CFN News Roundup: Giving Alms with Prudence, Synod 2022 Theme Announced

In this episode, CFN Editor-in-Chief Brian McCall and Managing Editor Matt Gaspers discuss the following news items:

Give Alms, Especially During Lent, But Not to CRS
- Catholic Relief Services (CRS) is the charitable arm of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB).
- Every year during Lent, CRS conducts their “Rice Bowl” fundraiser as a means of collecting alms for the poor — one of the three preeminent good works to which the faithful are called to devote themselves, especially during Lent (the others being prayer and fasting).
- The Lepanto Institute, led by Michael Hichborn (founder and president), recently concluded a year-long investigation into CRS and has begun to release thoroughly documented evidence of CRS actively promoting the use of condoms, other forms of contraception, and even abortion (see here and here).
- CRS has responded by promising to investigate the allegations.
A Synod on “Synodality”?
- Roughly five months after the disastrous Amazon Synod (Oct. 6-27, 2019), the Vatican announced the theme for the next Synod of Bishops (scheduled for Oct. 2022) on March 7: “For a Synodal Church: Communion, Participation, and Mission”.
- “Synodality” has become the hallmark of the Francis pontificate — the means by which he advances the radical agenda for which he was elected, with the help of the St. Gallen Mafia.
- Pope Francis has asserted on more than one occasion that synodality “is what the Lord expects of the Church in the third millennium” (see here for a similar statement). For this reason (i.e., the will of Francis), no doubt, the International Theological Commission (ITC) spent a few years studying the history/theology of “synodality”, eventually publishing a text in March 2018 called, “Synodality in the Life and Mission of the Church“.
- Tellingly, when Cardinal Michael Czerny, S.J. (one of two special secretaries for the Amazon Synod) was asked to explain “synodality” last October, he answered: “I think that the dynamic of the Synod is such that everyone had a sense of what it [synodality] meant because we were doing it. Whether everyone could explain it in words, I’m not so sure, but I’m not sure that that mattered.”