Question 214 – What can the lay faithful do to oppose heretical teachings of the Church?

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Interview Organization: The Confraternity of Our Lady of Fatima
Interviewer Name: Christopher Wendt
Date: September 13, 2023
The lay faithful can oppose heretical teachings of the Church by staying informed, seeking guidance from reputable sources, engaging in prayer, participating in discussions, and supporting traditional teachings. Learn more about how you can take a stand against heresy.
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Transcript:

Fasting, I think we have to profess publicly that Catholic truth—those truths that are evidently undermined by the Synod agenda, which we now know in the working document—there are a lot of things that are ambiguous and others that contradict the Catholic faith. And so, regarding these points, lay people and priests should publicly profess again the constant traditional teaching of the Church, concretely regarding the hierarchical structure, that the church has a hierarchy and the church has these two parts: the teaching Church, which are the apostles and their successes with their bishops with the Pope, the teaching Church and the flock, the sheep, and the faithful, who are the church. It is taught that this is a divine structure, and our synod undermines this in various ways. Then, the other divine structure of the church, which is taught constantly in 2000 years by the prayer and by the sacramental practices of the church, is that the sacrament of the Holy Orders, which has three steps: deacon, priest, and bishop, is reserved for male faithful, so only men or males can receive it by divine institution. So, these troops will have to proclaim again; clearly, this is now undermined in the Synod proposals and documents, and also to deal with the truth on morality: the sixth commandment not to commit adultery or other impure, unchaste acts is a divine law. And we have to proclaim this again against these cunning expressions, which is that the document of the Synod is there for welcoming LGBT people, including them, and so on. This is basically a justification for the sin of homosexuality itself or of adultery, concubinage, and so on. We have to proclaim these truths. I think this is an important first step, besides prayer and fasting, of course. 

The second part of the question is: What shall we do if such ambiguous or erroneous teachings are issued by the sinner? We can have a very clear answer: we cannot obey here because this would be against the divine revelation and the divine commandment. And in this case, we have to clearly follow God and the constant teaching of the Church. We are not Protestants; we will not follow our own opinion when we resist the possible synodal teachings of the Pope or the bishops. We should not be like Protestants, where you only follow your own opinion. In protesting against the ambiguous teaching of a synod, we will follow the Catholic principle of the constant, unchanging tradition of over 2000 years. This is Catholic.