In a 2017 interview, Vatican official Rodrigo Guerra López summarized the evangelical ideal behind Francis’s call for openness, dialog, listening, and accompaniment:
Francis … lives under the premise of having an elementary sympathy with all people, with all positions, with all ideas. Not because all ideas are equally valid or true, but because he always manages to discern the point of encounter.
There’s a lot to be said for that as an ideal. It’s reminiscent of the Apostle Paul’s “I have become all things to all men, that I might by all means save some” (1 Cor 9:22b). But it’s a bit hyperbolic. Paul didn’t become a murderer so he could appeal to murderers. Nor does Francis mean expressions like “todos, todos, todos” literally. For example, he would no doubt exclude those he calls “corrupt” from sympathetic outreach. These are people who are unreachable, because they think they have no need for God’s forgiveness. An example would be mafiosi, who organize crime as a systematic business, and view that with pride rather than remorse.
But there are further complications. Francis reaches out to people who enter into homosexual or adulterous partnerships, and so intentionally put sexual sin at the center of their lives. The apparent reason is that he considers it possible for such people—unlike mafiosi—to be subjectively well-intentioned: as he said, “Who am I to judge them if they’re seeking the Lord in good faith?”
The “point of encounter” he apparently discerns is practical affirmation of their way of life—admittance of divorced and remarried people to Holy Communion, blessings for same-sex partnerships through informal local option. (In contrast, Paul told the Corinthians they shouldn’t even eat with a man who partnered with his step-mother.)
Francis is less tolerant of other attachments he considers flawed. These include the attachment many Catholics feel to the Traditional Latin Mass. Papal biographer Austen Ivereigh has argued that Francis views such people as corrupt. They set themselves up above the liturgical reform and the Second Vatican Council, take pride in doing so, and through their sins of pride and party spirit close themselves off from correction.
That is a plausible explanation of how Francis views the matter. For all the talk of dialog, and the widespread concern within the Church about how the revision of the liturgy and other initiatives after the Council have actually worked out, Francis seems to view his vision for the Church—which he identifies with that of the Council—as God’s own. He tells us, for example, that his synodal project “is the journey that God wants from his church in the third millennium.”
But if what Francis says is simply what God wants, then opposing him becomes very much like the sin against the Holy Spirit. His faith in his goals thus turns to righteous outrage when people resist them. When the bishops failed to say what he wanted about the Latin Mass, their comments remained shrouded in obscurity. And when the Synod on the Family didn’t deliver as intended, he told the assembled Synod fathers that their deliberations had been carried on “not entirely in well-meaning ways,” and had
laid bare the closed hearts which frequently hide even behind the Church’s teachings or good intentions, in order to sit in the chair of Moses and judge, sometimes with superiority and superficiality, difficult cases and wounded families.
Many other people—anti-vaxers, conservative American Catholics, the many clergy he doesn’t like—have also been subjected to insult rather than dialog. Francis may well believe that they too are beyond reason.
So what do we make of this?
Trying to find common ground in cases of disagreement certainly seems a good idea. And most of us have found that there are some people you just can’t talk with on certain issues. But application of these principles should be guided by a solid understanding of ultimate goals, and of our own fallibility. Otherwise they could lead us to ignore as unreasonable people who object to our projects while forming opportunistic alliances with those who accept them.
And here Francis is disquieting. To judge by his most favored project, the “open” but managed Synod on Synodality, he seems to be promoting a Church that slights traditional concerns in favor of this-worldly political causes, and he seems to put that goal and his way of promoting it beyond question.
Commentators have noted that the Synthesis Report on the Synod’s first session gave progressives few concrete victories. On the other hand, the abundant language about outreach, inclusion, and nonjudgmental accompaniment, and about overcoming informal and institutional barriers, encourages the progressive strategy of depriving doctrines and disciplines they don’t like of effect, so they become “ideas” rather than “realities” and drop out of sight.
Also, Francis tells us that “time is greater than space”—the process is more important than the current position. The Report is full of calls for further reflection and discussion on disputed issues that would include a very broad range of participants, including social scientists and non-Catholics. That process is no doubt already being organized.
And particular issues are less important than what the document says about Catholicism and the Church in general. It’s pervaded by a this-worldly spirit that as a practical matter divorces them from transcendent realities and reduces them to the projects of those with institutional power. As the Synthesis Report puts it, “the Church ‘is’ mission.” It seems, then, that she can be identified wholly with the things she—practically speaking, those in charge—determines her members should be doing with respect to the world at large.
Synodality, “a mode of being Church that integrates communion, mission and participation,” is said to involve a process of mutual listening involving the whole Church, and even those outside of her, carried on by selected representatives and guided by appropriately-qualified facilitators. The open-ended nature of the process aligns with papal insistence on downplaying settled standards and formulations, and suppressing symbols of transcendence and timelessness like the Traditional Latin Mass.
The process is to take into account all experiences and concerns, especially those of the poor and marginalized, regarding the needs of the Church, her members, and the world. But, from how the process is managed, it appears that the outcome is not going to be left to chance. And from what’s said in the Report, it’s evident that the needs in question have to do with social issues such as peace, poverty, racism, sexism, migration, climate change, and the problems of people outside traditional family relationships.
Nothing is said about the knowledge and love of God, except as implicit in promoting human well-being in this world. And the reverent attention devoted during the Synod to the “Pact of the Catacombs” confirms that the needs with which the Synod concerns itself are to met symbolically by gestures of solidarity, but practically through state action on a global scale leading to a new social order.
Concern for non-bureaucratic social arrangements that allow ordinary people to lead productive and rewarding lives in community with others is almost entirely absent. That absence corresponds to papal and progressive lack of concern for social standards, like ordinary sexual morality, that support stable and functional families and communities. They evidently view such things as personal matters of little public interest.
Francis says God wants synodality. His supporters tell us that to distrust it is to lack faith in the Holy Spirit. And the Synthesis Report says that it “provides a sure criterion for determining whether a particular doctrine or practice belongs to the Apostolic faith.”
Even so, is any of this a good idea? Downplaying supernatural faith and natural social bonds in favor of technocratic global utopia seems a bad idea to me. If that’s what the Church is about, who needs the Church? It’s hard to imagine anyone, apart from activists who want to change Church teaching, ecclesiastical bureaucrats who like going to meetings and issuing pronouncements, and hierarchs who want to give projects that harness the Church in support of their political goals the appearance of broad popular support, who would take an interest in a Church reconfigured in accordance with the Report.
But if that’s so, how is this version of synodality a source of hope for the future?
(Editor’s note: The quotation from St. Paul has been edited for accuracy.)
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You can’t have abortion purveyors (or homosexualists or Modernists) leading parishes and apostolates and youths and marriages. Understanding this is not a “synodalist” issue or question and coming against it is not “assuming the chair of Moses to be judgmentalist over difficult cases and families”.
Don’t be ridiculous.
Creating scandal over refusal to correct it is sin and inversion. It has to be corrected and displaced and the way of the Church in this is to do it without delay and without fanfare.
We read: “that [Francis’] synodal project ‘is the journey that God wants from his church in the third millennium’,” and then, “what are we to make of this?” Another lens, some quotes, a comment, and a question:
ANOTHER LENS: Perhaps viewing Francis through the lens of controversies over the Council (the Documents versus the “spirit of the Council”) is to miss the deeper current now in play?
Instead, not literally, but does Pope Francis view himself as the reincarnation of St. Francis of Assisi, and as the apostle of the three ages of the world under the like-minded Joachim of Flora: the OT age of the Father, the NT age of the Son, and then the age of the Holy Spirit (second millennium, and now synodal)?
How much are our “signs of the times” like the confused and turbulent world of 13th-century St. Francis, a world of ideologies (heretics), city-states (now nation-states), the concrete common people—and even the perceived rigidity of the scholastic/Thomistic scholars in Paris (“backwardists”)?
QUOTES: Writes historian Heer (“The Intellectual History of Europe,” 1953):
…as a “movement from below [….] the Franciscan spirit was to fling itself against Thomist authoritarian thought for five centuries.” Then, “What Francis produced was a new people of God [!], a people of poor brethren with a father [in Heaven] chosen by him in defiance of all the dominating fathers of the old world [today, academics and rigid bigots?].” In the 13th century, “Pope Innocent III was in a position to spread the mantle of his protection over Francis [….].” The Franciscan order was absorbed into, and breathed new life into the Church [….] And then, “…Francis was made into the spearhead of the ‘third Kingdom’ [of Joachim] of the Holy Spirit. An intermingling of Jaochimite enthusiasm and historicism [“time is greater than space”?] with the radicalism of the Franciscan Spirituals took place [….]”
A COMMENT: Any parallel between today’s synodal assembly and the many currents of the 13th century can be easily overdrawn, but the defense of the commoners now from “ideological colonization” (and seemingly at all costs to the Church?) invites a broader perspective than our myopic, post-Vatican II polemics. Not Hans Kung and his camp followers, but Joachim of Flora! In 1241 an abbot of this Order even sought political refuge in the Franciscan House of the Friars Minor in Pisa—from which was harmonized a roundtable (?) “synthesis”(!) of Joachim’s salvaged writings with Franciscanism!
QUESTION: Today, given the dialogical/synodal roundtables, and then given the superiority of an expert “synthesis” over broader and alternative perspectives (limited to three-minutes at the mic!), what then of the perennial Catholic Church—charismatic, yes, but first a unity because also institutional, and first “apostolic” because “sent” by Christ?
But, but, but CLIMATE CHANGE! and,and……
Superb and bullseye perspective. I would have paid attention to the SoS if it had been about how to get all Catholics to believe in the Eucharist or how to get the non churchgoers back to Mass. But,but, WHOOPIE GOLDBERG!?!
“How is this version of synodality a source of hope for the future?” It’s not. Synodaling is a sham claiming the Holy Spirit against Sacred Scripture, Sacred Tradition and previous faithful pontificates. Synodaling is an abuse of papal authority to promote secular power and politics over authentic Synods of Bishops. Synodaling seeks to minimize magisterial teaching to tolerate popular pastoral heresies. Etc. The fake fad of Synodaling shall pass. Stay Catholic.
Bullseye, God’s Fool.
As always excellent comments. The reality that the Church is the Mystical Body of Christ, whose purpose is the salvation of souls is completely ignored. So, logically the conclusion will be, ‘who needs a Church.’ My guess will be that this Sydodal process will collapse of its own weight.
We can always hope!
As always excellent comments.
As our Lord said, it all comes down to the fruit we produce. Examine PF’s fruits carefully and draw your own conclusions. PF doesn’t dialog, listen or show impartiality except to the perverts, misfits and social malcontents who have neither the understanding of nor inclination toward conversion and repentance. Rather, PF displays nothing but intense prejudice against all within Holy Mother Church that came before him.
As was said about every leader cut from the mold from whence he came, “No matter how hard you may try, you cannot polish a turd”.
Ditto, Paul.
Paul didn’t become a murderer so he could appeal to murderers (James Kalb). The truth of the matter couldn’t be put more succinctly.
“Synodality provides a sure criterion for determining whether a particular doctrine or practice belongs to the Apostolic faith” (His Holiness words interpreted by Kalb and an excerpt from the Synthesis Report). Whereas there’s no confirmation in Church history that identifies an infallible mechanism other than the limited formal pronouncement of a Roman pontiff to the universal Church. The attempt to transform the Church from the ordination of a hierarchal structure instituted by Christ to a public discussion forum, the Synod on Synodality concept cannot be reconciled with what Christ revealed.
Kalb’s articulation of the drawbacks of Synodal ecclesiology is quite complete as are the objections by Elias Galy and Peter Beaulieu. “Nothing is said about the knowledge and love of God” [Kalb], the rest, how to address our physical well being in the world. Is there any difference in this vision from that of Karl Marx?
Bracketing Cannondale’s smart and holy person requirement for advice, I will offer this advice to the faithful.
What’s occurring is indeed an anomaly for the faithful for the very reasons so well listed by Frank Cannondale. Yes. Bishop Strickland and Cardinal Burke are victims for speaking out, which is their duty as soldiers of Christ. What’s occurring placed in context of the anomaly 4, How can this happen for reasons given can only happen with allowance of God, who instituted the Deposit of Faith through his Son. It is being permitted. The why question answer is found in the increasing infidelity of the faithful, the major sins abortion of innocent life made in God’s image, the homosexual perversion of man and woman made in God’s own image, and the desecration of the Real presence of the Eucharist received by apostates and sinners.
This was essentially foretold in sacred scripture, and the prophetic writings of the Apostles and saints. Our duty as clergy is to speak out honestly, fearlessly, and pointedly as Cannondale suggests. Insofar as laity that obligation is best expressed in commentary, personal dialogue, and personal witness or in instances of the more credentialed by their persistent writings, lectures, for example those of Joseph Siefert, Roberto de Mattei and others.
Finally, prayer, sacrifice in reparation by all in expectation of some form of divine intervention, if not, gratefully, a new leader, then severe chastisement.
Some things, Cannondale, aren’t easily explained, this a complex theological question as to why God would permit so grave a sense of abandonment. As such it reflects the punishments of ancient Israel for their infidelity.
In our instance it’s a form of collective punishment, each of us guilty for our digression not only from faith, but coldness of heart. It’s a test of whatever love, or faith we possess. Those faithful who have been lukewarm after receiving so many gifts are given the seemingly enticing option of following a path that permits license, as is suggested during this particular pontificate on a scale that hasn’t ever occurred since Christ came to us.
The hard, narrow road has become more difficult not due to increased hardship, rather the lack of willingness to suffer hardship. Only those prepared to make the effort will triumph with Christ, as he literally is separating the chaff from the wheat. While we possess the faith fan the embers until the flame strengthens our will, and we not only endure but attain our final victory with Christ.
HEROES NEEDED. COWARDS NEED NOT APPLY
1. Who can deny that the papacy and its connected Vatican institutions have ceased to function to protect and promote the Holy Doctrine of the Catholic Faith and the life of holiness based on that Faith, but now actually operate to corrupt and undermine the Faith and holiness?
2. After all, sodomy, a sin that cries to heaven, is now being blessed in the Church with the explicit approval and endorsement of the sitting pope.
3. The papacy ceasing to play its protective role, and coming to play a corrupting role, isn’t THAT issue that theologians, pastoral leaders, and Catholic magazines need to address?
4. Doesn’t someone need to explain how this could be happening (in light of Catholic doctrines that seem to assert that the papacy can always be relied upon by lay Catholics for sound guidance)?
5. Doesn’t some smart and holy person or group of persons need to advise us on what to do in this situation?
6. Yes, it is easy to do nothing, and act like it’s “business as usual,” since most of our fellow lay Catholics have no idea about what’s going on.
7. But we know, don’t we? We know that the car is heading for the edge of the cliff (metaphorically speaking), so don’t we have a special responsibility to say something to try to guide the car to safety and to the path of life?
8. Yes, speaking out effectively and directly is risky. Look what happened to the faithful shepherds Bishop Strickland and Cardinal Burke. But aren’t they the heroes who are vindicated in realm of the perfect, everlasting, divine government of Heaven?
James. I too am a convert(of over40 years) and I came into the Church because I came to believe it was the true Church and only it could truly interpret Scripture and truth. I came in spite of the foolish clown masses and hare brained teaching and practices that I observed at the time . Over time I have seen the American Church return to sanity. Nothing in life is static; there’s an ever changing left to right movement in everything-the Church included. We see the present drift to the left, but a turn in the other direction is sure to follow in time. Perhaps Francis’ harsh reaction to the extreme right is a signal that the tide is being pulled the other way now and that the next pontificate will be more moderate. What we are seeing at the present is an overreaction on the part of the Pope to try to correct or eliminate a perceived threat by a very few ultra conservative bloggers who pretend to represent a large number of very committed Catholics. These people are proud, judgmental, divisive, arrogant and truly a threat to the Church and need to be put in place. If they think they ARE the Church., they should separate , elect their own Pope and go their own way. The Pope is only a man and reacts the same as we probably would in his position if we were from his background. Yes, he probably did botch things up badly, but that does not mean that there wasn’t a problem that needed to be addressed. Let’s be charitable and patient and prayerful. God bless.
L
Jesus Christ is the Head of my Church, not the Pope.
And please stop the highly charged words favored by Progressives: “extreme right”; “ultra conservative bloggers”. There is Truth and that’s found only with Jesus Christ. All you need to discern is whether comments made regarding almost everything are true or not true. Those are the only labels needed, thank you.
Mr. Connor, are we to conclude that the Pope cannot handle or abide criticism from “a very few ultra conservative bloggers?” Is he that petty? By your argument, apparently so. You are more charitable than I and God bless you for it. Francis is a tyrant who attacks his perceived enemies without measure. I, a sinner, pray for him and for the Body of Christ.
Nailed it👍
Synodality= the meeting-by-meeting destruction of the True Catholic Church by progressively inventing a sodomy-centered cult identical to the one already in the world right now, with adoration, blind obedience and worship of the Pope and the total exclusion of Jesus-God. Let’s all choose Jesus-God and any sacrifice that choice comes with, for God’s absolute glory, in time and in eternity. Sodomy is the absolute enemy of eternity and eternity is the absolute enemy of sodomy. Let’s choose eternity with God, in this life and the next!!
I for one had to go confession and confess my sin of judging pope Francis. I know that we are to hate the sin, but love the sinner, of which the pope has truly acknowledged himself to be. No priest that I know of wants to “go to hell”; after all didn’t they become a priest with the intention of saving souls? It is true the the popes brother bishops have the responsibility of correcting his errors in pronouncements. Let we the faithful pray that they will take up their cross and do the right thing.
You misquoted Paul. He said “I become all things to all men that I might save SOME”. Paul knew not all would be saved because he knew not all do God’s will. Not every position is true.
Thank you, Deacon Woods. The quote from 1 Corinthians has been corrected.
The Douay-Rheims, which I used, says “all” after the Vulgate “Omnibus omnia factus sum, ut omnes facerem salvos.” (The Nova Vulgata updates that to “aliquos,” “some.”)
Bishop Strickland has a newly-established YouTube channel. Check it out & subscribe. It’s an antidote to the wokism of this papacy.
God’s response to Adam & Eve’s original sin, the golden calf, the worship of baal by the Jewish people which ultimately resulted in their exile to Babylon, along with a plethora of like examples recorded in Sacred Scripture, each one of which illustrates how Almighty God reacts in those situations where He is rejected and abandoned by His people. The same is happening again to us today. We are experiencing God, yet again, ad nauseam, withdrawing from the people He loves so that we can experience precisely what life on earth is like without Him.
Unfortunately, God, in His wisdom, also withdraws His protection. Hence, we experience ever worsening terrors and injustices as we continue to replace God, this time with ourselves.
The point here is simply that God also withdraws in the same way from His Church. The adage that in a democracy, the people get the government they deserve, also applies to our beloved Catholic Church. By means of our collective lukewarmness, infidelity and worldliness, we, likewise, get the pope and prelates we deserve.
1. That interpretation of recent Church history certainly makes sense in terms of the history of the Hebrew people as recorded in the Old Testament.
2. Yet, that interpretation seems to be ruled out by Catholic doctrines that, as I understand them, say that the Catholic people can always rely on the pope as a sure guide to the purity of the Doctrine of the Faith and sure guide to the purity of holy living.
#2 is not correct, as presented; it is far, far too broad. Popes can (and do) have flawed or even incorrect opinions and they certainly can sin. To borrow from Mark Brumley:
1. None of the 16 documents of the Second Vatican Council contains a single definitive act of a proclamation of a doctrine pertaining to faith or morals.
2. And yet we are told by the popes and bishops that we absolutely must accept and celebrate all of the new doctrines of the Vatican Ii Council.
3. For example, when Vatican II documents contradict earlier papal encyclicals, such as Pope Pius xi’s 1928 encyclical “Mortalium Animos” which said that the Church’s doctrine forbade any participation in the Ecumenism Movement that was then gaining popularity with schismatic sects, we are told that we must accept the new doctrines of the Vatican II Council and reject earlier teachings, or we must force a magical “hermeneutic of continuity” onto the matter so that we can say that we see a continuity that we really can’t see as being there (and which no one has convincingly shown as really being there).
4. The point is this: The life and doctrine of the Church has been profoundly altered (and will most likely continue to be profoundly altered along these same lines) without any pope ever proclaiming as a definitive act a doctrine pertaining to faith or morals.
5. This revolutionary change happened with several of the 16 documents of Vatican II.
6. And this revolutionary change in doctrine happened again with Pope Francis’ answer to the dubia of Cardinal Burke (and several other bishops) regarding Church blessing ceremonies for people in homosexual marriages.
7. Right now the Church’s practical day-to-day teachings HAVE BEEN ALTERED to say that sodomy is not always or generally an intrinsic evil (a “sin that cries to Heaven for vengeance”), but can be and often is a blessed act that deserves recognition by the Church as a blessed act.
7. That doctrinal change HAS OCCURRED, and every priest and lay member has seen it happen with their own eyes.
8. Everyone saw Bishop Strickland and Cardinal Burke get severely publicly punished for rejecting that doctrinal change, and priests and laity will all be afraid to publicly oppose the new doctrine less they get a similar punishment imposed on them.
9. I think there is a way out of his revolutionary period that has been going on for 60 years now: It is if there arises a movement among theologians, laity, priests, and bishops that flatly refuses to accept the use by popes and bishops of the trickster sleight-of-hand tactic of “pastoral but not doctrinal.” We must make our “No!” (in theological terms, our non-reception of these new doctrines) loud and clear. Like the faithful Catholics who were temporarily outnumbered when the heresy of Arianism swept through the Church with the support of popes and emperors, I think perhaps we must not go to mass at parishes where these new doctrines are taught. We must stand on the ground of Truth and Christ.
10. But I’m pretty sure such a “No!” movement will never catch on. Everyone is too complacent, too cowed by the pope and his allied bishops.
11. So, maybe someone will come up with some better plan that will catch on and help fix things. I hope so. We need help! God save us!
About your point #9: In Veritatis Splendor (1993), Pope St. John Paul II saw this coming, the “trickster sleight of hand tactic of ‘pastoral but not doctrinal’.” Analogous with the providential way that St. Athansius’s “Incarnation” was written a few years prior to the Council of Nicaea, and then was available to recall what had been believed from the beginning—in contrast with the novelty proposed by Arius. And, today, in contrast with any possible proposal to portray Nicaea more and as act of consensual inclusion than as a definitive act of memory and exclusion (of Arianism).
Three selections from Veritatis Splendor, to the point that (1) moral absolutes do exist, that (2) pastoral does not eclipse moral doctrine, and that (3) this clarity is now explicitly part of the Church’s Magisterium:
FIRST, “The relationship between faith and morality shines forth with all its brilliance in the unconditional respect due to the insistent demands of the personal dignity of every man [italics], demands protected by those moral norms which prohibit without exception [!] actions which are intrinsically evil” [!] (n. 90).
SECOND, “A separation, or even an opposition [!], is thus established in some cases between the teaching of the precept, which is valid and general, and the norm of the individual conscience, which would in fact make the final decision [no longer a ‘moral judgment’!] about what is good and what is evil. On this basis, an attempt is made to legitimize so-called ‘pastoral’ solutions [!] contrary to the teaching of the Magisterium, and to justify a ‘creative’ hermeneutic according to which the moral conscience is in no way obliged, in every case, by a particular negative precept [‘thou shalt not…!’]” (n. 56).
THIRD, “This is the first time, in fact, that the Magisterium of the Church [!] has set forth in detail the fundamental elements of this [‘moral’] teaching, and presented the principles for the pastoral discernment necessary in practical and cultural situations which are complex and even crucial” (n. 115). “The Church is no way [!] the author or the arbiter of this [‘moral’] norm” (n. 95).
MOREOVER, and offsetting various conciliar textual ambiguities, the Second Vatican Council does repeat (does not pretend to amend or even abrogate) the natural law: “…the Council wishes to recall first of all the permanent binding force of universal natural law and its all-embracing principles. Man’s conscience itself gives ever more emphatic voice to these principles” (Gaudium et Spes, n. 79).
Lumen Gentium and Dei Verbum are both dogmatic constitutions [the only dogmatic constitutions among the documents of Vat II] which contain definitive teachings that we’re required to adhere to.
It appears the bishop of Rome seeks Caesar’s approval and friendship much too often.
I could be wrong.