St. Ignatius of Loyola’s first rule for thinking with the Church is: “We must put aside all judgement of our own, and keep the mind every ready and prompt to obey in all things, the true spouse of Christ our Lord, our holy mother, the hierarchical Church.” This loving obedience can be difficult; it requires discernment and a readiness to conform one’s thinking to the mind of Christ and his immaculate bride – sentire cum ecclesia. One of the difficulties today concerns the idea of “synodality” as concretized in the current multi-year synodal process. Many Catholics who want to think with the Church are both embarrassed by and deeply apprehensive of the steady stream of images and documents generated by the General Secretariat of the Synod of Bishops. We are embarrassed by the ugliness and ideological character of the images, by the low intellectual level of the documents, and by the displacement of a genuine sense of the Catholicity of the Church rooted in mystery of Jesus Christ by slogans about “acceptance”, “equality”, and the need to “embrace diversity”.1
In trying to understand the requirements of sentire cum ecclesia in this situation, it is helpful to recall the discernment undertaken by Henri de Lubac in the confusing period immediately following the Second Vatican Council. In particular, de Lubac criticized his confreres for adopting:
a false idea of openness to the world, shameless preached as if it were the thought of the Council, which takes away from the mass of the faithful that which was always the strength of Christians no matter how immersed they were in the world; that is: the awareness of their obligation to be the world’s vivifying soul. Instead, it leaves them as poor creatures without an identity, trailing along in tow.2
These words about “trailing along in tow” – desperately trying to be fashionable and accepted by the world – are an apt description of many of the phrases scattered throughout the working documents of the synodal process. And it does not inspire confidence when ideological slogans about “embracing diversity” and the need to provide “a more welcoming space” for LGBTQ individuals are presented as the voice of the Holy Spirit. For example, the drafters of the recent “Working Document for the Continental Stage” of the synod exhort us to “enter these pages as on ‘holy ground.’” No and no thank you.
How did this situation come about? What exactly is meant by “synodality” or “synodal ecclesiology”? What are the specific proposals for implementing synodality at every level of the Church? Finally, what are some of the limitations of this new synodal ecclesiology? My aim in what follows is to explore these questions in two steps. The first part of my paper will trace the recent history of the concept of “synodality” and the ecclesiology undergirding recent proposals to build or construct a synodal Church. Part Two will raise some critical questions in light of the sacramental nature of ecclesial authority and the specific vocation of the laity.
Let me preface my remarks by addressing a possible misunderstanding or an objection. The objection can framed as follows: The Church’s magisterium has proposed “synodality” as a key to renewing the life of the Church. It follows that a fundamental criticism of the synodal process represents a form of disobedience to the shepherds of the Church. I have two points to make in response to this concern, both of which will be elaborated in what follows:
1. The word “synodality” means walking together. The concept is based on the common dignity and co-responsibility of all of the baptized for the life and mission of the Church. At the heart of the synodal path is mutual listening, collaboration, and a renewed sense of shared responsibility of the part of all for the mission of the Church. Conceived in this general way, “synodality” is unobjectionable; it is a noble goal. In fact, it can be read as an attempt to take seriously the teaching of Dei Verbum that the deposit of faith is a common good uniting pastors and faithful in what the Council Fathers call a “singularis conspiratio.” The faithful, no less than their shepherds, have a role in receiving and transmitting the Word of God. Nothing in my remarks should be taken as a criticism of “synodality” conceived in this general way. Mutual listening, renewed forms of collaboration, and a sense of shared responsibility on the part of all the baptized are essential goods for the life of the Church. My critical questions are not directed at “synodality” as such, but rather at the documents that aim to implement the synodal path by creating new structures and processes. In this sense, my criticism aims to restore a genuine co-responsibility and mutual listening from what I consider to be certain clerical distortions. This leads to the second point:
2. The target of my criticism is not the magisterium of the Catholic Church, but the non-magisterial documents generated by the General Secretariat of the Synod of Bishops. The head of this bureaucracy, Cardinal Mario Grech, has specifically asked the laity for feedback, including critical comments on these documents.
Part One: The Recent History of the Concept of “Synodality” (1965-2021)
The word “synod”, derived from the preposition “συν” (with) and the noun “όδός” (path), suggests the notion of the “common journey” of Christians or the assembly of those who have been called together by God. More specifically, the word synod refers to “ecclesial assemblies convoked on various levels (diocesan, provincial, regional, patriarchal or universal) to discern, by the light of the Word of God and listening to the Holy Spirit, the doctrinal, liturgical, canonical and pastoral questions that arise as time goes by.”3 1From the time of the early Church councils or synods have played an essential role in the life and mission of the Church.
The contemporary emphasis on synodality can be traced to a decision of Pope Paul VI in 1965 to reintroduce the practice of regular meetings of bishops to address issues of concern for the universal Church. 4 The inspiration and theological foundation for instituting the Synod of Bishops was Lumen Gentium’s teaching on “collegiality.” The college of bishops is also (with the Roman Pontiff) the subject of supreme and full authority over the universal Church.
The Lord Jesus, after praying to the Father, calling to Himself those whom He desired, appointed twelve to be with Him, and whom He would send to preach the Kingdom of God; and these apostles He formed after the manner of a college or a stable group, over which He placed Peter chosen from among them. That divine mission, entrusted by Christ to the apostles, will last until the end of the world, since the Gospel they are to teach is for all time the source of all life for the Church. And for this reason the apostles, appointed as rulers in this society, took care to appoint successors.
The order of bishops, which succeeds to the college of apostles and gives this apostolic body continued existence, is also the subject of supreme and full power over the universal Church, provided we understand this body together with its head the Roman Pontiff and never without this head.5
It is not the case that Christ bestows all authority on the successor of Peter, who then delegates some of his authority to other bishops. By virtue of the sacrament of episcopal ordination, each bishop is entrusted by Christ with authority to teach and govern the Church, and each bishop is co-responsible for the universal Church. In order allow the bishops and the Pope to better exercise their shared responsibility for the Church, it is fitting for there to be regular meetings to deliberate on questions of universal concern. As John Paul II noted, the Synod of Bishops, “representing the entire Catholic episcopate, demonstrates the fact that all the bishops are in hierarchical communion in solicitude for the universal Church.”6 From the establishment of the Synod of Bishops in 1965, through the papacies of John Paul II and Benedict XVI, the terms “synod” or “synodality” referred principally to the collegial exercise of episcopal authority.
More recently, a new idea has gained currency: the novel idea is that “synodality” pertains to the essence of the Church and to every aspect of the Church’s life and mission. In short, synodality is an essential and constitutive feature of the Church. What are the theological foundations and motivation for this analogical extension of the concept of “synodality”? The first and most basic concern of synodal ecclesiology is a renewed sense of the common dignity and vocation of all of the members of the Church. By virtue of the Sacrament of Baptism, all of the faithful participate in the priestly, prophetic, and kingly offices of Christ. Synodal ecclesiology seeks to confirm and deepen the participation and shared responsibility of all for the life and mission of the Church. The diversity of charisms and ministries in the Church is meant to serve and enrich our “common journey”, allowing each member to play an active role in the Church’s mission.
Undergirding the participation and co-responsibility of all of the faithful is the doctrine of the sensus fidei fidelium. In an important address on the fiftieth anniversary of the institution of the Synod of Bishops, Pope Francis developed the connection between synodality and the sensus fidei:
After stating that the people of God is comprised of all the baptized who are called to “be a spiritual house and a holy priesthood”, the Second Vatican Council went on to say that “the whole body of the faithful, who have an anointing which comes from the holy one (cf. 1 Jn 2:20,27), cannot err in matters of belief. This characteristic is shown in the supernatural sense of the faith (sensus fidei) of the whole people of God, when ‘from the bishops to the last of the faithful’ it manifests a universal consensus in matters of faith and morals”. These are the famous words infallible “in credendo”. In the Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, I emphasized that “the people of God is holy thanks to this anointing, which makes it infallible in credendo“, and added that “all the baptized, whatever their position in the Church or their level of instruction in the faith, are agents of evangelization, and it would be insufficient to envisage a plan of evangelization to be carried out by professionals while the rest of the faithful would simply be passive recipients”. The sensus fidei prevents a rigid separation between an Ecclesia docens and an Ecclesia discens, since the flock likewise has an instinctive ability to discern the new ways that the Lord is revealing to the Church.7
The sensus fidei establishes the whole Church, anointed by the Holy Spirit, as the bearer of apostolic tradition. In order to discern the voice of the Spirit, it is necessary for the Church’s pastors to consult the faithful and to listen to their voice. Reciprocally, synodality encourages the faithful to become protagonists or active participants in the Church’s missionary journey. Both the method and the goal of synodality is “a mutual listening in which everyone has something to learn. The faithful people, the college of bishops, the Bishop of Rome: all listening to each other, and all listening to the Holy Spirit, the ‘Spirit of truth’ (Jn 14:17), in order to know what he ‘says to the Churches’ (Rev 2:7).”8
A second, and related, aim of synodal ecclesiology is to overcome an exclusionary or one-sided “clericalism” that would preclude “the participation of all, according to each one’s calling, with the authority conferred by Christ on the College of Bishops headed by the Pope.”9 In the words of Pope Francis, “synodality, as a constitutive element of the Church, offers us the most appropriate interpretive framework for understanding the hierarchical ministry itself.”10 If every member of the Church is co-responsible for the Church, then every member should participate in the Church’s governance. While acknowledging the distinction of gifts or charisms in the Church, including the charism of hierarchical ministry, the program of synodality seeks to develop new forms of collaboration and “mutual listening” as well as new structures that will allow the laity to participate in decision-making in the Church.
In summary, the recent history of the concept of synodality begins with a concern to implement the teaching of Lumen Gentium on collegiality. The institution of the Synod of Bishops was meant to express and realize the collaboration and shared responsibility of the Pope and the bishops for the universal Church. The past few years have witnessed a development or analogical extension of the meaning of “synodality”; if the term initially referred to episcopal collegiality, the new idea is that the whole Church is constitutively and essentially synodal. In the words of the International Theological Commission, “synodality is the specific modus vivendi et operandi of the Church.”11
Before considering some possible limitations of synodal ecclesiology, it is necessary to present some specific proposals for the implementation of synodality in the life of the Church. “Synodality” is essentially a programmatic concept in the sense that it authorizes and requires new processes, structures, and events in order to realize the goal of “building a synodal Church.”12 An important text from the International Theological Commission offers a description of synodality as an essential and constitutive dimension of the Church:
a. First and foremost, synodality denotes the particular style that qualifies the life and mission of the Church, expressing her nature as the People of God journeying together and gathering in assembly, summoned by the Lord Jesus in the power of the Holy Spirit to proclaim the Gospel. Synodality ought to be expressed in the Church’s ordinary way of living and working. This modus vivendi et operandi works through the community listening to the Word and celebrating the Eucharist, the brotherhood of communion and the co-responsibility and participation of the whole People of God in its life and mission, on all levels and distinguishing between various ministries and roles.
b. In a more specific sense, which is determined from a theological and canonical point of view, synodality denotes those structures and ecclesial processes in which the synodal nature of the Church is expressed at an institutional level, but analogously on various levels: local, regional and universal. These structures and processes are officially at the service of the Church, which must discover the way to move forward by listening to the Holy Spirit.
c. Finally, synodality designates the program of those synodal events in which the Church is called together by the competent authority in accordance with the specific procedures laid down by ecclesiastical discipline, involving the whole People of God in various ways on local, regional and universal levels, presided over by the Bishops in collegial communion with the Bishop of Rome, to discern the way forward and other particular questions, and to take particular decisions and directions with the aim of fulfilling its evangelizing mission.13
There are several things to observe regarding this summary account of the three levels or dimensions of synodality. The first point to note is the logical connection between the three levels. The first level refers to synodality as a “style” that can and should be expressed in the ordinary life of the Church, especially in her liturgical life. However, the content and meaning of this “synodal style” is vague and generic. The real test of whether or not a synodal style is adequately present in the life of the Church is the attention given to the processes, structures, and synodal assemblies described as the second and third levels. In a reflection on these three levels in which synodality is expressed, the Preparatory Document for the 2023 Synod affirms that “if it is not embodied in structures and processes, the style of synodality easily degrades from the level of intentions and desires to that of rhetoric.”14
The second point to note is that synodality is a project or plan that requires new initiatives and new processes. By journeying together in a synodal way, “the Church will be able to learn through Her experience which processes can help Her to live communion, to achieve participation.”15 This requires “the ability to imagine a different future for the Church and her institutions”16 with the goal of “building a synodal Church.”17
What are some of the processes and structures in which and by which the synodal nature of the Church can be expressed? The answer to this question is complex insofar as different processes and structures are called for at the level of a parish, a diocese, a region, a nation, and the universal Church. It is helpful to focus on synodality at the level of the parish. For most members of the Church, the parish is the concrete place where the Church is encountered and experienced. Referring to the importance of synodality in the life of the parish, the ITC document on synodality notes:
In the parish there are two structures which have a synodal character: the parish pastoral council and the financial council, with lay participation in consultation and pastoral planning. In this sense it seems necessary to review the canonical norm which at present only suggests that there should be a parish pastoral council and to make it obligatory, as the last Synod of the Diocese of Rome did. Bringing about an effective synodal dynamic in a local Church also requires that the Diocesan Pastoral Council and parish pastoral councils should work in a coordinated way and be appropriately upgraded.18
The idea here seems to be that synodality involves participating in representative institutions or structures that allow the laity to share in the governance of the parish. Earlier in the text, the ITC explained that “the advanced demands of modern consciousness concerning the participation of every citizen in running society, call for a new and deeper experience and presentation of the mystery of the Church as intrinsically synodal.”19 The dynamic of “mutual listening” and shared responsibility within the Church should find expression in structures that allow the laity to participate in decisions that affect the life of the parish.
The second way for the laity to implement and realize the synodal nature of the Church is by means of their participation in “synodal events” convoked by a competent ecclesial authority. The current synodal process, which will culminate in a multi-year General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, is a key example of such an event. In its inception and planning, the current synodal process has been specifically designed to allow for the participation of the whole Church. The first phase of the current synodal process involves “listening to and consulting the people of God in the particular Churches (October 2021 – April 2022).”20 How exactly can the laity participate in this event? By participating in parish meetings or workshops on synodality or by responding to a synod survey on specially designed interactive websites. In both cases the questions which form the basis for the consultation phase of the synodal process, include the following:
How is [the synodal]“journeying together” happening today in the Church?
What space is there in your life to listen to the voices on the peripheries of the Church, especially cultural groups, women, the disabled, those who experience poverty, marginalization, or social exclusion?
What space is there our parishes for the voice of people, including active and inactive members of our faith?
How is authority or governance exercised in your local parish and in the Church?
How does your parish promote participation in decision-making within the hierarchical structures of the Church?
This synodal survey, let me stress, is designed to enact a consultation or listening to the voice of the laity as a way of hearing the voice of God. In the words of the General Secretary of the Synod of Bishops, Cardinal Mario Grech, “by listening to the people of God – this is what consultation in the particular Churches is for – we know that we can hear what the Spirit is saying to the Church.”21 The answers to these questions have been collated and sifted through by a committee of synod experts first at the diocesan level, and then by a committee at the level of the national bishops’ conference, and then by a committee of experts at the general secretariat of the Synod of Bishops, who in turn have drafted documents summarizing the results of this consultation of the faithful.
Part Two: Critical Questions
The method and the goal of synodality consist in a deeper appreciation of the shared dignity and “common journey” of all the members of the Church. A synodal Church promotes participation, shared responsibility, and mutual listening for the sake of reform and a renewal that will reinvigorate the mission of the Church. As I noted earlier, stated in these general terms, the notion of “synodality” is unobjectionable.
The question requiring more discernment, however, comes from the fact that what is described as a “momentous and new teaching” on synodal ecclesiology is concretized and expressed in specific processes, structures, and events. The claim that needs to be tested is whether the documents guiding and informing these new processes and structures adequately reflect the sacramental nature of the Church, and the diversity of charisms in the Church founded by Christ. I have four questions or areas of concern.
The Sacramental Ground of Authority
One of the stated goals of the synodal process is to reflect anew on the exercise of authority in the Church. “Synodality,” writes Pope Francis, “as a constitutive element of the Church, offers us the most appropriate interpretive framework for understanding the hierarchical ministry itself.”22 The Preparatory Document for the 2023 Synod on Synodality calls for an examination of “how responsibility and power are lived in the Church as well as the structures by which they are managed.”23 The Preparatory Document returns to the theme of authority in a concluding section that lists key themes that should considered during the first phase of consultation. Under the headings “Authority and Participation” and “Discerning and Deciding,” the following questions are posed:
A synodal Church is a participatory and co-responsible Church. . . . How is authority exercised within our particular Church? How are lay ministries and the assumption of responsibility by the faithful promoted? How do we promote participation in decision-making within hierarchically structured communities?
The guiding thread for these questions on the exercise of authority in the Church is a concern to correct a perceived imbalance or injustice that would exclude the lay faithful from participation in governance or “decision-making” in the Church. The remedy for this imbalance is “synodal conversion” that will inspire and generate new processes and structures that involve the laity in decision-making within the hierarchical Church.
What is arguably missing from the various documents on synodality or the synodal process is an adequate reflection on the source and meaning of hierarchical authority in the Church. This is a significant lacuna given the modern tendency to reject as unjust any form of authority that has not been delegated or authorized by the individuals concerned. As noted above, the ITC mentions “the advanced demands of modern consciousness concerning the participation of every citizen in running society.”24 If one assumes a modern conception of authority as essentially arbitrary power, then the path of ecclesial reform is to create processes and structures that distribute authority/power more widely. An authority authorized “from below” would appear to be the most just and participatory kind of governance.
Let me be clear that the difficulty I am raising does not concern the idea of “promoting participation” or mutual listening or consultation in the life of the Church. The difficulty concerns the precise nature of lay participation in the specific tasks of hierarchical ministry. That such a difficulty arises has to do with the fact that there is a certain confusion or ambivalence in the preparatory documents on the hierarchical nature of the Church. This ambivalence coincides with a modern faith in sociology and bureaucratic procedures, which are, on closer inspection, mechanisms of unaccountable top-down control.
In this context, it is necessary to recall the sacramental nature of ecclesial authority. Hierarchical ministry is not delegated or authorized by members of the Church; it is gift of grace. A text from the Catechism of the Catholic Church unfolds the essential ground of ecclesial authority:
“Faith comes from what is heard” (Rom 10:17). No one can give himself the mandate and the mission to proclaim the Gospel. The one sent by the Lord does not speak and act on his own authority, but by virtue of Christ’s authority; not as a member of the community, but speaking to it in the name of Christ. No one can bestow grace on himself; it must be given and offered. This fact presupposes ministers of grace, authorized and empowered by Christ. From him, they receive the mission and faculty (‘the sacred power’) to act in persona Christi Capitis. The ministry in which Christ’s emissaries do and give by God’s grace what they cannot do and give by their own powers, is called a “sacrament” by the Church’s tradition. Indeed, the ministry of the Church is conferred by a special sacrament.25
The implications of this teaching are endlessly rich. The authority to teach and govern the Church is a sacramental gift that not all of the members of the Church receive. Furthermore, the grace of authority entails speaking and governing in the name of Christ. This requires fidelity to Christ, partaking of his life and mission, being configured by grace to the One who offered his life as a sacrifice for the redemption of all. This is the opposite of despotism; to speak and govern in Christ’s name is to participate in Christ’s own way of personally uniting authority and love in representation of God the Father. By the same token, it is to display an icon of true authority as understood in its root meaning. For “auctoritas” (authority) is derived from “augere” meaning “to increase, or cause to grow.” Genuine authority is distinct from the modern idea of arbitrary power. The nature and purpose of authority is to augment the life of the members of the community. This is the viewpoint of the Letter to the Ephesians, which explains how the distinction of charisms or ministries in the Church is for the sake of “building up the body of Christ. . . . speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ. . . . each part working properly makes bodily growth and upbuilds itself in love” (Eph 4:12-16).
The sacramental nature of ecclesial authority arguably suggests a path of reform somewhat different from the idea of “promoting participation in decision-making” proposed by the synodal process. True reform, then, demands a return to the life-giving source of authority, Christ himself. This is more than a moral appeal for the Church’s hierarchical ministers to act like servants. A return to the source of authority entails faithfully preserving the priceless gift of Christ which is the deposit of faith. This can and does require clear Magisterial teaching in the form of a precise confession of doctrine – Jesus Christ is homoousios with the Father (Council of Nicaea); “If anyone says that the sacrifice of the Mass is one only of praise and thanksgiving, or that it is a mere commemoration of the sacrifice consummated on the Cross but not propitiatory one . . . let him be anathema” (Council of Trent). What doctrinal statements like these reveal is the Church’s bi-millennial confidence, founded in the promise and command of Christ, that the Magisterium is entrusted with authentically interpreting the deposit of faith and identifying its binding contents.
To be sure, the sensus fidei is an essential witness to the deposit of faith. Even more, all believers have a stake in receiving and transmitting this deposit. Now, their share in this task occurs in persona Sponsae ecclesiae; they are to receive and transmit in the spirit and attitude of the immaculate Bride of the Lamb. But because no one is immaculate apart from Mary, we as believers need an authoritative office, other than ourselves, empowered to speak to us in the name of the Bridegroom and so to keep his word ever before us in all its life-giving, binding authority.
For this reason, there is a dimension of apostolic authority that cannot be delegated or shared. Of course, this authority was bestowed for the sake of “building up” all of the members of the body of Christ in love (cf. Eph. 4:11-16). Nevertheless, the sacramental grace of apostolic office is not simply a matter of listening to the voice of the People of God. There is also an obedient listening to apostolic tradition – “everything contained in the Symbol of Faith . . . and everything contained in the word of God, whether written or handed down in Tradition, which the Church, either by a solemn judgment or by the ordinary and universal Magisterium, sets forth to be believed as divinely revealed.”26
The Clericalization of the Lay Vocation
A primary aim of the synodal process is to involve the lay faithful in the life and mission of the Church: “Synodality means that the whole Church is a subject and that everyone in the Church is a subject. . . The faithful are sunodoi, companions on the journey. They are called to play an active role.” As noted above, the ITC document on synodality and the Preparatory Document for the 2023 Synod elaborate two ways for the laity to participate in the synodal process. First, the laity can join either the pastoral council or the financial council of their parish. Secondly, the laity can allow their voice to be heard by engaging the various means of synodal consultation, including answering internet “synodal surveys.”
The various documents on synodality or the synodal process are surprisingly silent on the specific vocation of the laity. According to Second Vatican Council, the essential or specifying feature of the lay faithful is their “secular character.” In the words of Lumen Gentium, the lay faithful “live in the world, that is, in every one of the secular professions and occupations. . . . in the ordinary circumstances of family and social life.”27 The crucial point is that it is precisely from within this “secular setting” that the laity contribute to the life and mission of Church by ordering the world from within to the Kingdom of God. The laity “are called by God so that they, led by the spirit of the Gospel, might contribute to the sanctification of the world, as from within like leaven, by fulfilling their own particular duties.” An adequate appreciation of what is proper and specific to the lay vocation is essential for avoiding a self-referential ecclesiology. The Church is essentially missionary, and the laity are called to embody and extend the mystery of ecclesial communion into the ordinary realms of family, work, and the social order in all of its dimensions.
Looked at in this light, the synodal process, as described in the relevant documents, seems liable to a subtle “clericalization” of the laity, in the sense that their contribution to the life and mission of the Church is measured by the extent of their involvement with tasks that are specific to the hierarchical ministry of the Church. In place of the Second Vatican Council’s emphasis on the unique contribution of the laity to the Church’s mission in the world, there is a turning inward to try to convince the laity that what really matters is their participation in “decision-making within the hierarchical structures of the Church.” Once again, this is not to deny the co-responsibility of the entire body of believers for receiving and transmitting the deposit of faith. The point is rather that the co-responsibility proper to the laity unfolds in and through configuration to the ecclesial bride––a configuration essentially requiring an obedience to the Word of God the Magisterium exists to foster and protect. Far from being a form of slavery to clerical overlordship, however, this obedience is an implication of the freedom of God’s children––just as the Magisterium is not the private good of clerics, but a service of the deposit of faith that demands the most radical expropriation for the sake of the bonum commune on their part.
Self-referential Synodality
In his hand-written notes that formed the basis of his intervention during the General Congregations prior to the Conclave of 2013, then Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio wrote:
When the Church does not go out of herself to evangelize, she becomes self-referential; she grows ill (like the stooped woman in the Gospel). The evils which appear throughout history in Church institutions are rooted in this self-referentiality – a kind of theological narcissism.28
These reflections accord with a fundamental and oft-repeated concern of Joseph Ratzinger / Benedict XVI:
the first word of the Church is Christ, and not herself. The Church is healthy to the extent that all her attention is focused on Him. The Second Vatican Council placed this concept masterfully at the pinnacle of its deliberations; the fundamental text on the Church begins with the words: Lumen gentium cum sit Christus. . . . If one wishes to understand the Second Vatican Council correctly, one must begin with this first sentence again and again.29
The shared insight of Jorge Bergoglio and Joseph Ratzinger is that the center of the Church is outside of herself; she exists in order to faithfully bear witness to the mystery of Christ. A Bishops’ Synod on Synodality is quintessentially a self-referential exercise. Of course there are times when a look inward or a reform of structures is appropriate. The difficulty arises when this exercise of looking inward (and reforming structures) is presented as the most essential thing. The risk is that synodality be exhausted in the mere process of organizing synods. The impression that current thinking about synodality comes alarmingly close to such an adoption of modern bureaucratic faith in procedures (which turn out to be mechanisms of unaccountable top-down control) is unfortunately hard to dismiss in light of statements such as these: “Our ‘journeying together’ is, in fact, what most effectively enacts and manifests the nature of the Church as the pilgrim and missionary People of God.”30 Or consider the claim of the ITC: “exercising synodality makes real the human person’s call to live communion, which comes about through sincere self-giving, union with God and unity with our brothers and sisters in Christ.”31
Dishonesty
This leads to my fourth and final concern. It’s hard to avoid the impression that there is something fundamentally dishonest about the current synodal process. Under the guise of a synodal process devoted the theme of synodality, the actual questions under discussion concern the Church’s moral teaching and sacramental order. This is especially true of the most vocal proponents of “synodality” in the United States. Consider, for example, the recent account of “synodality” by Phyllis Zagano in article that sharply criticizes Cardinal Pell, Cardinal Müller and others for raising questions about the current synodal process: After castigating them for not embracing synodality, she writes:
The synod’s issues are well known — women in ministry, a married priesthood, the status of divorced-remarried persons and considerations about homosexuality. These are the concerns of Catholics around the world.32
I thought the synod was meant to reinvigorate the shared responsibility of all the baptized for the mission of the Church. Instead, we are now being told that the synod is really about changing the Church’s teaching on same-sex unions, the indissolubility of marriage, and the sacrament of Holy Orders. To claim that this is what the Holy Spirit is calling for – because we have discerned the voice of the Holy Spirit by consulting the people of God through our synod workshops, and internet surveys that various committees of synod experts have collated and summarized – is to compound the dishonesty.
Conclusion
In his seminal essay on the priority of the Marian dimension of the Church, Hans Urs von Balthasar writes:
The Church since the Council has to a large extent put off its mystical characteristics; it has become a Church of permanent conversations, organizations, advisory commissions, congresses, synods, commissions, academies, parties, pressure groups, functions, structures and restructurings, sociological experiments, statistics: that is to say, more than ever a male Church. . . . May not the reason for the domination of such typically male and abstract notions be because of the abandonment of the deep femininity of the Marian character of the Church? . . . From the cross the Son hands his mother over into the Church of the apostles, from now on her place is there. In a hidden manner her virginal motherhood holds sway throughout the whole sphere of the Church, gives it light, warmth, protection; her cloak makes the Church into a protective cloak. It requires no special gesture from her to show that we should look at the Son and not at her. Her very nature as handmaid reveals him. So, too, she can show the apostles and their successors how one can be both wholly effective presence and wholly extinguished service. For the Church was already present in her before men were set in office.33
The current pre-occupation with synodal processes and synodal re-structurings and plans to finally build a synodal Church represent a certain loss of vision or a forgetfulness of the true countenance of the Church. At the heart of the Church is the immaculate faith of Mary, who goes before us in holiness with a love that bears all things. By looking to her the lay faithful can discern a form of listening and shared responsibility that is less visible to synodal surveys and worships but that is more likely bear fruit and renew the Church’s mission.
(Editor’s note: This essay, originally published by CWR on February 4, 2023, is a shortened and revised version of the essay titled “Communion, Sacramental Authority, and the Limits of Synodality”, published in the Winter 2021 issue [48.4] of Communio.)
Endnotes:
2 Henri de Lubac, Mémoire sur l’occasion de mes écrits (Namur: Culture et Vérité, 1989) [At the Service of the Church (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993), 150].
3 ITC, “Synodality in the Life of the Church,” § 4.
4 Paul VI, Apostolica Sollicitudo.
5 Lumen Gentium, 19, 22.
6 John Paul II, Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Pastores Gregis (2003), 58.
7 Pope Francis, “Address on the 50th Anniversary of the Synod of Bishops”.
8 Pope Francis, “Address on the 50th Anniversary of the Synod of Bishops”.
9 ITC, “Synodality in the Life of the Church,” § 67.
10 Pope Francis, “Address on the 50th Anniversary of the Synod of Bishops”.
11 ITC, “Synodality in the Life of the Church,” § 6.
12 General Secretariat for the Synod of Bishops, “Preparatory Document for the 16th Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops,” § 16 [hereafter Preparatory Document].
13 ITC, “Synodality in the Life of the Church,” § 38.
14 Preparatory Document, § 27.
15 Preparatory Document, § 1.
16 Preparatory Document, § 9.
17 Preparatory Document, § 16.
18 ITC, “Synodality in the Life of the Church,” § 84.
19 ITC, “Synodality in the Life of the Church,” § 38.
20 Preparatory Document, § 3.
21 Cardinal Mario Grech, interview by Andrea Tornielli, “Transformation of Synod to Create Space for People of God,” Vatican News, May 21, 2021.
22 Pope Francis, “Address on the 50th Anniversary of the Synod of Bishops”.
23 Preparatory Document,
24 ITC, “Synodality in the Life of the Church,” § 38.
25 Catechism of the Catholic Church, 875.
26 John Paul II, Apostolic Letter Motu Proprio Ad Tuendam Fidem.
27 Lumen Gentium, 31.
28 Jorge Bergoglio, [**].
29 Joseph Ratzinger, “The Ecclesiology of the Second Vatican Council,” Communio: International Catholic Review 13 (1986): 239-252, at 240.
30 Preparatory Document, 1.
31 ITC, “Synodality in the Life of the Church,” § 43.
32 Phyllis Zagano, “Can Pope Francis survive the scheming of ‘the schismatics’?” National Catholic Reporter (2022)
33 Hans Urs von Balthasar, “The Marian Principle,” in Elucidations, trans. John Riches (London: SPCK, 1975), 70-72.
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In a word, is it all about entropy? The progressive disintegration of order.
Can’t help but notice the growing resemblance between Synodality and Islam as a natural religion….Where, for example, the structure is egalitarianism, and the “revelation” is capable of continuous reinterpretation (“abrogation”)—a bit like Western process theology, or now in synodal jargon, “paradigm shifts.”
So, entropy! The drift back toward the fraternity of equivalent natural religions. Islam: a particular natural religion which assimilated onto itself many trappings Jewish and Christian. So, synodality as assimilation in the opposite direction?
(a) Downplaying of the apostolic “sent”-ness and the full implications of Divine Revelation,
(b) Erosion of a structured and yet “hierarchical communion” (Lumen Gentium);
(c) Ministries obscuring the distinct and ordained priesthood; instead, and as warned against in the Documents of the Second Vatican Council, a conflation of “laicized clergy and a clericalized laity,” e.g., the proto-“continental” “experts” inserted in place of the Successors of the Apostles;
(d) Retooling long ago of the priesthood as “presiders,” resembling Muslim imams (trained but not sacramentally ordained); followed now with retooled bishops as synodal “facilitators;”
(e) In the 1.2 billion laity we have the uniformly achieved (!) “universal call to holiness,” while in Islam it’s the union of 1.5 billion Muslims in the cosmopolitan and mystical umma;
(f) A diminished sense of sin and personal conversion, and especially Original Sin as part of complex human nature and which does not exist at all in Islam;
(g) Of course, there’s the many stark differences as between Christian hope and Islamic fatalism, and between a turban and a red hat or Bishop Batzing’s suit and tie.
Just sayin’…maybe in 2023 and 2024 the tautological Synod on Synodality might finally clarify not what synodality IS, but what it IS NOT…
The zeitgeist of the woke Synod on Synodality has already percolated down to local dioceses. This, from the Diocese of my ordination:
Mission of the Office of Intercultural Ministry of the Diocese of Charleston (SC): to promote the “Catholic Understanding of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion to Promote Peace, Unity and Love”.
In my mind, they ought to rename this department as the “Department of Social Propaganda and Mind Control”.
In all the many words and phrases about synods, then most important thing seems to be missing The purpose of evangelism it seems to me is the salvation of souls. Salvation as I understand it is union with Jesus Christ in His Mystical Body. Our understanding of reality is to be conceived in light of divine revelation, clearly recorded in Holy Scripture, from Genesis to Revelation. Basing an understanding of the Mystical Body Christ in a radical secularist understanding of reality seems to be implicit with some of the most influential cardinals involved in the process. Embracing a way of life that is based upon the wisdom of this fallen world by influential clergy does not help people to stay on the narrow and difficult road to salvation. The authentic way of love of God and neighbor is clearly revealed in the Church since the beginning. Its not complicated.
Dear Russell E. Snow: “It’s not complicated.”
Genesis 2:17 was not complicated either – “of the tree of the knowledge of good & evil you are not to eat”; but God’s clear admonition was confusticated by the devil, to discombobulate humanity & to separate us from our loving Creator.
The Francis Faction’s destructive plans are also wrapped in a cloud of confustication. First confusing the masses through hints and contradictory indications that subtly point to God’s ‘imperfections’, to King Jesus Christ’s ‘backwardness’, to the ‘unreliability’ of The Holy Spirit-anointed, Apostolic instructions of The New Testament, and to the ‘naïve’ moral understanding of the testimony of two millennia of Catholic saints and martyrs!
Because of this, the Francis Faction would not be recognized as Catholics by the millions of our loyal Catholic sisters & brothers forever enjoying The Glory of God. How is it then that we on earth still listen to them?
Keep watching & praying everyone and following King Jesus Christ; love & blessings from marty
Good observations and counsel. Except that Nicholas Healy Jr lionized the pontiff, but excludes the essential role in the institution of and direction by Pope Francis of the Synodal process.
Not mentioned are Francis’ remarks in line with cardinals Hollerich and Grech that ‘No one should be denied the Eucharist, all that is necessary is the garment of faith’. Nor is His Holiness’ assignment of the bishops, contrary to the article’s quotes of the pontiff’s support of collegiality, importance of the hierarchy – as Synodal note takers.
The commander must be alerted by his subordinates when he mistakenly leads the troops into disaster. Here confrontation with Christ, which is doomed to disaster.
“We are embarrassed by the ugliness and ideological character of the images, by the low intellectual level of the documents, and by the displacement of a genuine sense of the Catholicity of the Church rooted in mystery of Jesus Christ by slogans about ‘acceptance’, ‘equality, and the need to ’embrace diversity'”.
Yes, we most assuredly are.
All of this “Synodality” feels a lot like Vatican II, part 2. In which case, if actually implemented, it will be an unmitigated disaster. The liberal Bishops in charge of this mess might not care about those results, as long as they can still push their narrative and claim to be “right”. What will happen however, is likely the abandonment of the church at that point by the remaining ORTHODOX believing faithful. You know, the ones (already older and few) who show up for Mass and support the church financially. Once they disappear, there will be only a remnant of the church left, which will need to drastically downsize and combine. If even still possible. This is not the way to evangelize on any level. Extreme liberalism has already driven Protestants out of their churches. I guess the Catholic church is next.
The more the church tries to conform with the culture and bend to the winds of the current faddish behavior, the faster people leave the church. My former protestant denomination (the one I was reared in) went down this path in the 1970’s and has shrunk to the edge of oblivion.
“new structures that will allow the laity to participate in decision making in the Church parish council.” From the beginning Bergoglio talked about “decentralization of the papacy’. Does he intend to change the Church into a democracy of people’s desires? “And I say to you, you are Peter and upon this rock I will build my Church.” (Matt16:18) The Church is Christ, His mystical body. They want to give Communion to all; the Holy Host who is God, to people in grievous sin; the crime would be violence onto God who gives Himself freely to His people for love of His creatures. They want a church of men, by men, without God. “But because no one is immaculate apart from Mary, we as believers need an authoritative office other than ourselves, empowered to speak to us in the name of the BRIDEGROOM and so to keep his word ever before us in all its life-giving, binding authority.”
Thank you.
It should be that synods remarks will recall frequently the three temptations of Jesus, which clearly point to the eschewing of material wealth (which He also points out at other times, including to the rich young man, Matthew 9:21-22) and this has been a problem. Fr Michel Rodrigue whose began a religious order in Canada, was visited by St Benedict Joseph Labre, who himself took on the true nature of poverty, and what it entails. This is a basic difference between religious orders (now very much on the wane) and priesthood which do not take such religious vows of poverty, chastity and obedience.
The world continues to bring up old models of church which no longer exist, and cann0ot be replicated. Furthermore, while considerable movement has occurred in Catholic charismatic renewal (mysticism), and Medjugorje (Over 40,000,000 pilgrims), these frequently are ignored. Hence the same problems of the past continue to emerge, and the same comments continue.
Academic and scholarly dialogue is always important, but so also are the nuts and bolts which make up the church, that appear in both saints and martyrs. Not for nothing did Fr K. Rahner SJ, state that “The Christian of the future will be a mystic or NOT EXIST AT ALL (my emphasis), yet this has hardly percolated through to the clergy who need to appreciate what this entails, even more to what it asks.
To keep it simple: Currently there are around 45,000,000 abortions per year globally. So evil and so infamous is this influence that it can be seen its effects in population growth: Every country in Europe has a birthrate below 2, along with Canada, Aust, NZ, and the U.S. Yet the practicalities of this go unnoticed and generally ignored. It should also be stated that the antithesis of Secular Humanism (an apostasy, and the state religion of the U.S.), is mysticism. Yet where is the interest in Catholicism? Most services avoid this, and many prefer to act with symbol, historical, rational and dialectic. This means solutions continue to be suppressed. Heroism on the part of evangelism may continue but it is clear the barometer of the church of today and tomorrow, the youth have already expressed second thoughts.
The matter is certainly grave, and parents seek anew solutions which do not appear.
Eucharist is a tabernacle in what one parishioner called “The granny flat”, and private adoration (present in a few churches), absent, so what message is being sent out to youth, pray tell?
Fasting (Fr Garrigou Lagrange OP) is an essential to spiritual growth, yet church discarded fasting [before mass, and during Lent], except now it appears among those who see Medjugorje as a solution to many problems. If the church wishes to move forward it must pray. Prayer itself has many levels (St Terese of Avila), and fasting plays a distinct part in this.
Finally, it should be noted, that the antithesis of Secular Humanism (the ubiquitous problem that has resulted in the EU being pro-choice), is NOT psychology, but mysticism.
Pope Saint John Paul II, who completed two doctorates, one in mysticism, wrote of the sensate (“Crossing the threshold of hope”), that it does not contain either God or soul, which latter is what everyone is supposed to be saving.
Religious have been living synodality for 1500 years.The Rule of St. Benedict says:”CHAPTER III: CONCERNING THE CALLING OF THE BRETHREN TO
COUNCIL
As often as any special business has to be transacted in the monastery, let the abbot convoke the whole community and himself state what is the matter in hand. And having listened to the counsel of the brethren, let him settle the matter in his own mind and do what seems to him most expedient. And we have thus said that all are to be called to council because it is often to a junior that the Lord reveals what is best. But let the brethren so give counsel with all subjection and humility that they presume not with any forwardness to defend what shall have seemed good to them; but rather let the decision depend upon the abbot’s discretion, so that he shall decide what is
best, that they all may yield ready obedience: but just as it behoves the disciples to be obedient to the master, so also it becomes him to arrange all things prudently and justly.”
Our Rule of St. Albert says: “On Sundays or other days if necessary, you shall treat of the observance of the Rule and the salvation of souls. At the same time the faults and defects of the religious (if there be any) shall be corrected with charity.”
We have found that what Benedict says about listening to the younger members is quite true.
The Church can not be singularly defined in terms of the monastic experience. Similarly, you can not constrain the Church within a super-organized synodality. Why this escapes you is an interesting matter but I don’t accept to resolve the complexity posed there, only notice its origins: “synodality is a constitutive element of the Church”. It’s neither the Church’s identity nor VATICAN II.
Some people have gotten old in their ways, we have to be on a watch about this.
Thank you for sharing your opinion. I am a bit confused when you write that “Some people have gotten old in their ways; we have to be on a watch about this.” I thought that The readers of Catholic World Report value traditional customs and practices. Was I mistaken?
The thing speaks for itself sister, I really do not need to reply. But I’d like to add on extra points.
I think you mean “value Catholic tradition” etc., not just any old tradition, custom or practice. Right now we have a variety of things happening claiming to be in Tradition of the Church, such as legalizing of homosexuality; and this is offered up in the run-up to the so-called constitutive synod of synods. But you can gather without difficulty from things I contribute, such things can not get into my soul. Perhaps someone would mean to force it into me; well, Sr. Gabriela of the Incarnation, I say you need to be clear in your own mind if indeed before God you want to synodize it. So it isn’t merely that the synod “form” is irregular, it’s also that – and, more that, – substance can’t measure up to faith.
I have already declared that Pope Francis needed to withdraw the “Mexico” statement he effectively made when the interview was leaked. He did not renounce it during Fr. Benedict’s lifetime; and obviously now the situation shows that that is not coming to pass either.
You pain the Lord if you want to have a share in it.
A tradition that goes back 1500 years has been validly tested and confirmed by many popes. My own Order dates from 1208 and it has also been confirmed. You are free to disagree with me and I have no difficulty in accepting that. May God bless you.
Sr. I’m not contesting your reply, I’m enamoured of a blessing! I know Who it’s coming from, I had it in a reflection last night.
Nay God bless you also.
May God bless you too.
There is no equivocation of the Synodal connivance presently being instituted across the Roman Catholic globe and the fraternal exchange and listening ear Holy Father Saint Benedict admonishes us in his Rule. Apples and oranges as they say here invoked for self-consolation? Authentic monastic practice brings one to clear sight, self-deceit has no place. Cooperation with an erroneous enterprise has dire consequences.
We witness here again a propensity to attribute the credence of tradition to a fraudulence that is precisely aimed at the eradication of tradition, those broadly understood and treasured by the devout laity, monastic tradition, even Apostolic Tradition. It can be compared to the idea of stolen valor, or the image of lipstick on a pig.
The promotion of a façade of Roman Catholicism without its heart and practice is a sinful enterprise.
Sr. Gabriela of the Incarnation is one of the few voices of reason and balance on this discussion forum. I always enjoy reading what she has to say. Why not write for CWR? As for this article, it is one of the better ones on the Synod. No cynicism, no anger, just a bit long winded. The beginning was especially good.
Curious. St. Benedict’s Prologue begins with the very word “listen.” His overriding message is that of Revelation, not that of man. “Listen carefully, my son, to the master’s instructions, and attend to them with the ear of your heart.” It goes without saying Who Is the master.
Lest the reader doubt, St. Benedict quotes Scripture: “If you hear his voice today, do not harden your hearts.” And again: “You that have ears to hear, listen to what the Spirit says to the churches.” And what does he say? Come and listen to me, sons; I will teach you the fear of the Lord. Run while you have the light of life, that the darkness of death may not overtake you.”
Upon the baptism of Jesus, the Voice of the Father tells men: “This is my beloved Son, listen to him.”
Mary, directs the servants at the wedding feast to “Do whatever he tells you.” Jesus from the cross gives Mary to men as their mother. We are to listen to her.
Lest we be confused about what words Jesus has spoken, we have to remember Jesus telling us that He and the Father are One. The Spirit of God is the Holy Spirit who would not be One with the Father and the Son if he were to audaciously, ludicrously, and ridiculously today begin to suggest men meet men and women meet men and women meet women to revise, devise and follow a Gospel different from that one my Trinitarian Lord has already spoken.
Call me indietristic, driving in a rear-view mirror. I know what my Savior speaks and pray that you would too.
Edit: Transfiguration should replace Baptism. THANKS.
AKA I am averse to finishing the typing of the final parts of your “identifier”!
And “AKA” allows me to imagine something preferable like “faithful”.
Baptism would work too allowing for the wording, the Father illuminating the Baptist.
May God bless.
Thanks, Friend Elias. I understand your hesitancy! Please feel free to apply any ID or nickname you see fit. I am PROUD to call myself a backward Indietrist. After all, some see God and His Church’s doctrine as very old, in need of development, cancelation, revision, updating, or derogation.
Facebook once canceled me. I was proud about that. In the same way, I’m proud to belong to a group Francis now pejorates.
Socrates: “I maintain, Callicles, that it is not the most shameful of things to be wrongfully boxed on the ears, nor again to have either my purse or my person cut…any wrong done to me and mine is at once more shameful and worse for the wrongdoer than for me the sufferer.” (Gorgias, 508). It’s that old childhood stick-and-stone thing. Only THE ONE WORD can hurt me.
AKA, it now occurs to me, if we put “backward” before “indietrist”, it’s a double negative giving a positive! Trouble could be it is impossible to tally up all the negatives that have been put, in order to see if the result is finally a negative or a positive! What is this Pope driving at! They should maybe all chip in and give the Pope a golf buggy where he can not speed around corners so fast or always come out in front. It’s never easy for me to clear my mind of images when it comes time to pray, which is another reason I try to avoid them. For example, I never met St. Lawrence or saw his true picture but when I pray with him in mind, it is with the wish to have him present as he is loved by God.
So Phyllis Zagano thinks “The synod’s issues are well known — women in ministry, a married priesthood, the status of divorced-remarried persons and considerations about homosexuality. These are the concerns of Catholics around the world,” does she? How convenient for her that “the synod’s issues” are exactly the same as hers!
I have been re-reading James Hitchcock’s wonderful “The Decline and Fall of Radical Catholicism,” a theme of which is that the 1970s Catholic radical professed to love “the world,” but not the actual world — an academic, abstract, imaginary “world,” as opposed to the world of real people, most of whom weren’t at all interested in those things.
Thank you for his thorough essay, I wish the people behind the Synod had put half as much thought into it.
I appreciate these comments. Authority tested by time is a frequent explanation of many Catholic rules and traditions. I personally love many of the symbols and traditions. But I am not that persuaded by statements that are not supported by the Gospel from the life of Jesus. Too many rules are rooted in middle age politics and have little relationship with the faith we can validate with the word of God. Authority has been abused undeniably
Dear Mike Kerr well said!
A bit like our LORD observing they are straining out gnats & swallowing camels! (e.g. Matthew 23:24)
Ever in the unshakeable, unbreakable, unbeatable love of Jesus Christ; blessings from marty
At this point, Catholicism in North America and Europe is rather a back number.What matters is what the Catholics in Africa and Asia think.
@Anne Marie
Catholicism only in North America and Europe? By North America you have in mind Canada and US only? Is this your sense of North America? By Europe you include whatever Catholicism in the Balkan nations and in Ukraine? You exclude Catholicism in Iberoamerica, also called Latin America. Why?
I think you should read my comment again, more carefully. I excluded no one. I simply said that Catholicism in North America and Europe is rather a back number. The phrase “a back number” means “old-fashioned, out-of-date”. (I just Googled it and read several definitions.) The Church is most vibrant in Africa and Asia. There lies the future of the Church. What do Africans and Asians, especially Filipinos and South Koreans, think about the Synod?
Good point, dear Ann Marie.
Could CWR commission an article on this by those in the know . . ?
The ITC was quickly brushed aside when the “ministry, unity, leadership and authority” of successors of the apostles were recast simply as lubricating “facilitators”:
“…It is essential that, taken as a whole, the participants give a meaningful and balanced image of the local Church, reflecting different vocations, ministries, charisms, competencies, social status and geographical origin. The bishop, the successor of the apostles and shepherd of his flock who convokes and presides over the local Church synod, is called to exercise there the ministry of unity and leadership with the authority which belongs to him” (ITC, “Synodality in the life and mission of the Church,” 2018, n. 79).
So, yes to “communion, participation, and mission,” but “something is rotten in the state of Denmark” when even the “non-synod” of Germania fondles the microphone at the synodal European continental assembly, and soon at the definitionally self-referential “Synod on Synodality” (say what?). The red-hat test doesn’t pass the red-face test…
Why are we reminded of the movie “Shadowlands” where Joy Gresham (Debra Winger with Anthony Hopkins) queries an Anglican cleric: “Are you trying to be offensive, or merely stupid?”
Stupid as in Batzing & Co.: “Catholic but in a different way”–the great “transition” (!): synod = sin-nod = sin-nodomite.
Radical inclusion is the first premise of the Francis papacy, a tenet expressed by His Holiness repeated either verbatim or in effect by his supporters Card Hollerich Synod Relator among them. Insofar as radically changing Apostolic doctrine – That possibility is nihil. For one, God, I’m convinced won’t allow it to occur. Secondly it would deter their interests [the radical inclusive proponents] in radicalizing the entire Church. A large portion perhaps the majority would resist.
Their best option is submitting unchangeable doctrine to the discussion club approach. Allowing all and any doctrine to be openly discussed by a media designated panel regardless of added orthodox members it’s the message to the public [dissolution] that really matters, in this instance McLuhan’s the media becomes the message. Clever those heretics.
Yes, and the “heresy” is the implicitly dogmatic exemption of the “pastoral” from what now is the explicit Magisterium:
“A separation, or even an opposition [!], is thus established in some cases between the teaching of the precept, which is valid and general, and the norm of the individual conscience, which would in fact make the final decision [no longer a ‘moral judgment’!] about what is good and what is evil. On this basis, an attempt is made to legitimize so-called ‘pastoral’ solutions [!] contrary to the teaching of the Magisterium, and to justify a ‘creative’ hermeneutic according to which the moral conscience is in no way obliged, in every case, by a particular negative precept [thou shalt not!]” (Veritatis Splendor, n. 56).
And, “This is the first time, in fact, that the MAGISTERIUM of the Church [caps added!] has set forth in detail the fundamental elements of this [‘moral’] teaching, and presented the principles for the pastoral discernment necessary in practical and cultural situations which are complex and even crucial” (n. 115).
And, “The Church is no way [!] the author or the arbiter of this [‘moral’] norm” (n. 95).
Good quotes Peter from John Paul II in Veritatis, he anticipated what’s occurring.
Is a self-referential and front-to-back “Synod” on “Synodality” the institutional equivalent to the homosexual act?
At the Synod, the subliminal consent of just moving things along, by “walking together,” and all facing together in the same direction? As in the get-along-go-along “fraternal collegiality” of yesteryear? That went well.
Wondering, here, how many of the bishops in October 2023 will actually see through Hollerich’s likely harmonized word-salad for blessing or even endorsing sodomy and sequential bigamy? Or, instead, how many will revive Cardinal Eijk’s steadfast clarity in his opening address for the concluding session for the Synod on the Family (2015). Retained in the Final Report:
“…there is no foundation whatsoever to assimilate or establish analogies, even remotely, between homosexual unions and God’s design for marriage and the family.”
Well said, dear Fr Peter.
Reminds me of Revelation 14:12 – “This is why there must be constancy in the saints who keep the commandments of God and faith in Jesus.”
A number of ideas have been floated or implemented already and, to know more about their effects and plans, we have to wait on the outcomes of the so-called Synod on Synodality. Among these can be listed, actively promoting homosexual civil union and, for those who can handle it, Church blessings; imperatively breaking down capital punishment laws; progressively relatavizing the abortion issue that is no longer (or, that was never?) preeminent; managing limitless inclusivity “non-dogmatically”; equating temporal good and supernatural good and doing this to justify immediate reforms; accepting illegal, immoral and imposed abortion-taint self-infecting vaccination drives, as a style of Beatitude accessible in the Way of the Cross; eminently transposing apostolic institutes to dicastery for clergy.
That’s hard enough.
The so-called Synod is assembling an agenda that itself is a haphazard activity. We initially heard about what sounded like the big ticket items, neo-Pelagianism, gnosticism, manichaenism, formalism, fundamentalist rigidism, incurvatus, etc.; yet how these count for shaping the Synod and/or the developments is not known. Overall the events contrast synod, as that is in Church life, with making things lapse and then lapse again. Removing all distinctions is surely a good thing? Behind it, it seemingly is implied that the Holy Spirit is working it; so that therefore if it is not understood for now it would be because the Holy Spirit has not imparted the needed gifts? A Freemason would feel advanced with that – so I should be trusting him?
2 Thessalonians 2:11 Therefore God sends them a strong delusion, so that they may believe what is false,
1 John 1:6 If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.
James 1:27 Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.
James 1:18 Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of first-fruits of his creatures.
Titus 1:2 In hope of eternal life, which God, who never lies, promised before the ages began
I say, Brian Young, your imaging here sufficiently describes some of the condition and error of the Anglicans. In addition Anglican can have a reserved petulance.
Your thoughts on the Anglican Church are not off base. The Anglican Church still means a great deal to me, yet wayward men have entered and done damage. The Catholic Church is is experiencing difficulty and if the verse of scripture fits certain men, let it stand.
God bless you for your desire for the best in the Catholic Church.
@ Brian Young
Brian, although you’re not Catholic, apparently a disappointed Anglican and we do have some differences particularly your fundamentalist reliance on Sola Scriptura consequent rejection of veneration of the Theotokos Mary, we do have much else in common [I suppose it’s like saying he’s a kleptomaniac otherwise he’s a nice guy]. Actually you’re a nice guy.
Your first scripture quote, 2 Thessalonians 2:11 Therefore God sends them a strong delusion, so that they may believe what is false, is significant for the moment we’re in. Reading your comments you’re aware of the now popularized notion of merciful inclusion absent of repentance. Our Roman pontiff alluding to it as radical inclusion, that Catholics should consider it as true mercy. That awareness is literally vital. It’s an eternal life or death proposition. The Pontiff’s favorable position on this has enabled the proposition to be well received by many. What, then might we be confronted with in an eschatological sense if not the fulfillment of Christ’s warning? Catholicism is well aware of this citing the issue as a religious deception in the Catechism. Or might it be a prelude for more to come? We can’t say for certain. Although, the danger of that eschatological event, at least in likeness, is upon us. Considering this, if you’re not affiliated Church wise, I suggest you seriously consider what makes full compliance with Christ’s revelation amenable to the truth, which is Christ founded a Church to which he promised protection of the truth. That Church, the Roman Catholic has retained in its official Magisterium that same truth since he, Our lord instituted it.
Dear Fr Peter:
Thank you for writing. As Barnabas encouraged St Paul allow me to say thank you for your service in the Lord’s Kingdom.
Today I reread the joyous two letters of St Peter. Though short, they invite hours of contemplation. If any church wants to honour the Lord, comfort could be taken there.
Mary is much venerated by those in the Catholic Church. Some of high intelligence and well honed faith readily accept Church dogma on this subject! Part of my reading in delving into Peter was to see what he might say with regard to Christ’s dear and blessed mother. This is an important subject, yet scripture has little to say in respect in regard to this lady of virtue.
Perhaps this leads us to the idea of “sola scripture” in perceiving the will of the Lord. When the Catechism states that Holy Scripture is the ultimate authority for the church, other perspectives should fall in line with what has been revealed to man by the word of God, at least that is my view! Though unconvinced at this time, that we need the blessed mother of Jesus to intercede for us, nevertheless, to have God speaking to His people is a marvellous privilege!
Though I stand to be corrected Paul did not touch directly on the subject of Mary in his imposing letter to the Romans. Once again, standing to say I could be wrong, the Apostle John did not mention any special obeisance be given to Mary. Yes, there are verses in Scripture that may hint towards the Catholic position, yet can we really go wrong in following what God has said or not said.
These thought are offered in the spirit of love and appreciation.
Yours in Christ,
Brian
Of what “God has said or not said,” isn’t there a difference between the incarnate Word [“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, John 1:1; “and became flesh and dwelt among us” John 1:14], and then His oral words and physical deeds?
The words were passed on orally within the already-tradition even before Paul and then other members of the already-existing Church wrote them down for our benefit. And, possibly, does the Church–and not only private or even sectarian individuals–remain indwelt by the Holy Spirit as a charismatic and sacramental institution, with an apostolic structure tracing back to the hands of Christ rather than anyone else?
And, Mary?
Well, if the eternal Word of God selected her from before time began, and if she said so very totally and transparently “fiat” (actually, more than just words), then maybe we can honor his Mother as our mother, and even welcome her giving a nudge to her Son on our behalf. Just as we pray for each other? Why should Mary be excluded when Christ found her so uniquely special? There’s nothing at all in Scripture about the word “Trinity,” either, nor the “communion of saints” except that this is part of what Scripture—in total—is all about.
The authority (as in author) of the Church for its own written/scriptural testimony opens and unfolds, not by adding or deleting, and not by contradiction, but by deepening and expanding into broader understandings.
Why read St. Peter apparently apart from Matthew:
“Jesus replied, ‘Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven. And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven’” (Mt 16:17-19)?
The words of the Word, His words, not mine or ours….What an alarming mystery that the Word of the Father would enter into our history in person (!), and even choose to work through the hands of his fallen creatures, and even institutionally. Yes, even sacramentally, though not limited to the sacraments.
In St Peter’s two letters he outlines that path for the church. There is no fluctuation and no room for any deviation. Peter is resolute because his words are inspired by the Holy Spirit, they reflect the guidance of the Holy Trinity. Have popes zig zagged from the terms Peter laid out? It is obvious that some have not applied his godly counsel and missed the mark. What is bound and what is loosed is according to immutable guidelines set out by God and expressed throughout Holy Scripture. Peter would not have veered from the way and the truth and the life. He learned his lessons well as reflected in his words to the church.
Though the word “Trinity” is not mentioned, Scripture clearly delineates the principle. Would you like me to quote the verses?
In Islam, tawheed is not mentioned by name, however, the concept is well pointed out.
Blessings
Brother Brian,
On your last two points…first, no need here for you to generously quote verses summarized by the dogma of the “Trinity,” and which are familiar to CWR readers; perhaps you have underlined my point nicely, rather than refuting it?
And, second, tawheed/tawhid (“God is One,” or There is no god but Allah”) is, in fact, mentioned directly in Islam in the Hadiths as well as the Qur’an, and Muslims point to both sola Scriptura sources (e.g., Q 3:2, 47:19, 37:35-36). As for the Hadiths, such as this: “Some of the people of TAWHID [!] will be punished in the Fire until they are coals [….] (n. 2597).
Aside from our intramural mud-wrestling, the article is about “The Sacramental Nature of Authority and the Limits of Synodality.”
Yes, blessings and good will
Dear Peter:
To touch on your response of APRIL 19, 2023 AT 7:53 AM, regarding Tawheed and its mention in the Koran, You are correct to cite the concept of the oneness of Allah being acknowledged many times and in many places in the Koran, however the word “Tawheed” itself, is not found. Not that it really matters for the contradictions, errors, unclear contemplations and enigmatic writing style render it the work of men, certainly not the work of God.
Alack, Koran 3:2, 47:19, 37:35-36 does not present the word Tawheed. Nevertheless the Koran leaves out the vital and replaces it with the enervated.
You’ve noticed that I tend to run off track! 🙁 You won’t be asking me to do any editing for you anytime soon! Alas!
Blessings,
Brian
@ Brian Young APRIL 18, 2023 AT 2:08 PM
“I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear. But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth” (Jn 16:12,13).
Brian, tradition is an essential source of knowledge of the faith. Devotion to Mary is found in the two great Alexandrian patriarchs Athanasius and Cyril. The divine nature of Christ affirmed by both, the complete human and divine natures of the one person Jesus Christ by Cyril at Chalcedon 451.
Cyril in opposition to Nestorius, patriarch of Constantinople, who repudiated the divinity of Christ, that his flesh and blood did not convey that divinity, was anathematized by Cyril at Ephesus in 431 AD. Mary was proclaimed at that ecumenical council Theotokos, Mother of God. Devotion to Mary naturally followed that teaching.
Dear Fr Peter:
Praise and honour and glory and thanksgiving be unto our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ.
Thank you for touching on the Nestorian heresies that were rebuked by Cyril at Ephesus!
You mention “Mary was proclaimed at that ecumenical council Theotokos, Mother of God. Devotion to Mary naturally followed that teaching.” You also remind us of the verse ‘“I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear. But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth” (Jn 16:12,13).”
This verse means a great deal to me because it demonstrates my dependency in matters of faith. One consolation is that the Lord told the Apostles they had much to learn as well. The “Spirit of truth” would be the Holy Spirit for indeed He will guide us into all truth.
The question that forces itself and please forbear with me, did this pronouncement come from men or was it indeed from the Holy Spirit? To be frank, it is a query to be pondered! If it guidance from the Holy Spirit there should be points of reference to give us assurance that we are on the correct path! I mean no disrespect, yet many others have meditated on this matter and it would be good to have the rational.
What we are taught has a great impact on our faith. I am not trying to denigrate here, but to gain perspective and there will be others that wrestle and reason with the concept.
Even if we come to a different understanding on the matter, do know my respect for your lifetime of service to the Lord’s people.
Yours in Christ,
Brian
Your mother isn’t mentioned in Scripture, Brian Young, according to your yardsticks.
Dear Elias:
Allow yours truly to respond to the easier of your two comments! What would we be without motherly love and guidance? Jesus was blessed with a singular mother. Our mothers deserve our appreciation and respect and little should be taken away from them!
Yet, should our honour and gratitude be directed towards her virgin born son, the Saviour of the world?
Blessings,
Brian
Exodus 20:12 “Honour your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.
Psalm 127:3 Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward.
Isaiah 66:13 As one whom his mother comforts, so I will comfort you; you shall be comforted in Jerusalem.
Isaiah 49:15 “Can a woman forget her nursing child, that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you.
Proverbs 6:20 My son, keep your father’s commandment, and forsake not your mother’s teaching.
Now you have your mother in Scripture equated with the BVM for the sake of the Lord.
On your say-so.
And your yardsticks changed and stayed the same simultaneously.
Did your mum teach you that?
Dear Fr Peter:
Perhaps easier to digest responding to you in two parts When I saw “kleptomaniac” immediate thoughts went to J S Bach’s eldest son W F Bach. it has been written that he was a a kleptomaniac, not one to invite into ones home. yet he was a fine composer in his own right.
You well know the Catholic Church is rich in music, not to mention art. Mozart, Beethoven, Haydn and Eybler. Eybler completed Mozart’s Requiem at the request of Mozart’s widow. He was a student of the great genius. We must not over look some of the giants of the “italian school”, Vivaldi, Monteverdi and Pergolesi, only to scratch the surface. Arguably the Catholic Church has musical riches beyond compare!
I don’t think I could add anything of value to the balance of your precis, except to say, thank you!
Brian
A learned response Brian.
This entire “synodal” process seems merely an exercise in “immanentism” (a heresy). Not that God isn’t immanent in the life of the soul sanctified by grace; but that any soul, no matter how grotesque, can speak for the holy spirit. What the church needs is clarity, what this synod will bear is the fruit of confusion. Be prepared for another wholesale dump of faithful from the church. We’re literally witnessing the fulfillment of the prophecy of Our Lady of LaSalette, that “Rome will lose the faith”. I weep for all those whose faith in God is fully measured by their allegiance to the Pope (No. I am not a sedevantist. I’m certainly not a hyper-papalist).
Jesus christ is the head of the church & his teachings should not changed, altered or compromised to suit worldly ideals
Well said, dear Susan Aers!
He, our First Love and most beloved Saviour, is with us who desire to hear Him and follow Him. King Jesus Christ will never leave any of us orphans! Even if our family and friends turn against us, Jesus will never desert us.
Eternally wise are those little ones who hear Him & then do their best to obey Him!
Thank you Brian Young. I am, however, working on my own track, a pledge in the Lord. That reserved petulance is part of Anglican coda from the very beginnings that entails its other side, that it must not be questioned.
I believe it has a pre-Anglican, pre-English origin, in Wales in the deeply feudal Tudors of Penmynydd; and that it came to new flowering in the reign of Henry VII. By imposing its form on his reign he quelled the century of fighting. He was able to do this through its adoption and ministering by Cardinal Wolsey.
You can begin to see the stranglehold Cardinal Wolsey had on the society by the time Henry VIII (Henry Eighth) began insisting on divorcing his true wife Catherine Aragon. This coda has a primacy about it that was always against faith. One writer has tried describing it as ‘ministerial aristocracy’.
My sense of it is that it is a very peculiar manner of behaviour and interaction – the reserving of hidden petulance and the norm that it is beyond questioning.
And that it reveals the cultural refining of Penmynydd isolation through some 5 centuries.
It’s not English.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tudors_of_Penmynydd
Dr. Healy,
Thank you for devoting so much time to a topic that is dear to me.
Context: In 2018, after the debacle of the Pennsylvania grand jury clergy abuse report (and the many cases before and since) it became obvious that those ‘in authority’ were failing the governed. Something had to be done. Clericalism, as the ill-founded admiration and respect of the laity for the clergy, had suffered a knock-out blow. At the time, I documented a possible solution: a synod of the laity in which clerics could participate but have no vote! Idealistic. Curiously, two years later Pope Francis concurred, in a way. Was that a coincidence or the Holy Spirit? All we have as human beings is our anthropological interpretation of the facts, sayings and teachings of long ago. Granted, some interpretations are more educated than others but, the simplest ones cannot just be ignored. Perhaps Ockham said it best.
Clearly, as a Catholic non-cleric in a remote corner of the globe, I had little or no chance of furthering my idea. However, Pope Francis reworked it and reframed it into a Lucan theme of journey with an Ignatian flavor of discernment by listening to one another in a prayerful Spirit of consolation. It involves a learning curve.
Naturally, everyone’s common temptation seems to be trying to advance one’s own agenda. Addressing and resolving specific issues is not necessarily the purpose of a Synod on Synodality (or how to do synod work) in which one is called to ‘listen to one another’. I have heard of groups trying to advance the Latin mass by spreading their representatives throughout a diocese giving the impression that their favorite topic should filter up the chain of synodal communication. Others, try to advance what would normally be local pastoral concerns that are not necessarily universal ones.
Synodality is nothing but a process, a process of listening to one another as we journey through life. It can be a wonderful pastoral way of being church while leaving the governing to those who, in humility, have accepted a role of authority. As such, synodality can become a way of life that will alleviate the sufferings of those who feel ignored or, worse yet, discriminated for any reason.
Look at it this way. The sacrament of reconciliation has afforded the Church a wealth of knowledge regarding the pastoral needs of persons. Synodality affords the bishops, including the Bishop of Rome, a rich fountain of information regarding the aims, desires, achievements and failures of the governed and those governing. No one is being asked to give their authority away.
In our Catholic Church, any authority which is not exercised through service, particularly attentive to the pastoral needs of others, could be deemed overbearing and misplaced even when interpreted as ‘commanded’ by a higher authority.
While I thank you for the time and effort you have devoted to this topic, I would like to point out that in the condensed version of your essay I have read, the word ‘authority’ appears forty times. The word ‘service’ appears only four times.
Your brother in Christ.
Everything you say here Suarez corresponds hand-on-hand with the manners, style and non-secreted communication of the Lodge.
Or as they have it in Spanish, “mano mano”. Or in English, “hand-in-glove”.
Thank you to Nicholas Healy for this analysis and to CWR for republishing it. It merits attention from those inside the synodal bubble…a few points in further response:
FIRST, as for synodality being “holy ground,” we can only marvel at how it includes former speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi who identified late-term abortions as “sacred ground”(June 2013). https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/27444/catholic-groups-slam-pelosis-claim-that-abortion-is-sacred-ground.
So, why not impose, onto the entire Church, this rite of passage into irreversible modernity? Inclusivity! And, likewise, why not allow LGBTQ juggernaut to also recruit the Church as a (w)hole?
SECOND, rather than missing “adequate attention” to the “hierarchical communion” of the Church (Lumen Gentium, Ch. 3 with Explanatory Note), synodality has taken on purpose/rhetoric to dismember the Church into an “inverted pyramid.” Or, is it only a polyhedron with or without a center, or maybe a square circle?
Yes, “walking together” by genuflecting to “procedures”, as in the secular world and as in Marshall MacLuhan’s “the medium [synod] IS the message. The opening wedge was in the initial parish and diocesan gatherings, where the very nature of the successors of the apostles was indefinitely deferred (“primarily as facilitators”). Grooming of the laity? Or, the first step in a late-term abortion?
THIRD, even within the so-called “leadership” of synodality, obviously there are fractures, if not in the infected content, at least in the “style”!
Take the photo at the head of this article….Do we see Hollerich witlessly exposing the agenda to veto inborn sexual morality by demolishing what is, therefore, the teaching of the Church? Together with Grech’s unguarded facial expression…”who is this idiot? We’re supposed to be more nuanced and ambiguous, as in only ‘stretching the gray area’!”
A damn TRAGEDY! Undermining (or under-minding?) both the Church and more credible prospects for a genuine fabric of lay-clerical, mutual consultation. This observation from yours truly and others who, twenty years ago, took part in a very fruitful Archdiocesan Pastoral Council (also three years, during the Scandal of 2002!). Where, nevertheless, the being “sent” of the bishops (apostello) was respected, still breathing, and therefore leavening—in season and out of season (2 Tim 4:2).
INSTEAD, today, and as in the invasive secular world—“Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies” (French author Honoré de Balzac). And, councils (and synods and ecclesial town hall meetings!) are “what the Church DOES, not what the Church IS” (“The Ratzinger Report”, 1985).
During the three years of pushing-and-pulling, cut-and-pasting, and dialoguing/ discerning the Council’s four Constitutions and their Declarations (1962-5), the termites failed to delete one word in this anchoring insert:
“The Christian dispensation, therefore, as the new and definitive [!] covenant, will never pass away, and we now await no further new public revelation before the glorious manifestation of the Lord Jesus Christ (cf 1 Tim 6:14, Tit. 2:13)” (Dei Verbum, n.4). The word is DEFINITIVE. The termite colony has been trying ever since to walk this thing back. As in the backwardness of synodally “walking [it back] together.”
Again, a tragic event when, yes, needed aggiornamento–butt, amputated from ressourcement as the other leg–falls on its face, or whatever…Fr. Martin sass?
The quote from Ignatius Loyola (in the opening paragraph) seems to me a pathological distortion of what the Church is, a “super-clericalist-ideology” that eclipses Christ as head of the Church and treats “the hierarchy” as if they are the head of the Church, and the obedience owed to Christ can be offered, instead, to them.
That is a fundamental error, which is patently obvious now, in that we can plainly see that the “false shepherd,” like Eminence Hollerich, who presumptuously assume that obedience is owed to them, are themselves brazenly disobedient to the commandments of Jesus Christ.
These false shepherds are what Jesus called “adulterers.” They are unfaithful to Jesus the bridegroom of the Church, and brazenly expect the faithful to submit to them while they subvert and depose Our Lord Jesus and usurp his authority.
That is the pathology of “obedience” in the Society of Jesus.
They substitute themselves in place of Jesus, and offer the Church the “mind of McCarrick,” to replace “the mind of Christ.”
They are to be opposed, no matter what “office” they so falsely occupy.
The concept of Synodality is a good one, but this Synod of Synodality is spinning, like a tornado, into what will be a disaster and the source of an enormous rupture in the life of the Church. Why? Because Jesus gave to His Apostles alone the mandate to go and make disciples of all nations and to teach “all that I have commanded you.” He built His Church (and it is still His) on Peter and the Apostles, and only they and their successors have the right and authority to teach, to pass on, the doctrine of the Church received by the Apostles from Jesus Himself. The doctrine of the Church is Jesus’ doctrine. The affrontery of the participants to think that they can change Church doctrine means they are superseding the authority of Jesus with their own authority, and that is nothing short of pure Pride.
Archbishop Fernandez, referring to the American Church, said we do not have a right to question the Pope’s doctrine. That statement alone shows how unqualified he is for his new position. He should know the Pope has no doctrine. All doctrine came from Jesus and was communicated to His Apostles. The job of the Church is to communicate Jesus’ doctrine to the faithful.
The notion of involving the laity, who were not given a mandate by Jesus to be involved in the governance of the Church, in the decision-making of the Church will lead to nothing but confusion. Jesus established His Church with a centralized authority, not a decentralized authority. Many (and sadly we see this in some Bishops as well) will want to change the Church doctrine on abortion, contraception, same-sex marriage, lawful marriage, reception of the Sacrament, and even more. I am afraid that Pope Francis himself has been an impetus for such thinking. As a result of his misguided direction, the Synod will be discussing the ordination of women, same-sex marriage, reception of the Eucharist by divorced and remarried Catholics, incorporating the LGBTQ+ laity into the life of the Church, and other such topics that should not even be considered in this Synod. Pope Francis, in a way, initiated this through his Pachamama event in the Vatican Gardens, his Traditionis Custodes which has caused enormous harm in the Church and in which he falsely claimed the Novus Ordo was the Mass of Vatican II (where truth is absent the Holy Spirit is absent). It is the Mass of Paul VI but is completely out of sync with what Vatical II said to do in Sacrosanctum Concilium. Also his questionable justification for the canonization of Pope Paul VI, and his confusing teachings in other documents, which he refused to clarify when asked to do so by a group of cardinals. In short, his lack of effective leadership has been the impetus for much of the confusion now swirling around the Synodal process.
Any discussion of doctrine should be limited to how the received doctrine can be better explained and understood by all, how the Church can better catechize the faithful (which has been an abysmal failure for 60 years), and how the Church, through all its members, can do a better job of evangelization. Jesus’ first command was to go and make disciples of all nations. The Church needs to make that a higher priority.
In short, the Synod is going in the wrong direction, is focused on the wrong topics, and will be nothing but a source of enormous confusion to the Church at large.
Brothers and Sisters in Jesus,
All the above comments are well and good and holy. And to that, I would add the following beautiful and blessed words of a great Doctor of the Church, St. Augustine, and his remarkable and Holy Spirit inspirational words concerning these Shepherds in Rome. What This Blessed Saint has to say to each and everyone of these Bishops who are gathering succint and Christlike. In fact, if anything, this so called Synod should be a gathering whereby all the bishops in attendance ponder for 2 weeks the following directive on what a Bishops job for Christ is. What St. Augustine said 1,500 years ago was of paramount importance back then and even more so now!
St. Augustine says: “You have already been told about the wicked things shepherds desire. Let us now consider what they neglect. You have failed to strengthen what was weak, to heal what was sick, and to bind up what was injured (that is, what was broken). You did not call back the straying sheep, nor seek out the lost. What was strong you have destroyed. Yes, you have cut it down and killed it. The sheep is weak, that is to say, its heart is weak, and so, incautious and unprepared, it may give in to temptations.
The negligent shepherd fails to say to the believer: My son, come to the service of God. Stand fast in fear and in righteousness, and prepare your soul for temptation. A shepherd who does say this strengthens the one who is weak and makes him strong. Such a believer will then not hope for the prosperity of this world. For if he has been taught to hope for worldly gain, he will be corrupted by prosperity. When adversity comes, he will be wounded or perhaps destroyed.
The builder who builds in such manner is not building the believer on a rock but upon sand. But the rock was Christ. Christians must imitate Christ’s sufferings, not set their hearts on pleasures. He who is weak will be strengthened when told: “Yes, expect the temptations of this world, but the Lord will deliver you from them all if your heart has not abandoned him. For it was to strengthen your heart that he came to suffer and die, came to be spat upon and crowned with thorns, came to be accused of shameful things, yes, came to be fastened to the wood of the cross. All these things he did for you, and you did nothing. He did them not for himself, but for you.”
But what sort of shepherds are they who for fear of giving offence not only fail to prepare the sheep for the temptations that threaten, but even promise them worldly happiness? God himself made no such promise to this world. On the contrary, God foretold hardship upon hardship in this world until the end of time. And you want the Christian to be exempt from these troubles? Precisely because he is a Christian, he is destined to suffer more in this world.
For the Apostle says: All who desire to live a holy life in Christ will suffer persecution. But you, shepherd, seek what is yours and not what is Christ’s, you disregard what the Apostle says: All who want to live a holy life in Christ will suffer persecution. You say instead: “If you live a holy life in Christ, all good things will be yours in abundance. If you do not have children, you will embrace and nourish all men, and none of them shall die.” Is this the way you build up the believer? Take note of what you are doing and where you are placing him. You have built him on sand. The rains will come, the river will overflow and rush in, the winds will blow, and the elements will dash against that house of yours. It will fall, and its ruin will be great.
Lift him up from the sand and put him on the rock. Let him be in Christ, if you wish him to be a Christian. Let him turn his thoughts to sufferings, however unworthy they may be in comparison to Christ’s. Let him centre his attention on Christ, who was without sin, and yet made restitution for what he had not done. Let him consider Scripture, which says to him: He chastises every son whom he acknowledges. Let him prepare to be chastised, or else not seek to be acknowledged as a son.
Responsory”
Excellent, thank you, dear JCALAS.
Let’s join the millions of faithful Catholics who are praying: “Dear LORD Jesus Christ, please give our wayward Bishops, Archbishops, Cardinals, and Pope divine encounters with You, as with Paul of Tarsus on the Damascus Road, that they who think they can see will be struck blind to the world so as to have their eyes opened to Your Glory and Your instructions, for You are our Only Teacher. Amen”
Ever in the love of the LORD; blessings from marty
We must remember that the Church is part of The Kingdom of God which was frequently referred to by Christ. It is NOT a democracy. A Kingdom is ruled from the top down. It’s high time we get this straight. Peter and the apostles were given the power of binding and loosening.
Dear James Connor: “Peter and the apostles were given the power of binding and loosening”.
As with every true follower of Christ (see Matthew 18:18-19).
The corporate papal version (Mt 16) applies only when the current pope formally defines a doctrine ‘ex cathedra’ – meaning ‘from the chair of St Peter’.
If a sitting pope (e.g. Francis) speaks & acts in ways that contradict what Saint Peter and his Apostolic successors have already bound or loosed on earth (and thus in Heaven) the credibility of the sitter is subverted & will be ignored by most Catholics around the world.
The foolishness of anti-Apostolicity is vastly serious though, in that it presages schism. The Francis Faction, in their hubris, risk bringing the house down.
James, you’d know, the freemasons & other occultists are already celebrating.
Ever in the grace & mercy of King Jesus Christ; love & blessings from marty
If this is the short version I’d be forever reading the original! Sorry just a joke really good work but the summed up the whole thing with reference to the Star of the Sea: Go to Mass, pray the rosary get to confession become saints AND FORGET ABOUT THIS SYNODALITY RUBBISH!
A fine effort. Too bad the Synod of People is a sham. Bishops are displaced. The agenda is set. The draft documents have been written. The rest is Kabuki Theater.
Without a miracle, doctrine will be further confused and bypassed by heteropraxy.
Thanks for trying.