaches. Only by living by what the Church actually teaches can we have the interior freedom of which St. Paul wrote.

Radcliffe closed his meditation with an emphasis on how the Synodal “freedom” translates into a need to boldly break free from the constraints of orthodoxy:

“If we have only the freedom to argue for our positions, we shall be tempted by the arrogance of those who, in the words of de Lubac, see themselves as ‘the incarnate norm of orthodoxy.’ We shall end up beating the drums of ideology, whether of the left or the right. 

If we have only the freedom of those who trust in God’s providence but dare not wade into the debate with our own convictions, we shall be irresponsible and never grow up.”

It is this type of “freedom” that allows a Catholic priest who loudly supports the LGBTQ agenda to be the spiritual guide for the Synod. As Catholics know, however, this mindset excludes the true freedom God offers to those who abide by His truth and instead leads its adherents to be enslaved by sin, which is a key facet of the Synodal process.

Yves Congar. As discussed in previous articles, Francis opened the Synod on Synodality with his October 9, 2021 invocation of Yves Congar’s inspiration to “create a different church”:

“Dear brothers and sisters, may this Synod be a true season of the Spirit!  For we need the Spirit, the ever new breath of God, who sets us free from every form of self-absorption, revives what is moribund, loosens shackles and spreads joy. The Holy Spirit guides us where God wants us to be, not to where our own ideas and personal tastes would lead us. Father Congar, of blessed memory, once said: ‘There is no need to create another Church, but to create a different Church’ (True and False Reform in the Church). That is the challenge. For a ‘different Church,’ a Church open to the newness that God wants to suggest, let us with greater fervour and frequency invoke the Holy Spirit and humbly listen to him, journeying together as he, the source of communion and mission, desires: with docility and courage.” (Francis, October 9, 2021, Address to Open the Synod)

It should thus come as no surprise that Radcliffe mentioned Congar in his meditation. However, the candid manner in which he discussed Congar’s heterodoxy is revealing:

“Yves Congar was silenced by Rome. He was even exiled to England, a terrible fate for a Frenchman! Strangely he never appreciated our cuisine! In the depths of this crisis, he wrote in his diary, that the only response to this persecution was ‘to speak the truth. Prudently, without provocative and useless scandal. But to remain – and to become more and more – an authentic and pure witness to [that] which is true.’”

So, as Radcliffe accurately noted, Congar “was silenced by Rome” under Pope Pius XII, but continued to fight against those who sought to protect Catholic truth. Radcliffe does not even try to pretend that Congar was orthodox. When he and Francis applaud Congar’s role in inspiring the Synod, they are telling us clearly that their objective includes the complete rejection of the orthodox defense of Catholicism that we saw from the pre-Vatican II popes.

When faced with contradictions such as those which we see from today’s proponents of Synodality, a properly-functioning mind should conclude that the entire project is a farce.

Contradictions. Radcliffe continued his meditation with a homage to nonsensical contradictions:

“We need not be afraid of disagreement, for the Holy Spirit is at work in it. One day a man came to his rabbi to complain about his wife. At the end of the conversation the Rabbi said to him: 'My friend you are absolutely right, you are justified!' That afternoon the wife of the man came to the Rabbi and complained about her husband at great length. At the end of the conversation, the Rabbi said to the woman: 'My friend, you are absolutely right, you are justified!' When the woman was gone the Rabbi’s wife said to him: 'But you're absolutely mistaken. You cannot say that both of them are right, that both of them justified.' And the Rabbi said to his wife: 'You are right!’”

Whereas true Catholic orthodoxy excludes actual contradictions such as these, the Neo-Modernist plague infecting Rome today absolutely depends upon them. Professor Romano Amerio discussed the post-conciliar reliance on contradictions in his Iota Unum: A Study of Changes in the Catholic Church in the XXth Century:

“Besides being unsupported by the magisterium of the Church, all these ideas are riddled with logical flaws and assume, for example, that saying ‘Christ did not ascend bodily’ is the same as saying ‘Christ ascended bodily.’ The one is no mode of the other; the two are contradictory. Equivalences of this sort can be sustained only by supposing that the human intellect can make contradictions identical, that is, that it can tell itself that being coincides with non-being. . . This pseudo-rationalism has triumphantly installed itself in post-conciliar theological schools and is tending, by a fatal lack of logical force, to extinguish and annihilate the specifically supernatural character of Christianity.” (pp. 714-715)

When faced with contradictions such as those which we see from today’s proponents of Synodality, a properly-functioning mind should conclude that the entire project is a farce. But, tragically, far too many Catholics (including most of the hierarchy) have failed to reject the Synodal contradictions. Those who accept these contradictions end up believing anti-Catholic lies and impairing their ability to reason properly.

Vatican II. Radcliffe made only a passing reference to Vatican II but the significance is crucial:

“Like Congar, Henri de Lubac SJ endured persecution prior to the Council.”

As we saw above, Pius XII had silenced Congar. By appointing Congar and de Lubac — along with Hans Küng and Karl Rahner — as council experts to contribute to Vatican II, John XXIII not only invited theological catastrophe but also signaled that the Church had made truce with error, which it can never actually do. For men like Francis and Radcliffe, Vatican II’s significance is often less about particular ideas that sprang from the Council and more about this belief that Vatican II ended the Catholic Church’s enmity with theological error. Ironically, though, there can never actually be a truce between truth and error: the ultimate consequence of accepting error is to exclude truth, which is what we see with Francis and his Synod.

The Long Game. Those familiar with John Vennari’s The Permanent Instruction of the Alta Vendita: A Masonic Blueprint for the Subversion of the Catholic Church may recall the disturbing Freemasonic plan to overcome the Catholic Church through a process that would take decades to bear tangible fruits:

“The task that we are going to undertake is not the work of a day, or of a month, or of a year; it may last several years, perhaps a century; but in our ranks, the soldier dies and the struggle goes on.”

We hear echoes of this in Radcliffe’s meditation:

“So even if you are disappointed by the result of the Synod, God’s providence is at work in this Assembly, bringing us to the Kingdom in ways that God alone knows. His will for our good cannot be frustrated.  During the retreat I quoted Cardinal Consalvi’s reply to the alarmed monsignor who said that Napoleon wished to destroy the Church: ‘Not even we have succeeded in doing that.’ . . . Often we can have no idea as to how God’s providence is at work in our lives. We do what we believe to be right and the rest is in the hands of the Lord. This is just one synod. There will be others. We do not have to do everything, just try to take the next step.”

Aside from the possibility that Radcliffe may be taking Napoleon’s side rather than Cardinal Consalvi’s in the quote above, we can see that the Synodal leaders envision this as a beginning rather than an end.

Three years ago, Francis told us that he intended to create a “different church” with the Synod. He has succeeded — the Synodal Church is not the Catholic Church.

Stepping back, the October 2024 Synod on Synodality session in Rome has more to do with normalizing an anti-Catholic process than achieving finite spiritual victories. Sure, there will be more emphasis on false ecumenism and accompanying unrepentant sinners (and their sins), but the real damage relates to the virtually unopposed existence of the process itself.

Three years ago, Francis told us that he intended to create a “different church” with the Synod. He has succeeded — the Synodal Church is not the Catholic Church. Building on Radcliffe’s image of freedom as the “double helix of the Christian DNA,” the Synodal Church represents an unholy mutation of Catholicism that resembles the “ape church” described by Archbishop Fulton Sheen:

“He will set up a counterchurch which will be the ape of the Church, because he, the Devil, is the ape of God. It will have all the notes and characteristics of the Church, but in reverse and emptied of its divine content.” (Archbishop Fulton Sheen, Communism and the Conscience of the West)

As Catholics, one aspect of the true freedom we possess is a right, and even an obligation, to defend God’s truth with charity without having to fear the consequences. Now is the time to unambiguously reject and denounce the Synod on Synodality. If boldly defending the Catholic Faith against its diabolical counterfeit leads us to being excommunicated from the Synodal Church, Deo Gratias! When the alternative is to go along with Satan’s attacks on the Mystical Body of Christ, we must instead decide to stand with God and His saints. Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us!