Prague, Czech Republic, Feb 9, 2023 / 09:15 am (CNA).
The chief organizer of the Catholic Church’s Synod on Synodality said Wednesday night that the global synod process is meant to uphold what makes the Catholic Church distinctive, not “to destroy Catholic identity.”
In a homily in Prague’s St. Vitus Cathedral on Feb. 9, Cardinal Mario Grech noted that some have wrongly understood the synod as “a battle of the conservatives against the liberals.”
The secretary general for the Synod of Bishops added that others have misunderstood the synod as a process to change the Church and to “blur the distinction between what is within the Catholic tradition and what is outside.”
Addressing these two “equally problematic” ways of understanding the Synod on Synodality, Grech said that the synod is not a process to “raze distinctions.”
“The synod is not there to destroy distinctions. The synod is not there to destroy Catholic identity,” he said.
“Rather, it is there to uphold distinctions, to understand the Gospel and what makes the Catholic Church truly one, holy, catholic, and apostolic.”
Grech offered these reflections midway through the European Continental Assembly meeting in Prague Feb. 5-12, where some European delegations have asked for a clearer definition of “synodality.”
“We need to try and define our vision of the Church, which during this process means perhaps a clearer definition of ‘synodality’ in the broader ecclesiological and theological sphere,” a representative of one of the English-speaking discussion groups told the assembly on Feb. 7.
The European assembly is split into two parts. In the first part Feb. 5-9, laypeople and clerics — including 65 women and 46 bishops — together represented their countries in livestreamed discussions of what priorities and themes should be taken up in the Synod of Bishops meeting at the Vatican this fall.
On Wednesday night, four cardinals, 45 bishops, and 80 priests concelebrated the Mass under the high vaulted ceiling of the 14th-century Gothic cathedral with about 500 people in attendance.
Located within the Prague Castle complex, the Metropolitan Cathedral of Saints Vitus, Wenceslaus and Adalbert contains the tombs of Holy Roman emperors and Bohemian kings, in addition to the tomb of St. Wenceslaus, a 10th-century martyr who inspired the Christmas carol “Good King Wenceslas.”
In his homily, Grech used the word “prepositions” 30 times to explain that “what is internal cannot be understood if not in relation to the external, and the external cannot be understood if not in relation to the internal.”
“I believe that our synod is and should be a synod of prepositions. A prepositional synod — not necessarily a propositional synod — but definitely a prepositional synod,” Grech said.
The cardinal underlined that “every day we have to ask what makes us distinct as a Catholic Church.”
“It is in this way that I understand and look, with hope, at the Synod on Synodality. May our endeavor not become an exercise in exclusive distinction, between those who are in and those who are out. In other words, a distinction without relation, which ultimately results in no distinction,” he said.
“May our God, who is totally different yet totally in communion, guide his Church to become distinct, yet in relation.”
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In my view, Cardinal Grech here is struggling to adapt what he has heard, into a cohesive expression about synodal essence. Instead of saying “form” and “substance” he steps it back to introduce his own concepts.
According to him the synod is about “relating” what is “external” and “internal” on a “prepositional” basis that is “definitely prepositional” yet not “necessarily prepositional”; that will lead to the “clearer definitions” in “broader spheres” to do with the Church.
God has caught out this man in his Kantian nonsense.
And I say again, they are using feedbacks to construct their own replies but without admitting to it. This practice is a stamp of Modernism, one stock in trade of many types of stock; and is, at the same time, fundamentally dishonest. Now, at this moment, I wish to describe 2 further aspects to the practice:
1. how deceptive it can be when it is mixed in with defective and ramshackle logic
and
2. how it reveals that what we are dealing with is inventiveness and not meaningful originality.
“May our God, who is totally different yet totally in communion, guide his Church to become distinct, yet in relation.”
Yes, absolutely, so to speak, but wasn’t this what the Council’s ressourcement and aggiornamento were/are all about? That is, the voted documents of Vatican II rather than the footloose and so-called “spirit” of Vatican II–as now in synodally “walking together” in some-or-other Holy Spirit, to “stretch the grey area” (Grech).
The hour is late, and are the whores already out of the barn?
Also, we read this: “…not necessarily a propositional synod — but definitely a prepositional synod.” Meaning what?
A PROPOSITIONAL synod could be fully interconnecting, but still rooted clearly in the singular historical event (!) of Jesus Christ. And, therefore, Eucharistic first and, as a matter of identity, equally rooted in the Deposit of Faith. As articulated, yes, in conceptual “propositions”(!) as in the Nicene Creed.
Surely the Council of Nicaea is not to be synodalized into mostly a culture-bound, prepositional consensus—a short shelf-life proposition now to be eclipsed by the synodal process itself, the “endless journey” of “walking together”?
https://www.catholicworldreport.com/category/the-dispatch/
So, yes to Cardinal Grech’s very welcome recovery of “distinctions.” Surely, he means a definitely prepositional and outreaching synod which still is clearly accountable within the perennially “one, holy, catholic and apostolic” Church. But, then, at Radcliffe’s and Hollerich’s tautological Synod on Synodality, is this perennial Church still to be groomed into a, yes, distinct “identity,” but externally within a pluralism of religions, and internally—in today’s entropic world—as fluid lubricant between the seven “continental” editorial boards? The synodality of Continental Drift?
So, to the self-styled seven synodal Continental Assemblies of today—no less than to the Seven Churches in Revelation (Chapter 2) of yesterday—how about the universal and missionary Church for tomorrow, which truly IS what it is and, in what it then DOES, is neither synodalized nor sodomized?
Cardinal Grech, our new Apostle of the Gentiles is right, the Synod is certainly not “a battle of the conservatives against the liberals.” Rather, it is a battle of the liberals against the conservatives. Conservatives who rigidly hold on to Apostolic tradition.
Rigidity is a bad word. His Holiness uses it often, ‘a dangerous ideology’. What’s right is right, so the minute body of conservative busters have righteous authority to rule, to direct things exactly as planned [foreseen]. God who is totally different nonetheless in communion with the Church is an advanced theology that requires change in the very meaning of distinction. Distinction as exclusive is transformed by God’s power into inclusiveness. Makes sense? We are tentatively distinct ‘because’ of our inclusiveness. So then, in this advanced theology the nouveau Gentiles are who else other than conservatives. Traditionalists.
A new theory of theological relativity. The preposition [prepositions are premises] that internal and external cannot be understood except in relation to each other. Brilliant! Although, whether it sounds clever, I thought everybody knew that. What does that mean? Does it simply mean that the formulation of a premise makes it valid? Apparently, according to the Apostle Grech.
Card Grech proposes the New Preposition, that we are compelled to search, continuously for what makes us distinct as a Church. What resolves the distinction that makes us exclusive and inclusive [think on that for awhile]. That what Christ revealed doesn’t suffice. Never mind what the Apostle Paul said of anyone preaching a New Preposition.