We cannot “reinvent the Catholic faith” or “teach a different Catholicism in different countries”, Sydney Archbishop Anthony Fisher OP said in an interview this week. Source: CNA.
Archbishop Fisher, who is attending the Synod on Synodality as a member, spoke to EWTN on Tuesday in an interview to be broadcast today on EWTN News Nightly.
As the synodal assembly debates part 3 of the Instrumentum Laboris on “places,” the bishops and laypeople are considering questions such as the future of synodality and the role and authority of national bishops’ conferences, Archbishop Fisher said.
Should bishops’ conferences “have the authority to teach a different Catholicism in different countries or to decide a different liturgy in different countries or different Mass for different countries? Do they bring their own local culture to questions in the area of morals, for instance?” Archbishop Fisher said.
“Could we, for instance, envision a Church where you have ordination of women in some countries but not in other countries, or you have same-sex marriages in some countries but not in other countries, or you have an Arian Christology in some countries and a Nicene Christology in others?” he continued. “You might guess, I think no.”
As one of 15 bishops on the ordinary council of the Synod of Bishops for the Synod on Synodality, Archbishop Fisher attended the first session of the synodal assembly in October 2023 and is back in Rome this month for the second session.
He said he was “very concerned” that Catholics “hold on to the deposit of faith, the apostolic tradition, that we don’t imagine, in the vanity of our age, that we are going to reinvent the Catholic faith or the Catholic Church”.
“In fact, this is a tremendous treasure that we’ve received from generation after generation before us, all the way back to Our Lord Jesus Christ and his apostles. And we are here to transmit that faithfully to the next generations after us,” he said.
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Australian archbishop: Synod on Synodality cannot ‘reinvent the Catholic faith’ (By Hannah Brockhaus, CNA)
