Those most enthusiastic about the Synod on Synodality that opens on October 4 are wont to say that it’s the most important Catholic event since the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) – a claim that sometimes carries the implication that it’s the only important thing that’s happened in the Church since Vatican II. I beg to differ. Here are eleven crucial events since the Council, with notes on their significance.
July 25, 1968: Pope Paul VI issues the encyclical Humanae Vitae, on the morally appropriate means of regulating fertility. In doing so, the Pope challenges the culture-eroding assumptions of the sexual revolution, prophetically warns of the impact of a contraceptive mentality on society and on women, and draws a line in the sand against the attempt by proponents of Catholic Lite to dominate the Church’s moral theology.
December 8, 1975: Paul VI issues the apostolic exhortation Evangelii Nuntiandi, reminding the Church that Pope John XXIII intended Vatican II to energize the Church for mission, and that at the center of Christian mission is “the name, the teaching, the life, the promises, the kingdom, and the mystery of Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God.”
June 2-10, 1979: On his first pastoral visit to Poland, Pope John Paul II demonstrates the vitality of Catholic social doctrine by igniting a revolution of conscience that will, over the next decade, lead to the nonviolent collapse of European communism.
November 24 – December 8, 1985: The Second Extraordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, called to mark the twentieth anniversary of Vatican II by considering what had gone right and what had gone wrong in the Council’s implementation, affirms the Council as a great gift of the Holy Spirit and weaves the Council’s sixteen documents into a coherent tapestry by describing the Church as a communion of disciples in mission.
December 7, 1990: John Paul II issues the encyclical Redemptoris Missio, formally launching the New Evangelization by calling all Catholics to live the missionary vocation into which they were baptized, because mission territory is everywhere.
August 6, 1993: Dated for the Feast of the Transfiguration, John Paul II’s encyclical Veritatis Splendor teaches that the moral life is ordered toward beatitude, which is eternal life within the light and love of the Thrice-Holy God; that some acts are gravely evil in themselves, irrespective of intentions; and that growth in the virtues is the royal road to human flourishing and happiness.
March 20-26, 2000: During a week-long pilgrimage to the Holy Land, John Paul II reminds the Church and the world that Christianity is neither a myth nor a pious fairy-tale; Christianity begins with the lives of real men and women, in a place that you can see and touch today, who were so transformed by their encounter with the Risen Lord Jesus that they went out on a mission to convert the world—and thus teach the world its true story and its noble destiny.
August 6, 2000: The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issues the declaration Dominus Iesus, which affirms that Jesus Christ, far from being one example of a generic divine will-to-save that expresses itself in different historical personalities, is the unique savior of humanity and the center of history and the cosmos.
April 18, 2005: At the Mass for the Election of the Roman Pontiff, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Dean of the College of Cardinals, warns of a “dictatorship of relativism” that will threaten the human future if political and legal power is deployed to impose a dumbed-down notion of truth on everyone.
December 22, 2005: At his first Christmas address to the Roman Curia, Pope Benedict XVI describes two interpretations of Vatican II that have contested for the Catholic future since the Council itself. One was false: a “hermeneutic of discontinuity and rupture” that led to ecclesiastical stagnation and worse. The other, the “hermeneutic of reform” in continuity with the Church’s settled tradition, was true and had energized a vital Catholicism.
November 19, 2011: In Benin, Benedict XVI signs the apostolic exhortation Africae Munus [Africa’s Commitment], lifting up dynamic orthodoxy as the key to the evangelization of sub-Saharan Africa, the greatest growth area in the 21st-century Church.
If Synod-2023 is to be a development of the Church’s authentic tradition rather than another fruitless effort to reinvent Catholicism according to the cultural canons of post-modernity, its discussions—its so-called “conversations in the Spirit”—must take full account of these eleven crucial Catholic moments since Vatican II, all of which were expressions of the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit in the Church.
If you value the news and views Catholic World Report provides, please consider donating to support our efforts. Your contribution will help us continue to make CWR available to all readers worldwide for free, without a subscription. Thank you for your generosity!
Click here for more information on donating to CWR. Click here to sign up for our newsletter.
The idea… the thought, has been allowed. When Christ told Peter, “get behind me Satan,” he was instantly telling Peter to keep his bad idea, which was influenced by Satan to himself. In that moment, Peter was Anti-Christ. We are letting voices come forward to speak things which should not be said in public, nor which the church should allow to be said because they are Anti-Christ. There is no fear of the Lord, so there is no wisdom.
Excellent commentary by George Weigel. We should pray that this soi-disant Synod will not become an embarrassment to the Church and the cause of more defections.
From a lay person worm’s eye view of all of the high theology, the synod is the most important event since the Fall of Adam, a formal challenge from within Catholicism to conform to humanism as if there is a changeable god.
Yes! Thank you! And also a special thank you to Mr. Weigel.
CWR, can you incorporate a “most likes” feature in your comments? It assists your readers find the most insightful comments and increases the impact of your best articles.
Perhaps even the most important event since the Creation.
I wish JPII had been more diligent in appointing better bishops and cardinals instead of writing voluminous encyclicals that hardly anyone reads (or likely read when they were promulgated). We likely won’t be in the situation we are in now.
Indeed. As I’ve noted here previously, JP II gave us the likes of Bernardin, McCarrick, Mahoney, Pilarczyk, May, Law, Trautmen, Martini, Kasper, Daneels and one Jorge Bergoglio. He cheerfully overrode John Cardinal O’Connor’s strenuous warnings of McCarrick’s unsuitability and appointed him to DC anyway, and you know the rest. JP II also seemed utterly oblivious to the egregious liturgical abuses that ran rampant on his watch, some of the worst of them at his own Masses. Most surreal, perhaps, was his unstinting, continual soaring rhapsodic praise of the Second Vatican Council and the New Springtime of the Church that it had ushered in. What on earth could he have been thinking? It was as if VII had been a colossal, stupefying success, defying even our fondest hopes for it. Above all, he continue to write, and write, and write, and write, and write, and write, and write, AND WRITE, as if the papacy were a chair in philosophy. Sad as it is to say, JP II left the Church in significantly worse condition than he found it.
My response to the question of the headline is, “Um… hardly.”
And my suggestion for a better question, “The least Catholic Catholic event since Arius’ ordination as deacon?”
Yes, and for those who are far too liberal for the synod, they’ll quickly talk about the Sprit of the Synod (e.g. The Spirit of Vatican II)
Now, there’s the new “[in]authentic tradition” consisting of not only one, but two Synods! And, yes, this after two years of “aggregating, combining and synthesizing” all of Gaudium et Spes’s “joys and hopes and griefs and anxieties.” But, why two Synods?
It all goes back to Hollerich’s very own Vienna, from whence commeth the witticism that: “All things have an end, except for a sausage which has two.” Sausage, anyone?
And, about the new reading of Scripture and the new Germanic sexual morality…yes, Christ did admonish us to “turn the other cheek,” butt did He really mean to be taken so literally?
Number 12: The Promulgation of the Catechism of the Catholic Church (1992) — a “sure norm for teaching the faith” and the first comprehensive universal catechism since the Roman Catechism after the Council of Trent. In light of all the confusion introduced by the current pontificate, I’m surprised it didn’t make Mr. Weigel’s list.
I have a friend who is a conservative Lutheran. Recently her church hired a “woke” minister who is spreading all sorts of non-christian nonsense. My friend was warned by the church secretary to be certain she continued to send in her tithe, even if she was unhappy. I have the sense that much of this radical stuff is allowed to move forward in all churches because they have the cash to do it. If people resigned from the church and made sure they said WHY, maybe things would not be moving so radical left.
The Pope has been a train wreck since day one. The people most to blame however are the CARDINALS who voted him into office to begin with. Some of them at least HAD to know who he was,and what he believed. I would love to be a fly on the wall when they stand before the judgement seat. I believe that if Frances gets his way and Bishops begin to allow the blessing of gay unions, even more people will leave the church than after Vatican II.If so, possibly the lack of free flowing money will be a wake up call.
“The CARDINALS who voted him”. According to an Italian theologian, “The Rahnerians, under the influence of Cardinal Martini and secretly organized in the San Gallo group, were the ones who managed to elevate Bergoglio to the throne of Peter. They hoped that the new Jesuit Pope would support Rahner. However, as we have seen, after ten years of vain waiting, they were bitterly disappointed. It doesn’t seem like they are willing to give up on Rahner, though. After sixty years of climbing to power, they now hold strong positions and are attempting to dominate the Synod through the German Episcopate, which is largely influenced by Rahner.
But it is the Jesuit Pope himself who will stop them. Being a Jesuit, he cares about the honor of his Order and, above all, the welfare of the Church. He will not tolerate the disgrace of his esteemed Order being the downfall of the Church, and he will call them back to their fidelity to Saint Ignatius.”
The truth is that very few of the cardinals knew much about him. They mostly voted for him because he was a South American, and they thought an emphasis on the poor would be a nice touch. Bergoglio had a massive reputation as a conservative. He was disciplined by the Jesuits for being too conservative, and removed from his post and sent into exile. The first few weeks after his election, NCR, and other Catholic progressive magazines published attack after scurrilous attack on him, claiming that he supported Dictators, that he sided with the dictators in all things, that he did nothing when they threw people out of helicopters, etc. Only when he gave his first interviews and signaled his favor towards homosexuals did they stop. They were confused for a couple of weeks, and then they began supporting him.
I think I remember reading a little about those accusations from the Left in the beginning. Thank you for sharing that.
I heard a Catholic media person say that Cardinal Bergoglio would be the choice for Pope and that was well before he was elected. So it sounds like his name had already been getting traction in those circles.
New Oxfore Review knew a lot about his true progressive theological background and ran articles about him before anyone. They immediately started losing subscribers, and since their budget is weak, they had to stop. The articles are interesting if you can find them. It’s not by accident that the “St. Galen Mafia” promoted him.
I think he was removed by the Jesuits because of his harsh unpleasant personality and treatment of those under him, not the same as “conservative.” He also refused to permit the TLM despite Pope Benedict’s motu proprio removing the canonical obstacles to its celebration, and has been fiercely hostile to it since day one of his pontificate.
There will be no walls on Judgment Day. The Last Judgment shall be public. There will be no place to hide. ALL good and sinful words and deeds of everyone, everything, shall be revealed.
Then, a loss of money will be as snuffed candles in wind, but the wailing and grinding of teeth will deafen.
Thomas Aquinas reasons: The works and words and thoughts of men are not isolated from those of other men. Justice itself is defined as what one man owes another or what debt one incurs because of injustice toward another man and toward God.
QUESTION, for our day: Does a Pope have an obligation to strengthen his brothers and to feed God’s lambs and sheep? If this obligation is not fulfilled, has injustice been done? What are the effects of such injustice?
Fr. Charles Arminjon (“The End of the Present World”) says: “…especially in the case of leaders of nations and those who are invested with public authority, they [sins or good deeds] continue to subsist after they are concluded,,. either in the memory of other men or in public acclaim, as a result of the consequences they have had and the scandal they have caused. Thus, at first sight, a particular, secret crime seems to be only a private, personal deed; but it becomes SOCIAL on account of its effects.”
….At the final public judgment, “…God will not examine the actions in isolation and taken in themselves, but will examine them in their effects upon other men, in the good or evil deriving from them for families and peoples–in a word, in the consequences they produced and which those who perpetrated them ought to have foreseen.” Aquinas gives additional reasons for public judgment. Arminjon discusses them in pp. 94-96 of the Sophia Institute Press edition of 2008).
J.M.J.
“To Whom will we go Lord?”
Why leave Christ’s Church, when we can know through both Faith and Reason that those who deny The Unity Of The Holy Ghost (Filioque), have ipso facto separated themselves from The One Body Of Christ, and thus have ipso facto separated themselves from Christ and His One, Holy, Catholic, And Apostolic Church, outside of which there is no Salvation, due to The Unity Of The Holy Ghost (Filioque).
It Is “ Through Christ, With Christ, And In Christ, In The Unity Of The Holy Ghost” (Filioque), that Holy Mother Church, outside of which there is no Salvation, due to The Unity Of The Holy Ghost (Filioque), Exists.
And thus we can know through both The Catholic Faith and Reason, “It is not possible to have Sacramental Communion without Ecclesial Communion”, due to The Unity Of The Holy Ghost (Filioque).
The fact that The Filioque was left out of Dominus Iesus , does not change the fact that it is From The Father, Through The Son, In The Unity Of The Holy Ghost (Filioque) that Holy Mother Church Exists, and that a false ecumenism, in denying The Unity Of The Holy Ghost, will deny the fact that In order to have Sacramental Communion you must have Ecclesial Communion.
“For 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. ”
Dear Blessed Mother Mary, Mirror Of Justice And Destroyer Of All Heresy, Who Through Your Fiat, Affirmed The Filioque, and thus the fact that There Is Only One Son Of God, One Word Of God Made Flesh, One Lamb Of God Who Can Taketh Away The Sins Of The World, Our Only Savior, Jesus The Christ, thus there can only be, One Spirit Of Perfect Complementary Love Between The Father And The Son, Who Must Proceed From Both The Father And The Son, In The Ordered Communion Of Perfect Complementary Love, The Most Holy And Undivided Blessed Trinity (Filioque), hear our Prayer 🙏💕🌷
As The Veil is being lifted, the schismatic church is being exposed. Thank God, it is not possible for a schismatic counterfeit church to subsist within The One Body Of Christ, due to The Unity Of The Holy Ghost (Filioque).
“For 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. “
I was a young, undergrad, pro-life atheist in July 1968 and was impressed with the sensibility of Humanae Vitae, but I was confounded to notice yet another student demonstration on campus outside the office of the local Newman Club. Catholic students seemed to be universally upset with the Pope. The spectacle did not help my future conversion that occurred years later when I realized the Deposit of Faith existed independently of the foolishness of Catholics as individuals, confirmed again with the election of a Pope in 2013 with a personality and mind who thought it plausible to consider forming a committee of theologians to study Humanae Vitae to see if maybe it meant the exact opposite of what everyone thought it meant after all these years.
Despite radicals arrogantly and stupidly claiming that Ordinatio Sacerdotalis might at some time in the future be interpreted in such ways so as to permit female deacons or some forms of a quasi-priesthood for women, this apostolic letter by Pope St. John Paul II in 1994 has had the same kind of impact as Humanae Vitae in squelching some desires of the more radical elements of the Church by reasserting even more forcefully than Humana Vitae that perennial teaching is not subject to change by anyone…..EVER.
This being so, Ordinatio Sacerdotalis should also be included in Weigel’s grouping, and it is actually a bit surprising that he overlooked this most momentous and definitive action by Pope St. John Paul II.
Robert Royale at TCT throws the red flag:
https://www.thecatholicthing.org/
I think you mean this article by Robert Royal:
https://www.thecatholicthing.org/2023/10/04/confusion-worse-confounded/
“He knows, as will anyone with an ounce of sense reading this, that if such unions are blessed, it’s a step towards acceptance of homosexuality, Scripture and tradition notwithstanding.”
True, because it is not possible to “Bless” same-sex sexual unions without ipso facto “Blessing” same-sex sexual acts .
Jorge Bergoglio’s apostasy was external and made public and notorious, when as a cardinal, he stated in his book, On Heaven and Earth, in regards to same-sex sexual relationships, and thus same-sex sexual acts, prior to his election as pope, on page 117, denying The Unity Of The Holy Ghost (Filioque), and demonstrating that he does not hold, keep, or teach The Catholic Faith, and he continues to act accordingly:
“If there is a union of a private nature, there is neither a third party, nor is society affected. Now, if the union is given the category of marriage, there could be children affected. Every person needs a male father and a female mother that can help shape their identity.”- Jorge Bergoglio, denying The Sanctity of the marital act within The Sacrament of Holy Matrimony, and the fact that God, The Most Holy And Undivided Blessed Trinity, Through The Unity Of The Holy Ghost (Filioque), Is The Author Of Love, Of Life, And Of Marriage, while denying sin done in private is sin.
How then, can the election of a man, who was not in communion with Christ and every other previously validly elected Pope, and is thus anti Pope and anti Filioque, possibly be valid?
We can know through Faith and Reason,that Jorge Bergoglio cannot possibly be a successor of Peter, and each and every cardinal who voted for Jorge Bergoglio with full knowledge of his Apostasy, has ipso facto separated themselves from The One Body Of Christ, outside of which, there is no Salvation, due to The Unity Of The Holy Ghost (Filioque).
Yes thanks.
Will Francis make major changes based on what the Synod recommends or will he kick the can down the road and leave any major changes to his successor? I suspect that Francis is more interested in his successor than actually making big changes himself.
Edward J. Baker above – rebellion of Catholic students against Humanae Vitae. They were young and foolish and breathing the zeitgeist. It’d be interesting to know if events of the intervening fifty-five years have prompted any second thoughts among some of these now aging boomers.
Where is the money coming from to pay for this extravaganza? Peters pence ? China ? Pfizer? Bill gates ? Clinton foundation ?
It has always been about The Marriage In Heaven and on Earth. The Sacrifice Of The Cross Is The Sacrifice Of The Most Holy And Undivided Blessed Trinity, Through The Unity Of The Holy Ghost (Filioque), “ For God so Loved us that He Sent His Only Son…”
“Blessed are they who are Called to The Marriage Supper Of The Lamb.”
Sara?
Yes! That’s my answer to the question that is the title of this essay. Weigel’s and many others in the American Catholic hard right’s animosity and dissent to Pope Francis’ interpretation and implementation of Vatican II’s reforms is just a part of the normal expected opposition to the proper reception of the conciliar teachings which Yves Congar pointed out usually takes a century. Today, we’re still around forty years away from that magic number. Understandably, Weigel limits his view of proper reception of Vatican II only up to the papacy of Benedict XVI and betrays his loathing for the reigning Pope. As Weigel mentions the 1985 Synod of Bishops, it’s imperative to contrast this with the 2023-2024 Synod on Synodality.
The use of “grammar” to refer to “Synodality” is a good way to understand this maturing growth of receiving, understanding, and implementing Vatican II’s view of the Church as the “People of God” as outlined in Lumen Gentium. This declaration was a reaction to the pre-conciliar view of the Church as a “Monarchy” which translated into papalism, hierachicalism and clericalism in the 1% ordained reducing the 99% non-ordained faithful into simply doing the bidding of the ordained: pray, pray, and obey. For twenty years of the post-conciliar period the “People of God” ecclesiology led to the retrieval of the biblical and ancient gift of the laity’s place of co-responsibility in the Church.
The 1985 Synod of Bishops was a pushback by the hierachy on this development who longed to restore the “Monarchical” model of the Church by a slight of hand in the introduction of the grammar of “Communion.” This reactionary grammar of “Communion” was a veiled reintroduction of the “Monarchical” arrangement as it restored the pyramidal model of the Church underlining the spiritual and sacramental bond that unites the faithful with the Triune God at the top, the Pope immediately below, then the bishops, then the rest of the ordained, then the consecrated religious, and the laity at the bottom last. Consequently this setup preserved in the Church the marginalization and even exclusion of the laity, especially women and other minorities. “Communion” ecclesiology was widely used until the start of the reign of Pope Francis.
Early in his papacy, Francis started to emphasize and teach “Synodality” as the view of the nature and mission of the Church to receive and implement Vatican II’s ecclesiology of the “People of God.” In “synodality,” the Pope emphasizes “radical inclusivity” to reverse and correct the inherent exclusion and alienation inflicted by the “Communion” model on the 99% by the 1% of the faithful. The 2023-2024 Synod on Synodality corrects the 1985 Synod of Bishops to faithfully implement Vatican II’s “People of God” ecclesiology by emphasizing the grammar and praxis of “Synodality” which aims at recovering the biblical and ancient Church dynamics in which the full 100% of the baptized are truly aware of and active in their co-responsibility in the life and mission of the Church.
I suggest that a way to understand and apply Vatican II’s “People of God” ecclesiology is that it was directly a denial and rejection of the pre-conciliar view of the Church as “Monarchical.” If the Church is not a monarchy, what is it? John Paul II and Benedict XVI answered it as a “Communion.” Today, Pope Francis rectifies his predecessors’ eupemistic rebranding of “Monarchicalism” into “Communion,” by teaching that the Church is not a “Monarchy” but a “Synodality.”
If I understand your comment, I apparently am to believe that you and Pope Francis – who were not in attendance at VII – understand it much better than JP II and Benedict XVI, who were there and participated directly in tis deliberations. I wonder how that can be?
Sara? Where is your evidence for that?
N.D.,
Wasn’t Sara asking questions rather than making a statement?
My only question with Vatican II and this Synod is why does the Church feel the need to keep re-inventing the wheel? As an example, Bergoglio is, for no reason which I can discern, hostile to the Latin Mass. Pray for our Church.
You need to add in the functional aftermath of Church events. The deplorable behavior of the religious in the post Vatican II era (rebellion against Church teachings, the Land ‘O Lakes Statement, clerical abuse scandal) greatly helped to undermine the legitimacy of the Council and the Church. Vatican II was supposed to engage with the modern world. The Council faltered badly in implementing a faithful post Vatican II program and left a teaching vacuum in its wake. In the modern world with 24/7/365 media you don’t get the luxury of having a century to get your act together as in the past. It took far too long to produce a post Vatican II catechism. The bad actors exploited this post Council uncertainty to push their agenda.