In the first volume of his trilogy, Jesus of Nazareth, Pope Benedict XVI saluted the important contributions that historical-critical analysis of the literary forms and editorial “layers” of ancient texts had made to understanding the Bible. The pope also suggested that the essential fruits of that method had been harvested and that the time had come for a less dissecting approach to biblical interpretation: one that “read individual [biblical] texts within the totality of the one Scripture, which then sheds light on the individual texts;” one that that took into account “the living tradition of the whole Church;” and one that read the Bible within the context of the Church’s faith and the interlocking truths within that faith.
Might something analogous be said about the Church’s recent explorations of “synodality” — that its essential fruits have been reaped and that it is time to bring those fruits to bear on the Church’s mission, which (as Pope Leo has reminded us since his election) is the proclamation of Jesus Christ as the light of the nations and the answer to the question that is every human life?
What are the fruits of the past several years of “synoding”?
First, the younger Churches of Africa and Asia, where many living parts of global Catholicism are found, have been heard. Their voices became stronger as the multiyear synodal process unfolded. And in the discussions among cardinals before the election of Pope Leo, it seemed that that’s what “synodality” meant to many cardinals from the so-called “peripheries:” we are being taken seriously. That is a very good thing.
Second, the universal missionary mandate that summons every baptized Catholic to be an evangelist has been underscored. So has the universal call to the holiness that makes living that missionary mandate possible. Those are also very good things.
Third, the obstacle that a clerical caste system poses to evangelization has been identified. The synodal process has shown that ordained leaders who listen to, take counsel from, and collaborate with those they are called to lead are the Church’s most effective pastors. Furthermore, we should now know that collaborative and consultative structures already exist throughout most of the world Church—and that being a Church permanently in mission has less to do with who flies what desk in the Roman Curia (or the diocesan chancery) than with those in Holy Orders empowering the laity for evangelization.
Fourth, the living parts of the world Church have made a powerful case that successful evangelization means offering and living Catholicism in full — not treading water in the Church of Maybe. To be sure, the life of faith is a continuous journey. The journey must have a destination, however, and clarity about doctrine and righteous living keeps us focused on that destination: the Kingdom of God manifest in the person of Jesus Christ. Bold witness to that truth has been another fruit of the Synod on Synodality.
Assuming that the synodal process is not an end in itself and recognizing that the synodal process of 2021-2024 has produced some good fruits, perhaps it may be suggested that it’s now time to move from synoding to applying the fruits of the past three years to mission and evangelization.
It is not self-evidently clear how that transition will be facilitated by the Synod general secretariat’s recent publication, Pathways for the Implementation Phase of the Synod 2025-2028. The document envisions a time-consuming (and very expensive) three-year process of national and continental meetings followed by a time-consuming (and even more expensive) global “Ecclesial Assembly” in Rome — the nature of which is undefined. Moreover, this new process, as described by Synod secretariat official Sister Nathalie Becquart, does not seek to resolve “tensions” between “sides” in an “impossible arrangement,” but to manage those tensions in a “dynamism” that will be lived differently in different sectors of the world Church.
On this 1,700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea, it is worth noting, with Father Gerald Murray, that if such an approach had been taken then, there would be no Creed universally confessed in the Church today. At Nicaea, the “tensions” in the Church were not resolved dynamically but definitively: the Arian denial of Christ’s divinity was authoritatively rejected and Christian orthodoxy was authoritatively affirmed.
It is no disparagement of the accomplishments of the 2021-2024 synodal process to suggest that its essential fruits have been harvested and it’s time to move on: not with more meetings, and not with circular debates over settled matters of Catholic faith and practice, but with the proclamation of Jesus Christ who, as Vatican II taught, reveals the truth about God and the truth about us.
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Dear God’s, I don’t catch your idea here but I want you to know I found a way to address you that allows me to keep it civil; and at the same time tell you I read your posts.
Anyway I had to use Magnifier to make out the image.
Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant! What is it?
What is it? The Church is not an anthropological monolith similar to Easter Island rock sculptures, or the Aztec god of rain and ecology. Such a man made monolith is more accurately suited for describing Synodality. Our fundamental error is ascribing to the Church what it does, as instituted by man, whereas the Church is what it is as instituted by Christ. What it is differs from what it may do.
The likelihood of the anthropological monolith Synodality invented by former Abp Cdl Mario Martini of Milan and revered by his disciple Cdl Bergoglio the future Pope Francis is highly unlikely. Certainly it would be a blessing for the Church as suggested by Weigel. Although Synodality was Francis’ primary effort intent on its permanence. Leo XIV and a company of hierarchal supporters are intent on following through with Pope Francis’ overall policy.
Correction it was dec Cdl [Carlo] Martini Archbishop of Milan.
A superior response.
Of course synodalism has accomplished its purposes.
Except for the “loose ends” of psycho-sexual disintegration, and “contextualizing” Jesus.
“…the Arian denial of Christ’s divinity was authoritatively rejected and Christian orthodoxy was authoritatively affirmed.”
And yet, why has the Synod recycled both the Arian heresy by denying Christ’s teaching on respect for the Sanctity and Dignity of the marital act, within The Sacrament of Holy Matrimony, and thus God’s intention that we respect the Sanctity and Dignity of all human life from the moment of conception to natural death in accordance with Christ’s teaching regarding lust and the sin of adultery, and our Call to Holiness in all our relationships as we are Called to be “ Temples of The Holy Ghost”?
It is true that “orthodoxy was authoritatively affirmed at Nicaea”, so the question is, on whose authority is the Divinity of Christ, and The Unity Of The Holy Ghost being permitted to be question at the synod, when we can know through both Faith and reason that “The Holy Spirit was not promised to the successors of Peter that by His revelation they might make known new doctrine, but that by His assistance they might inviolably keep and faithfully expound the Revelation, the Deposit of Faith, delivered through the Apostles.” And
“Only those are to be included as members of the Church who have been Baptized and profess The True Faith, and who have not been so unfortunate as to separate themselves from the Unity of the Body, or been excluded by legitimate authority for grave faults committed. (Mystici Coporis 22).
I, for one , cannot simply dismiss the fact that a counterfeit magisterium , that questions not only the Divinity of Christ, but The Unity Of The Holy Ghost, The Spirit Of Perfect Divine Eternal Love Between The Father And His Only Begotten Son, Jesus The Christ, Who Proceeds From Both The Father And His Only Begotten Son, Jesus The Christ, and thus questions The Divinity Of The Most Holy Blessed Trinity, is being permitted to subsist within The One Body Of Christ, causing chaos and confusion, while leading a multitude of souls astray. This counterfeit magisterium must be charitably anathema for the sake of Christ, His One, Holy, Catholic, And Apostolic Church, All Who Will Come To Believe, And All Those Prodigal Sons And Daughters, Who, Hopefully, Will Return To The One Body Of Christ, Outside Of Which, There Is No Salvation, Due To The Unity Of The Holy Ghost.
About the universal and perennial Catholic Church and “ecclesial assemblies”—at a crossroads in the 21st Century…
Five points:
FIRST, instead of the bottoms-up (even literally!) Germaniac der Synodal Weg and a Synod-on-Synodality (say what?), this from Pope Benedict XVI: “…the problems left behind by Marxism are still with us. The dissolution of the primal certainties of man about God, about himself, and about the universe—the dissolution of the consciousness of those moral values that are never subject to our own judgment—all this is still our problem. In a new form, it could lead to the self-destruction of European consciousness, and we must take this seriously as a real danger [….]” (Ratzinger/Benedict, “Values in a Time of Upheaval”, 2006, p.145).
SECOND, under the tutelage of tribal Fr. James Martin & Co., infiltrated parts of the Church “walk together” toward the destruction of both the natural family and the family of the Church; AND on the world stage the Marxist axis marches together in a parade in Beijing (September 2, 2025) attended by 26 nations and, especially prominently, the recently allied heads of Marxist China, North Korea, and Russia, and Shi’ite Iran from the Muslim world.
THIRD, is the global choice between being “subjects” under these despots, or “citizens” under God—within nations that are in step with universal human morality? Approaching this threshold, the Second Vatican Council’s “Dei Verbum” centered on the stunning and historical fact of the Incarnation into our midst, and, therefore “Gaudium et Spes” also affirmed “the permanent binding force of universal natural law [!] and its all-embracing principles, [and] Man’s conscience itself gives ever more emphatic voice to these principles” (n. 79).
FOURTH, surely a redirected curia within the Church, and the laity in civil society, can find ways to reposition so-called “synods” within the more permanent nature of the Church—already clarified in “Lumen Gentium” as a “hierarchical communion” (respecting both the papacy as the successor of St. Peter, and the institutional and personal responsibilities of each successor of the Apostles). But, might distinct “ecclesial assemblies” help salvage continents and civilization from the dystopian anthill now looming over the global horizon? The “communio” of the perennial Catholic Church rejuvenated an alternative to the entropic new world order?
FIFTH, shortly after the Second Vatican Council—and still before the German/Roman “synodal” sidetrack—Benedict XVI reflected on the partial loss of “communio”—or the “ecclesial assembly” (his term)—in the wake of the Reformation. At Trent, the better articulation of the faith, and the restoration of the sacramentally ordained priest as more than a seeming “cult-minister” (his words), but as a bearer of sacramentality through Holy Orders, also led to too much of a “separation” of the laity from the clergy—the loss of communio—”the problem of the laity, which arose at this time and still haunts us today” (“Successio Apostolica,” as Chapter 2 in Ratzinger, “Principles of Catholic Theology,” Ignatius, 1982/Ignatius 1987).
SUMMARY: A council, or a real synod of bishops, or even an ecclesial assembly, are only what the Church DOES, but not what the Church IS.
Weigel’s analogy of Benedict’s historical scriptural exegetical completion to winding up our contemporary project Synodality is well made. It’s time to stop Syndalying and put the damned thing to bed.
“First, the younger Churches of Africa and Asia, where many living parts of global Catholicism are found, have been heard. Their voices became stronger as the multiyear synodal process unfolded.”
Maybe it’s just me, but I continuously fail to understand how tens of millions of individual voices can be “heard” by a “listening” Church. And to what are we supposed to listen? More demand for turning a blind eye to sexual depravity and the resulting slaughter of millions of babies?
Did the “harvest,” where notorious abortionists were invited as honored guests, include hearing, or listening to, or rather did they ignor the cries of aborted babies, born alive, disposed into waste lines, bucketed while living, into sewers, where the final cries of their short lives experience a final agony as they are ripped apart by rats?
These “sins below the belt” the “New Church” is now instructed to ignore are a harvest?
“African and Asian voices became stronger.” Really? How? Might this have occurred throughout the insulting condescension towards African prelates resistance to FS, who were told they “need more study.” Walter Kasper, “the Pope’s theologian,” was, as they say, ahead of his time in calling the Africans stupid before the synods even began.
With more study it seems, we learn that the synodal solution “harvested” has been one more episode of Catholic deconstruction to exalt moral relativism, sold as cultural relativism to accommodate the backwardist Africans defending Catholicism from Catholics.
Asian voices heard? Does Weigel mean the martyred cries from the persecuted Church in China not heard but ignored? Maybe he just means the silly public images from Cardinal Tagle snapping his fingers to trashy rock music. But then the entire episcopate humiliated the Church by rocking back and forth to trashy rock music that ended the Youth Synod.
When will George Weigel abandon Pollyannaism and become the witness God asks of him?
To suggest that the “essential fruits” of synodality have been harvested and it’s now time to move on is like declaring the Resurrection complete after Holy Saturday. Synodality is not a project with a deadline; it is a conversion of ecclesial imagination—a return to what the Church has always been at her core: the People of God walking together, not sitting apart in sacred silos.
The handwringing over “time-consuming” and “expensive” processes reeks of Roman managerial fatigue, not apostolic zeal. Was Pentecost efficient? Was Nicaea cheap? The early Church didn’t measure the cost of communion in coins or convenience—it measured it in martyrdom, in courage, in fidelity to the Spirit’s unpredictable lead. If the living Church today needs three more years of listening, discernment, and yes, even tension, then so be it. The alternative—performative orthodoxy and strategic silence—is what drove people to see the Church not as the Body of Christ, but as a fossilized bureaucracy.
The argument that synodality threatens clarity is especially rich coming from those who mistake dogma for dominance. Nicaea rejected Arianism not because it avoided tension, but because it was willing to confront it—through listening, not posturing. Synodality does not relativize truth; it relationalizes it. It takes seriously that the Holy Spirit might speak through the voices you’ve historically ignored: women, the poor, the laity, the margins.
So no, we haven’t “synoded” enough. Not until the Church stops confusing uniformity for unity. Not until the baptized are treated as co-responsible disciples, not spectators to clerical theater. Synodality isn’t the distraction from mission—it is its renewal. If Christ is the Light to the Nations, then synodality is the lamp being lifted from under the hierarchical bushel, so that finally, all may see.
We read: “Synodality does not relativize truth; it ‘relationalizes’ it.” The synodal problem, however, regarding truth–is the difference between reasoning and rationalization.
Synodaling seeks to blend the oil of Tradition with the Vinegar of New World Order, Catholicism with Agenda 2030.
Synodaling seeks to achieve the impossible task that Post-Conciliarism has failed to.
Catholicism and New World Order are two diametrically opposed projects for humanity. The Synodal Salad Shakers can only prolong the period of apostasy?
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An anthropological monolith has no voice other than what we imaginatively invent. They have eyes but cannot see ears that cannot hear mouths that cannot speak. Those who revere them come to be like them. This is what Synodallying will do to you.
Put synoldaling to bed? Even the word, along with every conceivable variation of it, should be at the top of a new Papal List of Forbidden Thoughts, Words and Actions, otherwise known as “Stupid Things a Pope Should Never Think, Say or Do”.
Synodality [a new variation is Synodallying] is a form of parliamentary think tank intended to reform the Church from its mission to convert the world to accommodating it by endless discussion on doctrine effectively rendering it impotent. My opinion is it was invented by former Archbishop of Milan Cdl Mario Martini and inspired by the Devil.
Synoding, also known as the repeated attempt to replace traditional doctrine and morality with a progressive agenda. It needed to stop years ago; it needs to stop right now.
It might be time to ask God for knowledge and wisdom to achieve the goals of the Designer.
Patrick A. Schmiedeler