The synod truly is the gift that keeps on giving, although it seems that few wish to receive it. The latest study group report has not only garnered criticism from within the College of Cardinals, but now from a prominent bishop and one of the Church’s leading organisations dedicated to helping homosexual individuals in line with Church teaching.

“Courage has suffered calumny and detraction before, but usually from secular outlets. It is a great sadness and an additional wound to our members to have this false and unjust depiction in a Vatican document.” Such was the response to Synod Study Group 9 from Courage International, a Church-approved group dedicated to helping people with same-sex attraction, in accordance with Church teaching – in stark contrast with many groups which promote LGBT ideology.

As reported by the Catholic Herald last week, Study Group 9’s report on “emerging issues”, including homosexuality, contained unfiltered promulgation of pro-homosexual talking points, rejection of Church teaching and attacks on the work of Courage itself.

One testimony collected by the synod featured a man now living with his “husband”, who strongly disparaged Courage. But the group itself stated that the testimony was “both calumny and detraction against the organization and its members”, explaining that the synod report “mischaracterises Courage’s work”.

“Courage is not nor ever has been involved in ‘reparative therapy’,” the group added, while also noting that “it is unjust to our members for the synod to publicly present Courage meetings and members in a negative light on the basis of one person’s experience”.

Interviewed by Vaticanist Edward Pentin, Fr Brian Gannon – the executive director of Courage International – expanded on the group’s initial statement.

“It is intellectually dishonest,” he argued. “No Courage representative was involved in the process, the study group became problematic and seems to contradict what synodality intends: the greater engagement of all relevant voices,” added Gannon.

Indeed, Fr Gannon points to a criticism many have made in recent years, namely that the synod’s “listening” focus was ideologically selective in its work, including in its recommendations for the Pope to take action on.

Questioned as to the possible motives behind an attack on Courage and Catholic morality, Fr Gannon noted that recent decades have “seen a global attack on the Church’s moral teaching like never before in history”. Certain “revisionist moral theologies that emerged from the 1960s sought to revolutionise Church teaching to accommodate the secular culture of the so-called sexual revolution”, added Gannon.

Courage is no fringe conglomeration of fanatics, but rather a canonically approved organisation providing “pastoral accompaniment to people who experience same-sex attraction who have chosen to live a chaste life”. Its executive management team also met privately with Leo XIV earlier this year, an event which its members saw as papal support for their work.

As such, Gannon expressed great concern about the impact of the synod’s report on the organisation’s reputation. Commenting on the synod text once again, he asked the Vatican to “assertively label it as it is: a non-authoritative summary of an incomplete inquiry into this very sensitive and challenging issue for so many families. That it does not acknowledge the many thousands seeking to embrace all the Church teaches.”

His thoughts – already shared by Gerhard Cardinal Müller – were echoed by Bishop Athanasius Schneider. Speaking to Vaticanista Diane Montagna, Schneider attested that the synod’s governing office “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”.

In the assessment of the auxiliary bishop, the report from Study Group 9 “has unequivocally crossed the line from orthodoxy into heresy”. Now, the report does not have any authority in its own right, nor will it assume any import unless Pope Leo XIV decides to take action over it.

Nevertheless, its arguments and rhetoric have swiftly been seized upon by activists keen to subvert Catholic teaching on homosexuality. Schneider highlighted this element. “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,” he stated.

Schneider has become well known in the Church for his forthright and unambiguous statements in defence of the fullness of Catholic teaching. On many occasions he has urged other prelates to join him in such activity, but he renewed this call with fresh vigour.

“Homosexual heresy is increasingly infecting the Body of the Church,” he warned, “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.”

Schneider went so far as to argue that the Study Group report was “proof” of the Society of St Pius X’s “state of emergency”, which is cited in defence of the planned episcopal consecrations.

“The current situation of the Church can only be described as a true state of emergency, which the SSPX rightly states,” said Schneider. “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 Andersen’s fairytale, ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’).”