The final report of Study Group No. 9 advances an “exegesis of doubt” in divine revelation and opens the door to “total moral relativism.”
The final report of Study Group No. 9 advances an “exegesis of doubt” in divine revelation and opens the door to “total moral relativism.”ROME, 12 MAY 2026 — Bishop Athanasius Schneider has launched a forceful critique of the Vatican’s new report on “emerging doctrinal, pastoral and ethical issues,” saying its treatment of homosexuality advances an “exegesis of doubt” in divine revelation that echoes the serpent in the Garden of Eden and opens the door to “total moral relativism.”
The 30-page final report, published on May 5 by the Holy See’s General Secretariat of the Synod, was prepared by Study Group No. 9, one of ten study groups established by Pope Francis in February 2024 to examine issues that emerged during the first session of the Synod on Synodality in October 2023.
The seven-member study group included Cardinal Carlos Castillo Mattasoglio, Archbishop of Lima, Peru; Archbishop Filippo Iannone, Prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops; and Italian moral theologian Father Maurizio Chiodi, a professor at the Pontifical John Paul II Theological Institute for the Sciences of Marriage and the Family, who has openly argued that sexual acts within a homosexual relationship can be good in certain circumstances. Fr. Chiodi is believed to have been its main author.
The report quickly drew criticism from Catholic commentators but was immediately praised as a “major step forward” by “LGBTQ+” advocates such as Father James Martin, SJ. Controversy intensified after it emerged that one of the two testimonies featured in the report was authored by the man pictured on the front page of the New York Times in 2023 receiving a blessing with his same-sex partner from the same Jesuit priest, just one day after the publication of Fiducia Supplicans.
In this interview, Bishop Schneider discusses what he views as an unholy alliance between the Synod Secretariat and proponents of an “anti-Christian” ideology, the extent to which the Study Group No. 9 final report represents a “red line,” and how its publication might affect already tense relations between the Vatican and the traditionalist priestly Society of St. Pius X.
While acknowledging that the report carries no formal magisterial authority, the auxiliary bishop of Astana argues that its publication by the Vatican nonetheless carries serious consequences, since it will inevitably be presented and interpreted in the global media as signaling a shift in Catholic teaching.
He also makes a direct appeal to Pope Leo XIV to protect the Church, and souls, from what he calls a “brazen Gnostic doctrine,” and warns that if the Holy Father — together with cardinals, bishops, and priests — do not “wake up,” future generations may one day look back and say of this era: “The whole world sighed and wondered how it had abolished the Sixth Commandment.”
Here is my interview with Bishop Athanasius Schneider.
Diane Montagna (DM): Your Excellency, what was your initial reaction to the Study Group No. 9 final report, and to the revelation that one of the two testimonies included was written by the man featured in the New York Times being blessed with his same-sex partner by Fr. James Martin, SJ., one day after the release of Fiducia Supplicans?
+Athanasius Schneider (+AS): In issuing the Final Report of Study Group No. 9, the Secretariat of the Synod of Bishops has stooped to promoting the propaganda of a global sexual ideology that is being aggressively pushed in politics and the media worldwide. Fr. James Martin is merely a clerical henchman of this anti-Christian and blasphemous ideology. The proponents of this ideology are seeking the Church’s moral and doctrinal approval of homosexual acts and lifestyles—that is, of conduct that is contrary to God’s creation and the natural order. The Secretariat of the Synod — an organ of the Holy See—is thus collaborating with its lobbyists in a true revolt against God’s work of creation, against the beautiful and wise order of the two sexes, male and female.
(DM): The final report is clearly aimed at normalizing homosexuality in the life of the Church. This process was set in motion in 2014 with the interim report of Pope Francis’ first Synod on the Family, which argued that “homosexuals have gifts and qualities to offer to the Christian community.” The text was widely rejected by the Synod Fathers, but the efforts continued.[1] What, in your view, does the final report reveal about the “synodal process” initiated under the late Pope?
(+AS): The final report reveals that legitimizing homosexuality (i.e., homosexual acts, lifestyles, and homoerotic relationships) was already on the clerical agenda at Pope Francis’ first Synod on the Family. This agenda reached a high point with the promulgation of Fiducia Supplicans by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, under its current prefect.
Fiducia Supplicans is a mockery of common sense. It speaks of the possibility of blessing homosexual couples, not officially and liturgically, but spontaneously. According to the document, the object of the blessing is the homosexual couple, and not their relationship. But being a “couple” is derived precisely from the relationship itself. Fiducia Supplicans thus treats the entire world like fools.
The final report of Study Group No. 9 goes even further by proposing a possible doctrinal justification for homosexual acts and homoerotic relationships. It does so by indirectly calling into question the enduring validity of the testimony of Divine Revelation concerning homosexuality in Holy Scripture, advancing a kind of “exegesis of doubt” regarding the relevant biblical passages. The report, in fact, states that: “It is necessary to go beyond a mere repetition of their current presentation and take into account the insights gained from diverse exegetical readings” (2.4). Such an exegesis effectively usurps the place of God and presumes to proclaim what is good and what is evil. This is precisely what the serpent did in the Garden of Eden.
(DM): Both testimonies highlighted in the report were written by openly homosexual men living in “same-sex marriages” who do not uphold the Church’s teaching regarding marriage and sexuality. Yet there was no testimony from anyone with same-sex attraction who is seeking to live according to the Catholic faith, involved with “Courage” apostolate, etc. What does this say about the “experts” who comprised Study Group No. 9?
(+AS): This fact speaks for itself. It clearly demonstrates that an organ of the Holy See — the Secretariat of the Synod of Bishops — is taking sides with an ideological, neo-Gnostic group within the Church, a minority that explicitly contradicts the Church’s constant teaching and the sensus fidelium. It’s clear that the aim is to initiate a process to reinterpret and ultimately abolish the validity of God’s revelation — specifically the validity of the Sixth Commandment.
(DM): The authors stress that their report is not intended as an exercise of authority but is only the fruit of work requested from the Study Group during the synodal process, aimed at fostering discernment in local churches. Some might argue that this is precisely the tactic by which proponents of these ideas mean to keep the revolution moving, while others might believe this is grounds to simply ignore the report. Where do you stand?
(+AS): Even though it is formally only a document from a study group and lacks magisterial authority, it is nevertheless published by the Vatican, through an organ of the Holy See. As a result, such a document conveys to the entire world, and to most Catholics—who lack knowledge of the theological distinction regarding the weight of authority given to Church documents—that the Catholic Church, and even the Vatican, is now opening itself up to the possibility of legitimizing and normalizing homosexual acts and lifestyles. This is a clear tactic aimed at gradually accustoming the faithful to regarding homosexual acts as normal, or at least to tolerating them in individual cases, chiefly through the sophistical argument that a homosexual couple may possess other good moral or intellectual qualities. In this way, the door is opened to total moral relativism.
(DM): Is this final report a “red line”? And given that the Secretariat of the Synod has now made the report public, what action do you believe Pope Leo XIV ought to take?
(+AS): This final report has unequivocally crossed the line from orthodoxy into heresy. The report employs the beguiling phrase “paradigm shift” to undermine, with empty rhetoric, God’s Revelation about the binary nature of the sexes and His clear prohibition of any sexual acts outside of a valid marriage between a man and a woman. Pope Leo XIV’s first duty is to protect the Church and the souls of the faithful from this brazen Gnostic doctrine, which seeks to justify fornication and unnatural vice. The voice of Christ, which rebuked the church in Pergamum for tolerating the sexual heresy of the Nicolaitans (cf. Rev. 2:14-15) and accused the church in Thyatira of permitting Jezabel — who “called herself a Prophetess,” to spread sexual immorality in the Church (Rev. 2:20-21), is also addressed to Pope Leo XIV today.
(DM): We’ve been writing about these issues for years — beginning with the Family Synod, then the Youth Synod, and now the ongoing Synod on Synodality. Yet so often — perhaps apart from the backlash after Fiducia Supplicans — and with rare exception, Cardinals and Bishops seem to choose silence and inaction. Is the fact that we’ve reached this point also the result of a failure on the part of the hierarchy to resist a revolution that ramped up under the previous pontificate? And how do you believe the Cardinals can now most effectively serve the Holy Father in this regard?
(+AS): The essential mission of the sacred office of a cardinal and bishop is to obey the solemn mandate of Christ, who commanded the Apostles to teach everything He taught. And Jesus Christ, God incarnate, Truth itself, sharply condemned every form of distortion of God’s commandments, as well as any compromise with sin. With outrageous audacity, the final report replaces God’s commandments—in this case, God’s commandment against sexual acts outside of marriage—with human traditions that de facto open the door to accepting homosexual acts and lifestyles.
Homosexual heresy is increasingly infecting the Body of the Church, and if the Pope, and with him the cardinals and bishops, do not wake up and, as responsible spiritual physicians and shepherds, clearly and courageously warn and protect people from such spiritual contagion, they will be guilty through their inaction and silence. It is quite possible that future generations, looking back on our era, will apply to it words from the time of the Arian heresy: “The whole world sighed and wondered how it had abolished the Sixth Commandment of God.”
(DM): As you note above, the report proposes a “paradigm shift” in how the Church approaches its most difficult doctrinal, pastoral and moral questions, and it describes this shift as part of a “process initiated by Vatican II that challenges the models that have been prevalent in ecclesial life over the past centuries.” We often hear that clergy and faithful attached to the traditional Latin Mass need to “accept Vatican II.” But how can they be expected to do so when those chosen as Vatican experts tell us this is where it leads?
(+AS): The final report, written in typical sophistic and Gnostic fashion, presents the unchanging, holy, and wisest truths of God’s Revelation as mere “theoretical models.” (cf. 2.3) In their report, the clear, infallible, two-thousand-year-old teaching of the Church on the divinely ordained and divinely willed order of human sexuality is thereby degraded to a time-bound “model.” This also deprives the entire natural moral law that God has inscribed in the human heart, as well as His truths revealed in Holy Scripture and Holy Tradition, of their binding force.
The authors of the final report are those who, in the words of the Apostle Jude, misuse the grace of God as permission to practice fornication (cf. Jude 4). They are the “waterless springs and mists driven by a storm” of which St. Peter speaks, who “utter loud boasts of folly” and “entice with licentious passions of the flesh those have barely escaped from those who live in error. They promise them freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption” (2 Pt 2:17-19). If the Holy See does not unequivocally condemn this final report No. 9, all remaining genuinely Catholic clergy and believers will lose confidence in those who hold positions in the Vatican.
(DM): The SSPX has announced that they plan to consecrate new bishops on July 1. How can there be any hope of reconciliation or unity if these sorts of onslaughts against the Catholic Faith — emanating from within official Vatican structures — continue?
(+AS): The scandalous and, in truth, blasphemous content of the Final Report No. 9 concerning the subject of sexuality and the ever-valid content of Divine Revelation in Scripture and Tradition is further proof — among many other alarming documents and acts originating from or tolerated by the Holy See — that the current situation of the Church can only be described as a true state of emergency, which the SSPX rightly states. One would have to be blind not to see it. Anyone in the Church who still denies the true state of emergency today is either spiritually blinded or considers the naked emperor to be decently dressed (as in Anderson’s fairytale, “The Emperor’s New Clothes”), or is behaving like the servant who exclaimed in the face of the burning castle, “Everything is going very well, Madame la Marquise!” (Tout va très bien, Madame la Marquise!)
(DM): The SSPX, the German Bishops, the Synod on Synodality … Pope Leo XIV has a host of very serious matters to deal with in the coming months and years. What would you say to him as he enters the second year of his pontificate?
(+AS): As his brother in the episcopate, I could offer him no better and more relevant words than those spoken by our Lord to Peter, the first Pope: “Strengthen your brothers in the faith!” (Luke 22:32). What does “strengthen in the faith” mean in concrete terms? It obviously means bringing clarity to the confusion of faith, clarity to the ambiguity of faith, and clarity to the subversion of faith. The Pope should recognize that the Church, much like in the second century during the time of St. Irenaeus, is infected by a Gnosticism that, like a fox, cunningly denies the validity and concreteness of God’s Revelation and Commandments. This is why St. Irenaeus addressed the following warning to the popes, bishops, and faithful of his time—a passage worthy of being quoted in full:
“Such, then, is their system, which neither the prophets announced, nor the Lord taught, nor the apostles delivered, but of which they boast that beyond all others they have a perfect knowledge. They gather their views from other sources than the Scriptures; and, to use a common proverb, they strive to weave ropes of sand, while they endeavor to adapt with an air of probability to their own peculiar assertions the parables of the Lord, the sayings of the prophets, and the words of the apostles, in order that their scheme may not seem altogether without support. In doing so, however, they disregard the order and the connection of the Scriptures, and so far as in them lies, dismember and destroy the truth. By transferring passages, and dressing them up anew, and making one thing out of another, they succeed in deluding many through their wicked art in adapting the oracles of the Lord to their opinions. Their manner of acting is just as if one, when a beautiful image of a king has been constructed by some skillful artist out of precious jewels, should then take this likeness of the man all to pieces, should rearrange the gems, and so fit them together as to make them into the form of a dog or of a fox, and even that but poorly executed; and should then maintain and declare that this was the beautiful image of the king which the skillful artist constructed, pointing to the jewels which had been admirably fitted together by the first artist to form the image of the king, but have been with bad effect transferred by the latter one to the shape of a dog, and by thus exhibiting the jewels, should deceive the ignorant who had no conception what a king’s form was like, and persuade them that that miserable likeness of the fox was, in fact, the beautiful image of the king. In like manner do these persons patch together old wives’ fables, and then endeavor, by violently drawing away from their proper connection, words, expressions, and parables whenever found, to adapt the oracles of God to their baseless fictions” (Adversus haereses, I,8.1)
(DM): Your Excellency, is there anything you wish to add?
(+AS): With the following words, I wish to lend my voice to countless simple, devout Catholics whom I meet again and again in various countries, who love the Pope with a truly supernatural love, but at the same time suffer deeply because of the lack of an unambiguous affirmation of divine truths emanating from Rome amidst the unpunished spread of heresies and blasphemies in the life of the Church by clergy — even bishops and cardinals — who are wolves disguised as shepherds. I would fraternally plead:
Most Holy Father, listen to the voice of so many devout Catholics, of simple priests and religious, of children and young people who have been pushed to the periphery of ecclesial life by synodal structures and even treated with disdain solely because they remain attached to the faith and form of the liturgy handed down by their forefathers; to the faith and liturgy cherished by the saints; to the faith and liturgy embraced and offered by the overwhelming majority of the Popes.
Most Holy Father, do not side primarily with Church bureaucrats and apparatchiks, who are supported by the powerful of this world, but listen to and stand with the little ones in the Church: the traditional faithful and clergy who cling steadfastly to the faith once for all handed down to the saints (Jude 3).
Most Holy Father, be for our age another Saint Leo: make a crystal-clear profession of faith to strengthen the whole Church and dispel pernicious doubts and poisonous ambiguities, just as your predecessor and namesake once did. Then the faithful of our time, as in the age of Leo the Great, will be able to say: “Through the mouth of Pope Leo XIV, Peter has spoken!”