The first session of the “Synod on Synodality,” currently meeting in Rome, is slated to be followed by a second such month-long affair in October 2024. Both aim to build a “Synodal Church of Communion, Participation, and Mission,” which is certainly a laudable goal. Two weeks into Synod-2023, however, it must be asked whether the Synod’s methodology is conducive to serious conversation characterized by the parrhesia – the frank speaking – so often recommended by Pope Francis.
The Catholic Church has held synods since 1967, two years after Paul VI created the Synod of Bishops. No one involved in these gatherings over the past half-century is likely to argue that a perfect method for making synods interesting, effective, and humanly bearable has ever been devised. Rhetoric can, and has, gotten out of control: one weary cardinal, asked after the first week of Synod-2001 whether everything had been said on the synod’s topic, replied. “Yes, everything has been said. But not everyone has said it.” Different methodologies – more open discussion in general assembly; more small-group discussions, openly structured; – have been tried. None has proven completely satisfactory.
However, what is particularly striking about Synod-2023 is how closely micro-managed its small-group discussions are. The synodal Instrumentum Laboris (Working Document) includes thirty-three single-spaced pages of “Worksheets” through which the small groups are to make their way, question-by-question, in precisely time-calibrated segments monitored by “facilitators” appointed by the Synod General Secretariat. Whether this method of discussion-management (or discussion-control) will prove an improvement over previous synodal methodologies remains to be seen; the odds seem long to me.
This raises the question of whether the discussion might be gingered up if the prescribed questions, which are largely focused on issues of intra-Church process as defined by the (secular) criterion of “inclusivity,” were complemented by dropping questions of a more substantive, Christian nature into the conversation. Happily, such a set of questions was suggested by Archbishop Joseph Naumann of Kansas City, Kansas, which I found in a statement by the International Catholic Jurists Forum published in the National Catholic Register. If I may paraphrase:
Does the call of Christ for repentance, with which the Lord began his public ministry (cf. Mark 1.15), necessarily create an ecclesial culture of “exclusion”?
How should we understand the Lord’s clear, countercultural, and challenging teaching on the permanence of marriage, or on the consequences of undisciplined appetites? Are these teachings alienating? Might they be liberating? And if liberating, what do they teach us about the true meaning of freedom?
Many followers left Jesus after he told them, “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you” (John 6:53). Given that abandonment, and the Lord’s follow-up question to those who remained (“Do you also wish to go away?” [John 6.57]), can we say that radical inclusivity was the Lord’s highest priority?
Why should Catholics be surprised or made uncomfortable when so many people in Western societies reject the Church’s moral teaching on the life issues, on the true expressions of human love, and on our created givenness as men and women? Does rejection of those teachings mean that they’re wrong? Those teachings are surely countercultural today; but doesn’t their rejection call us to more effective communication of the truths the Lord has given the Church?
What has drawn people to Christ and the Church over two millennia – an inclusivity that rendered the Church indistinguishable from the ambient culture and surrounding society, or a mode of life that, while countercultural, was manifestly more life-affirming and ennobling?
It is certainly true that “everyone is welcome in the Church,” as we hear so often today. But mustn’t that sentence be completed, such that it’s clear that everyone is welcome in the Church on Christ’s terms, not their own? In our work of evangelization, how do we communicate that with compassion, recognizing that we are a Church of sinners who often fall short of the mark – but who have no authority to change the mark?
These questions should prompt a synodal reflection on why John Paul II was such a powerful evangelical magnet for young people. It was not, I suggest, because he pandered to them. It was because he was transparently honest about the demands of the Gospel and challenged young adults – and the rest of us – never to forget that the grace of God makes spiritual and moral grandeur possible in our lives.
If the call to “inclusivity” means blunting the sharp edges of the Gospel, then that call is not a work of the Holy Spirit.
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A standing O for Mr. Weigel and Archbishop Naumann!
These concise, deft and beautifully pointed questions place Bergoglio’s machinations in the perfect context, exposing them as nothing more than attempts to accommodate the self-obsessed rationalizations that pass as wisdom in our degraded secular culture.
For anyone wondering whether and how the Holy Spirit might speak during this time of Synodolatry, I suggest that they read Mr. Weigel’s piece above.
George. Thank you l. You have hit the nail on the head. A true home run, walk off victory in the 9th inning of the final game of the World Series!!! 👍. 😂
Excellent,excellent points!! Don’t hold your breath for these questions to be asked at the “Synod” though.
We read: “How should we understand the Lord’s clear, countercultural, and challenging teaching on the permanence of marriage, or on the consequences of undisciplined appetites?” Somewhere in his “Witness to Hope,” Weigel proposes that in the 21st Century, the “Theology of the Body” will have a “radioactive power”…
So, WHAT IF the Synod bridged between some of the key and siloed “concerns” in the Instrumentum Laboris? (By “Synod” we mean more accurately: consultative “focus group”.) What if, for example, in various locales and perhaps globally, we as populations are overshooting some ecological niches, and possibly the elusive carrying capacity of spaceship earth—as argued/speculated in Laudato Si? And what if open-range recreational sex amputated from any child within, has something to do with this? On this unstated (!) “concern,” how would the Church promote the joined-at-the-hip doctrines of SOLIDARITY and SUBSIDIARITY? What about this “human ecology” as distinct from the interrelated and vulnerable “natural ecology” (our global amniotic sac)?
For the focus group to resolve such false “polarities” (Cardinal Fernandez)—and in openness to the Holy Spirit—what if the member SUCCESSORS OF THE APOSTLES (apostello: “sent”) fully rediscovered the compass of irreducible moral absolutes at all “levels”? The fruits of the Holy Spirit significantly require “chastity”….So, in a long-evaded response to the Sexual Revolution of the 1960s, these Successors again might call all to chastity, whether (a) binary/complementary and married and not celibate, whether (b) unmarried and therefore celibate, or equally (!) whether (c) unmarried and challenged by non/anti-binary predispositions. The Successors then might affirm Humanae Vitae/Veritatis Splendor, and the positive understanding of human sexuality offered in the companion “Theology of the Body.” They might not seem to treat NFP as an equivalent option akin to mechanical/chemical contraception, and, for the secular regime, even abortion.
When Pope Francis proclaims that “the Church must change,” is it in these forthright ways that the Papacy and the Successors might invite and “welcome”—truly? Truly, as in the sacramental bond of permanent marriage, as in the bonding Eucharistic Church—across the globe and all of human history, and even into the full Communion of Saints. The expansive intimacy of the Real Presence and, therefore, of our gifted and real BELONGING. This, rather than the post-modern LONELINESS that breeds consumerism, the porn culture, motel-room escapism, sex trafficking; and tribalism—including composite LGBTQ-ism with the radical redefinition of words and meanings, like “marriage” and “mercy,” and “husband” and “wife,” and even annexing the Church through “blessings.”
About SEPTIC MODERNITY and disintegrating despair, the current and past two popes all have honored Roman Guardini:
“Loneliness in faith will be terrible. Love will disappear from the face of the public world (Matthew xxiii, 12), but the more precious will that love be which flows from one lonely person to another, involving a courage of the heart born from the immediacy of the love of God as it was made known in Christ. Perhaps man will come to experience this love anew, to taste the sovereignty of its origin, to know its independence of the world, to sense the mystery of its final WHY? Perhaps love will achieve an intimacy and harmony never known to this day. Perhaps it will gain what lies hidden in the key words of the providential message of Jesus: that things are transformed for the man who makes God’s Will for His Kingdom his first concern (Matthew vi,33)” (“The End of the Modern World,” 1956).
Only more focus-group papers, possibly already drafted? OR the “radioactive power” of a NEW EVANGELIZATION? It is in our moral struggles where we truly discover our transcendent human dignity.
It’s not very often I agree with the author but this time, yes. The final line in the article is spot on and says it all.
The overeducated elites at the round tables should take note.
I get the feeling that Mr. Weigel knows that we are no longer under the protection and best interest of a Pope like JPII. He appears to be getting more and more disillusioned by the current “Qui noluerit sedere super sellam”.
Savoring these questions for a second time today. And they are quite decisive.
This is the finest — and, incidentally, maybe the shortest — commentary I’ve seen yet on the synod.
Exposes the entire enterprise as an attempt to deceive and subvert the Church of Christ Jesus.
Once again, CWR comports itself with distinction. Thank you.
I agree with you 100%. Thank you George Weigel for such a succinct and accurate line of questioning.
Better late than never. I’ve waited and waited for George Weigel to wake up to the hard core realities of this disastrous pontificate, although he still doesn’t refer to francis by name. Nonetheless, what a great moment it would be if one of the participants could deliver a speech as eloquent as this essay.
As we Catholics prefer to be respectful and reverent towards any Pontiff, that does not outlaw using our intelligence and common sense to discern the positively obvious. Pope Francis wants ordained deaconesses, to welcome lgbt as they are and is unconcerned about prolife. After all, deeds speak louder than words. He has once again raised the question of deaconesses when this issue was definitely treated and ended during the previous past two pontificates. Why now again and again? Not to mention the women he courts and grants meetings with: Mary McAleese, Whoopi Goldberg, Chelsea Clinton, Grammick, etc. All breathe women’s rights and are unhesitatingly proabortion. As for gays within the Church, he handled the abuse scandal pathetically, even blaming the clerical abuse scandal and McCarrick on Pope John Paul; he praises J.Martin, Gramick and embraces New Ways Ministry. He mocks the morality of ‘sins below the waist’, ignoring what those sins caused in the abuse of over 500 000 young people by gay priests. Not an issue for P.Francis. He merely publishede a mottu proprio warning ‘all’ clerics, as if there were no gay network in the clergy. He has appointed gay and pro gay bishops and cardinals galore so much so that one wonders if, in line with PF’s wish, the next pope be gay. It is clearly his plan. This synod is Pope Francis’ brainchild. He wants it for a clear purpose and we can see what he means by ‘change.’ Not to mention that he trashed Pope John Paul’s magnificent ‘Theology of Life’ college in Rome and replaced it with the homosexual Card Paglia as director. Do we really need to know more, to pretend to be stupid. Yes, the disastrous is taking place. That PF has publicly spoken against female deacons and gay marriage or blessing, the writing is on the wall. His actions, and there have been plenty more, have spoken loud and clear. We need not pretend it’s not so, nor that this Pope is not woke. He surely is. His priority given to climate change, trashing the Latin Mass, and taking away a prelature for Opus Dei, also support this. Throwing away great churchmen such as Cardinals Burke, Zen, Mueller,et al confirms this all the more. It is perfectly clear what Pope Francis is doing. He is implementing his agenda through the back door. After all, at the end of this synod of his, is he going to tell gays to repent.. they will raise hell. This is a macrocosm of the German Synod which he fails to shut down. So the cat is out of the bag, the horse has fled the barn. No need for us, in our reverence for the papal office, to pretend not to know what is going on. Whatever shall we say or do? , I’m not sure. Of course, we need to pray very hard, hope for the best, catechize our people much better, and be honest enough to loudly, boldy and respectfully raise our voices. We are all deeply offended and angry. We should be, since the PF agenda indeed changes the Church and Church teaching. This agenda makes the salvific mission of the Church meaningless, since in this agenda, sin is irrelevant or doesn’t exist or can just pass as ‘social sin. Indeed we are reliving the 60’s and 70’s , as has been noted, and Mr.Weigl has shown us that very well.
Weigel has improved in noting the reality of the crisis in recent articles, yet you, in your comments, more astutely identify the chief culprit in Francis, something Weigel has been too unwilling to do. Good job.
And as if the crisis within our Church isn’t damaging enough. Our inability to extinguish the fire is destroying our moral witness to the whole world and directly causing moral, physical, and spirtual death, for which all of us will have to give an accounting.
By making a farce of Catholic truth, this Synod makes a farce of Catholic witness around the world, and makes the Church complicit in the world’s crimes against humanity.