Vatican City, Oct 5, 2023 / 12:50 pm (CNA).
More than 400 people gathered at the Vatican on Wednesday to officially begin the Synod on Synodality.
During the first full day of work Oct. 5, participants met in small groups of about 12 people to discuss the first part of the Instrumentum Laboris, a document that will guide discussions over the nearly monthlong assembly.
The first section, which will form the basis of synod discussions Oct. 4–7, is titled “For a Synodal Church: An Integral Experience” and has two subpoints: “The characteristic signs of a synodal Church” and “A way forward for the synodal Church: conversation in the Spirit.”
According to Cristiane Murray, the vice director of the Holy See Press Office, synod members were given “a kind of task of answering” several reflection questions based on these themes on Oct. 4.
The president of the information commission for the synod, who is also the head of Vatican communications, Paolo Ruffini, said participants “were asked to pray with these [questions] yesterday evening, night, this morning before speaking at the synod.”
The main question for discernment was: “Starting from the journey of the local Churches to which we each belong and from the contents of the Instrumentum Laboris, which distinctive signs of a synodal Church emerge with greater clarity and which deserve greater recognition or should be particularly highlighted or deepened?”
The following questions were listed as “suggestions for prayer and preparatory reflection”:
1) Reflecting on how the synod course unfolded in the Church where I come from, what is the prevailing spiritual tone that characterizes it? What emotions and feelings did it arouse in those who took part? What desires did it arouse in the Christian community? What concerns emerged?
2) How can we grow in a synodal style of liturgical celebration, which highlights the distinctive contribution of all participants, starting from the variety of vocations, charisms, and ministries they bear?
3) In my local Church, how have we used and adapted the method of conversation in the Spirit? What are the main fruits it has enabled us to reap? How can it continue to help us grow as a missionary synodal Church?
4) What have we learned about listening as a characteristic of a synodal Church? What resources have we discovered we possess in this regard? Where do we perceive shortcomings? What do we need to address them? How can the ability to listen become an increasingly recognized and recognizable feature of our communities?
5) “A synodal Church promotes the passage from ‘I’ to ‘we’” (IL, No. 25). How has the synodal process promoted the cohesion of the local Church where I come from? How has it helped us to experience “the spiritual savor of being a people” (cf. Evangelii Gaudium, Nos. 268–274)? How do we feel we can grow in this dimension?
6) Did we meet with members of other Churches or ecclesial communities during the synod journey? Did we meet with believers from other religions? What was the spiritual tone of these meetings? What did we learn in order to grow in our desire and ability to walk together with them?
7) In my local Church, which tensions have emerged most strongly? How did we try to manage them so they did not become explosive? How do we evaluate this experience? What have we learned from this to help us grow in the ability to manage tensions without being crushed by them, which is proper to a synodal Church?
8) What experiences of discernment in common have we had in my local Church context? What have they enabled us to discover? In what direction do we need to continue growing?
After a day off on Sunday, Oct. 8, the Synod on Synodality will reconvene Oct. 9–12 to discuss the first question under section “B” of the Instrumentum Laboris: “A communion that radiates: How can we be more fully a sign and instrument of union with God and of the unity of all humanity?”
Section B is on “Communion, participation, mission: Three priority issues for the synodal Church.”
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When did Jesus stop becoming the Lamb of God, He who takes away the sins of the world . . . and become a psychologist? Obviously, I missed it.
It’s pretty pitiful isn’t it Mark?
Synodial corporate speak.
My heart mourns for what has become of the Church since the Modernists revolution. About two years ago I happened upon the life of Sr. Marie de St. Pierre. I would recommend reading about her life and her visions of Jesus – it was highly enlightening regarding the “chastisement of revolutionary men”. God bless you!
Thank you so much Mark. May God bless you also.
I’ve read about Sr. Marie & we actually had a priest come for a Lenten Mission this year to talk about devotion to the Holy Face & encourage us to not blaspheme or misuse God’s name. Father talked about making our Sundays real days of rest, too & refraining from unnecessary work & doing business.
And this follows the model by which Christ founded His Church?
Four hundred people of diverse faith backgrounds (or none) reflecting on these questions is intended to promote a relationship with Christ as Redeemer?
This all seems like a recrudescence of the Tavistock craze of the Sixties. I wouldn’t be surprised that at some point participants aren’t blindfolded and asked to fall backwards into the arms of the group as an experience in trust.
Who’s paying for this exercise in self-indulgent reflection by 400 people? Close up shop, cut the losses, save hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars and give the money to the poor? I’m actually ashamed at my Church putting on such a display.
Vatican III?
The purpose of synodolatry is coming clear.
It is to turn our gaze from Jesus — who is almost never mentioned in its documents — to ourselves.
Feelings, growth, conversing in the spirit, ability to listen, walking together as we instead of I, learning to walk with other religions, discernment in common – all out of the Sixties spirituality that feels in unison rather than thinks.
What Synod organizers mimic are the methods used by Marxist ideologues to brainwash, to cleanse the mind of preconceptions, convictions, to become pliable to the spirit. Which spirit? Personally I have a repulsion to what and how is being promoted.
Key terms extracted from the 27,000 words of bubble-wrap in the Instrumentum Laboris: “tone, style, fruits [gay bashing?], listening [or the ‘listing’ barque of Peter?], savor, tone [again], tensions, context”!
And next week, something about “radiates.”
Good news, this! Yours truly recalls that in his “Witness to Hope,” George Weigel commented on the “radioactive” power of the “Theology of the Body” in the 21st Century. Surely, THIS is the radiation on the Synod’s scripted agenda for next week!
If only the intended and concrete “fabric” (a better term?) of the also “hierarchical-communion” Church–rooted in the breadth and depth of the Communion of Saints–could be advanced without synodally undermining–I mean underMINDing–the unity of the Faith with morals. Walking and chewing gum at the same time!
Butt, the pygmies-of-progressivism are at the helm, or the stern, or the port side, or wherever.
Those questions are tedious. They don’t really ask anything that matters or pertains to the Divine and Holy Faith.
If this Synod just publishes a bunch of goop I won’t mind at all. Since goop has no meaning and by definition cannot harm the faith.
Yikes. Those questions are nonsense.
I am attaching a Wikipedia entry on the topic of “Sensitivity Training Groups” that is straight out of the 60’s radical psychologizing movement and the Tavistock model I alluded to above. If this doesn’t describe the proceedings on Synodality, nothing does.
“The focus of the sensitivity training group was on here-and-now interactions among the group members, and on their group experience; and worked by following the energy of the emerging issues in the group, and dramatising them in verbal or non-verbal ways. An atmosphere of openness and honesty was encouraged throughout; and authenticity and self-actualization were prominent goals.”
# of times the following words are mentioned in in the questions:
God = 1 time
Jesus = 0
Christ = 0
synod and its variants = 17
And Will Bishop Barron be THE VOICE “crying out in the wilderness” of this stupendous and evil gathering of heresy? Will he call out the heresy that is being expressed in flowery terms, and make bold proclamations of our Lord Jesus Christ, especially Jesus’ first encyclical to mankind: “REPENT AND REFORM YOUR LIVES, FOR THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN IS AT HAND?” Will Bishop Barron be that voice crying out in this synods wilderness engulfed in Satan’s smoke? And then will he boldly proclaim to all the souls in attendance in this wilderness what St. Paul resolutely said in leaving Athens: “HENCEFORTH I WILL PREACH CHRIST CRUCIFIED? What say ye, Bishop Barron? I pray, and I say this with all humbleness and sincerity of heart, that you and other likeminded men at this stupid gathering, will follow the example of St. John the Baptist.
From the moment I heard of this Synod on Synodality, I was highly suspicious. Then as the Synod when from bishops to a highly selected, specific group of lay members, I lost any degree of confidence that this would bode well for the Church. There was no Christ crucified. No Savior that chose to bear the sins of the world. No acknowledgement of his mercy or his glorious resurrection. I listen to pope Francis speak and I become confused. Where is Tradition valued and acknowledged. He abandons Christ, focuses on the mundane, and chooses to criticize the west. It is almost as if he is a politician for some failed, backward Marxist state.
Every single word I have read or heard from the Synod and its promoters gives me PTSD from the touchy-feely psychobabble that was served up to us in my “catholic” high school in the 1970s. It was cringy, embarrassing and revolting back then, when doofus hipster Christian Brothers and Maryknoll priests in civvies chatted us up as we sat cross-legged in circles on the floor. It is even more so now, coming from aging, reactionary hippies and their coterie of young, malformed dissenters.
Yes, this reminds me of the “listening sessions” & non-directive psychotherapy from the 1970’s which wreaked havoc on religious orders.
I just don’t get it. A synod about what a synod means to you or your fellow synod goers? They are looking for a reason to justify their time away from working in the vineyard.
With all this reference to “Spirit”, I can’t believe they can be this frivolous and blasphemous in their treatment of the Holy Spirit, so I’m sure, in the interest to get things started in the spirit of conviviality, they must be talking about mandatory cocktail hours. Given the importance of the event, I’m sure the whiskey varieties are, at the very least, twleve year old, which should take us back to an era before this madness began.