Douglas G. Bushman is well-known as past director of the Institute for Pastoral Theology at Ave Maria University and the University of Dallas, and for his courses on Ecclesiology, Catholic Spirituality, John Paul II, Vatican II, and Pastoral Theology. For eight years he held the St. John Paul II Chair of Theology for the New Evangelization at the Augustine Institute, during which time he developed a course on the Theology of the New Evangelization and completed the research contained in his recent book, The Theology of Renewal for His Church: The Logic of Vatican II’s Renewal In Paul VI’s Encyclical ‘Ecclesiam Suam’, and Its Reception In John Paul II and Benedict XVI (Wipf and Stock, 2024).
We corresponded recently about the book. Here is our conversation.
CWR: I’ve long appreciated the insight you bring to studying the Catholic Faith. What was the genesis of a book on a relatively obscure encyclical?
Bushman: Vatican II, as you well know, has been foundational for my teaching, which now spans five decades. Almost universally, direct contact with the Council’s texts, coupled with interpretation guided by the theological work of those who participated in the Council, has been the occasion for my students to see through the one-sided, tendentious, and exaggerated interpretations that distort the Council’s true teaching. Trusting in the maturity of their faith (sensus fidei), their encouragement to make much of that material more widely available really became something of call, a sense of responsibility to make available to others what they had found compelling.
A sense of urgency was added to this by interactions with numerous bishops, priests, and deacons during the Year of Faith, which began on October 11, 2012, the 50th anniversary of Vatican II. It was my privilege to give presentations on the Council to clergy in several dioceses. Many expressed gratitude for finally being able to see “the big picture” regarding Vatican II.
Many also asked: “Why are we hearing this for the first time only now?” That was when I decided to write this book. Obviously, my sense of urgency did not exactly coincide with the design of Providence! Other responsibilities delayed the completion of the project until it was finally published this year.
CWR: Why did you take Paul VI’s 1964 encyclical on the Church, Ecclesiam Suam, as the basis for this book?
Bushman: The short answer is that I discovered that this “relatively obscure encyclical” was like a “road-map” for the Council. That’s not my opinion; rather, it is the opinion of Pope St. John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI, and I wanted to address the nearly total neglect of Ecclesiam Suam in scholarly work on Vatican II.
In many ways, Paul VI and this encyclical were overshadowed both by the Council itself and by the aftermath of his encyclical, Humanae Vitae. I discovered that both Karol Wojtyła-John Paul II and Joseph Ratzinger-Benedict XVI took Ecclesiam Suam as a guide for understanding Vatican II as a doctrinally-based pastoral council. So, what the astoundingly prolific Matthew Levering called my “proposal to read Vatican II through the lens of Pope Paul VI’s Ecclesiam Suam” came from them. If, indeed, it can be called (again, Levering) “a breakthrough not only for the interpretation of Vatican II but also for insight into the particular mode and extraordinary power of Pope John Paul’s reception and implementation of Vatican II”—it is not that I have proposed a hypothesis of my own. Rather, my goal was to let these three popes of the Council speak for themselves.
CWR: What you just said seems valid for the first two parts of the book. The first part is an in-depth analysis of Ecclesiam Suam and the second examines its reception by and influence on John Paul II and Benedict XVI. But the third part does seem different; you are proposing something like a hypothesis.
Bushman: Fair enough. While the third part may seem like an hypothesis, I think of it more as an analysis of the “mind of the Christ and His Church, a “mind” evidenced in the paths set forth by Paul VI and the long-standing tradition of the Church.
In the third part, I propose that Paul VI’s encyclical and the standard three dimensions of programs of formation mutually enlighten one another. While I’m not arguing a “cause-effect” relationship between Ecclesiam Suam and later documents on formation/education, I am asking the reader to consider seriously the relationship between the two. This struck me as more than coincidental insofar as both bring to light an essential dynamism of revelation and of the Church’s faith and life. That correspondence looks like this:
Ecclesiam Suam: Awareness (doctrinal penetration); Programs of Formation: Intellectual or theological formation
Ecclesiam Suam: Renewal (metanoia); Programs of Formation: Spiritual formation
Ecclesiam Suam: Dialogue (ministry, apostolate); Programs of Formation: Pastoral formation
CWR: How are these three aspects or dimensions related?
Bushman: Paul VI clearly saw but never fully explained the logic that unifies the three paths of the Church, and thus his understanding of the renewal of Vatican II.
To answer your question, we have to see what the bishops at Vatican II saw and considered the main purpose for the Council. The Council’s main goal was to revitalize the Church’s mission. Many detractors of Vatican II like to think of the Church prior to the Council as stable, strong, and vigorous. By superficial measures, this is understandable, but such a reading of history must be set aside in the name of realism.
For example, in 1958, the young Joseph Ratzinger gave a lecture entitled “The New Pagans and the Church.” There was still a “Christian façade” to the Church’s public image, but for countless Catholics it was no longer faith that gave definitive meaning to their lives. There was less and less a distinction between the Church and the world. They had become secular in their ways of thinking, no longer living according to that “renewal of your minds” (Rom 12:2) that comes with faith in Christ. Thus, the lines between the world and the Church were no longer discernable.
What was needed, he said, was for the Church to rediscover her identity and mission: “Only when she ceases to be a cheap, foregone conclusion, only when she begins again to show herself as she really is, will she be able to reach the ear of the new pagans with her good news, since until now they have been subject to the illusion that they were not real pagans.”
Similarly, and fully eleven years earlier, in his pastoral letter for Lent, 1947, Cardinal Suhard, Archbishop of Paris, wrote that “Pagan society penetrates everywhere into the daily life of Christians.” France had become “a mission country.” In many respects, Catholics in France had lost their faith and needed to be re-evangelized.
CWR: How do the three dimensions of renewal—the three paths of the Church—promote the goal of revitalizing the Church’s mission of witness to Christ?
Bushman: Well, we have to ask ourselves: Who is qualified for this re-evangelization? Who can be entrusted with a ministry or apostolate in the name of Christ’s Church? The answer is: those who can say, with St. Paul: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Gal 2:20). Missionary disciples, as we refer to them, “have the mind of Christ” (2 Cor 2:16). They have undergone the conversion that St. Paul calls the “renewal of our mind” (Rom 12:2). They are filled with missionary zeal, eager to share with others the life in Christ that they have received.
Finally, we must ask: What is the catalyst for conversion? It is a conscience purified by the blood of Christ (Heb 9:14). Consciences are purified by revealed truth, by doctrine. When the truth of doctrine penetrates the conscience by faith, it bears the fruit of becoming a mandate to live in accordance with that doctrine. For Paul VI and Vatican II, the more clearly Catholics understand what Christ has revealed about His Church, the more they are impelled to live up to that doctrine.
Jesus said, “Everyone to whom much was given, of him much will be required, and from him to whom they entrusted much, they will demand the more” (Lk 12:48). Renewal through conversion begins with a deeper understanding of doctrine and its implications for life, and it bears the fruit of a new missionary zeal.
Along the way, I propose that this schema can be discovered in St. Luke’s account at the Annunciation. It begins with a new revelation to Mary. Through Gabriel’s words, she is enlightened and comes to understand her place in the fulfillment of God’s plan. The first effect this has on her is the realization that her vocation is beyond her. It seems impossible to her (which is why Gabriel reassures her, “nothing will be impossible with God” – Lk 1:37). Mary knows she must be renewed for her new mission, that she needs a new grace. We know that this renewal was effected by the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit. From the moment of Christ’s conception, then, Mary is the handmaid of His mission.
At the time of Vatican II, the Church experienced a renewal of the grace of Annunciation. Like Mary, in face of a mission that seemed too great, the Church imitated Mary by humbly asking, “How shall this be?” “How can the Church effectively bear witness to Christ in a post-Christendom world? The answer lay in divine revelation. Imitating Mary yet again, the Church pondered all the revealed truth that she had stored up on her memory. She experienced a doctrinal penetration that put new demands on her, and she engaged in a profound renewal through conversion (metanoia). St. John Paul II called the fruit of the conciliar renewal the New Evangelization.
This is what I intend to convey through the phrase, “the logic of renewal.”
CWR: If I am not mistaken, Ecclesiam Suam is best known for what it says about dialogue. If that is correct, is your main focus, then, on dialogue?
Bushman: You are not mistaken. Virtually universally, when people think about Ecclesiam Suam, they think almost exclusively of dialogue. This includes theologians, and many who participated in Vatican II. But that is precisely the problem. “Dialogue” is the subject of Ecclesiam Suam’s third section. The correct understanding of dialogue requires seeing how it relates to the prior two sections. Pope Paul says that there are three paths that the Church must follow. He names them: Awareness, Renewal, and Dialogue.
The order is highly significant. Renewal must be based on the doctrine of Christ’s apostolic Church. So, the first path is a deeper awareness or consciousness of that doctrine. John XXIII called it “doctrinal penetration.” The focus of Vatican II was especially on what God has revealed about the Church. For those who love the Church with the very love of Christ Himself, “who gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her” (Eph 5:25–26), a deeper understanding of the Church cannot fail to produce what Paul VI describes as “the unselfish and almost impatient need for renewal, for correction of the defects which this conscience denounces and rejects, as if, standing before a mirror, we were to examine interiorly the Image of Christ which He has left us.”
This renewal concerns, first and foremost, “correcting the defects of its own members and of leading them to greater perfection.” This is why both Paul VI and John Paul II told us that the Council’s teaching on the universal call to holiness is the main focus of the Council and thus the primary way to implement the Council, is “the most characteristic element in the whole Magisterium of the Council, and so to say, its ultimate purpose … This call to holiness is precisely the basic charge entrusted to all the sons and daughters of the Church by a Council which intended to bring a renewal of Christian life based on the Gospel.” Of course, the only way to greater holiness is the path of conversion. This is the second path, which Paul VI does not hesitate to call metanoia.
Thus, the third path of dialogue is the fruit of this conversion. Dialogue is the form that the Church’s missionary activities must take because dialogue is the way that God revealed Himself. This in itself is highly significant, since many well-catechized Catholics who live and love their faith have concluded that “dialogue” is something that is antithetical to the propagation of faith. I find this easy to understand, since their experience of what many have said about dialogue and of how it has been practiced has been nothing short of scandalous. But this only shows that it is necessary to distinguish between what Paul VI and the Council actually taught and the unenlightened ways that many understood it and acted on it. The same can be said about the liturgical reforms of Vatican II.
The main point is that the third path of missionary witness to Christ presupposes the prior two paths of doctrinal penetration and personal conversion. Holy men and women, who have suffered through the many conversions to put whatever is sinful in themselves to death, are best able to respond to the promptings of the Holy Spirit and to proclaim the mystery of Christ through their lives and their words. It is precisely the suffering of deep conversion, that interior violence that is necessary in order to take the kingdom of heaven by force (Matt 11:12), that creates an authentic sense of the faith (sensus fidei) and authenticates a holy love for the Church and thinking with the Church. For men and women of such mature faith, the Eucharist is the source and summit of the Church’s life, not just as a slogan but in fact. Nor can they be fooled into thinking that any program of renewal that does not entail a deepening of baptismal death-to-self has any chance of contributing to the renewal of the Church and revitalization of the Church’s mission through personal testimony of life and words.
CWR: Will readers with devotion to St. John Paul II and Benedict XVI find familiar material in the second part of the book, which shows the influence of Ecclesiam Suam on them?
Bushman: I would certainly expect that. But I think they will also get to know these two popes better. Both popes develop several themes of Vatican II that are better understood in light of Ecclesiam Suam.
For example, the logic of the three dimensions of renewal can also be expressed as “fidelity to God and fidelity to man,” which incisively conveys how the Council must be understood in light of its goal: that holy men and women more and more take on the attitude of Christ Himself, when He said that He came not to be served but to serve (Matt 20:28). It takes great maturity in faith, great holiness, to be ready to serve others by testimony to revealed truth, even if this should entail rejection, persecution, suffering, and death. The Council was not naïve about this. In its chapter on the universal call to holiness in the Church, it taught that “all must be prepared to confess Christ before men. They must be prepared to make this profession of faith even in the midst of persecutions, which will never be lacking to the Church, in following the way of the cross” (Lumen gentium, 42).
In light of this, we can recapitulate: The chief sign of the times that preoccupied the bishops at Vatican II was the increasing encroachment of secularism into the lives of the faithful. Their faith was not strong enough to resist the fantasy that there is no opposition between faith and various worldly values of an increasingly Godless culture. The bishops at Vatican II understood that the only effective defense against this encroachment would be a mature and committed (or, as we say today, intentional) faith, which not only repudiates secularism but also bears witness to the fully human life of the beatitudes.
And, the more mature faith becomes, the more zeal for souls becomes the driving force. Put simply, the more the Church’s members are Christ-centered, the holier they are, the more they are solicitous for the salvation of others. It turns out that the best defense is a good offense!
CWR: Given all the emphasis on synodality these days, I wonder: did your research uncover anything on synodality? Where does synodality fit into the logic of renewal?
Bushman: Some theologians maintain that Pope Francis has ushered in a new phase in the reception of Vatican II. The Council did not use the term “synodality,” but it did convey the essentials of the notion by emphasizing that all the Church’s members are united in a communion of participation in and co-responsibility for the Church’s life and mission. The Council envisioned several institutions to serve this end, especially the synod of bishops, regional episcopal conferences, the diocesan presbyteral council, and the diocesan and parish pastoral councils. The documents issued under Pope Francis define synodality in terms of communion and mission, and differentiated participation and co-responsibility.
Since there is an obvious effort to enlist the Council for support of synodality, I think that the logic of renewal has much to offer an authentic theology of synodality. Synodality aligns with the third path of renewal, that is mission. Synods are meetings ordered to a communal reading of the signs of the times and discernment about how best to promote the Church’s mission. Thus, on the part of those who participate in them, they presuppose both doctrinal formation and personal conversion, or holiness.
The emphasis on everyone participating, without any kind of condition regarding maturity of faith and commitment to evangelical holiness through conversion, is unrealistic. This is what happens when synodality is virtually equated with the Church herself. Everyone who seeks faith and its development is welcome in the Church, but the same criteria that canon law stipulates for membership to pastoral councils should be also be enforce for participation in synodal events.
CWR: Any final thoughts?
Bushman: Those who were blessed with a deepening of faith during the pontificate of St. John Paul II might have a special interest in this book. It might be considered a prolegomenon to his New Evangelization. Many people who are familiar with the term and concept of New Evangelization do not realize that it began with Vatican II. Essentially, the New Evangelization is the fruit of the renewal of Vatican II.
In fact, many of St. John Paul II’s addresses and homilies exhibit the logic of renewal set forth in Ecclesiam Suam. Very often, John Paul would call upon his audience to remember their heritage of Christian faith and how it shaped their lives and their communities. That corresponds to doctrinal penetration, or awareness. Then, he would move into the present and challenge his audiences to examine whether they have been good stewards of the grace of faith. This corresponds to the examination of conscience that leads to personal renewal through conversion. Finally, he would look to the future and challenge the faithful to engage in bringing the Good News of God’s merciful love, fully revealed in Jesus Christ, to others through the witness of new life in Christ and words that explain it.
When you stop to think about it, this three-dimensional logic is inherent in the most central event of the Church’s life, the celebration of the Eucharist in Holy Mass. The Liturgy of the Word corresponds to doctrinal penetration and intellectual formation. This leads to the Liturgy of the Eucharist and the deepening of communion with Christ in faith, hope, and charity. The Eucharist is always God’s answer to our question, “How shall this be?” How shall we live up to what we have heard in the Liturgy of the Word? How shall the Church become vibrant again and fulfill her vocation to be light for the world? The answer is always the same: Deepen your communion with Christ in His paschal mystery, the source of all saving grace. The overshadowing and transformation of the Eucharistic bread and wine, and our transformation through Holy Communion, correspond to renewal through conversion, or metanoia, and spiritual formation. Finally comes the liturgical dismissal and commission: “Go and announce the Gospel of the Lord”; or, “Go in peace, glorifying the Lord by your life.” This clearly corresponds to mission through dialogue and pastoral formation.
In this light, the Eucharistic Revival can play a providential role in the implementation of the Council that taught that the Eucharist is the source and summit of the Church’s life!
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This is one fine interview on what is clearly a fine recapitulation of Vatican II. No doubt it will foster a range of comments. Here are three: one to guild the lily, then a further connection to St. John Paul II, and the third dealing with synodality. Plus a summary.
FIRST, we read: “The bishops at Vatican II (1962-65) understood that the only effective defense against this encroachment would be a mature and committed (or, as we say today, intentional) faith, which not only repudiates secularism but also bears witness to the fully human life of the beatitudes.”
Yes, and inseparable the beatitudes, St. John Paul II underlined the other unstated half of repudiating secularism: “…the commandment of love of God and neighbor does not have in its dynamic any higher limit, but it does have a lower limit, beneath which the commandment [!] is broken” (Veritatis Splendor, 1993, n. 52).
SECOND, about the middle part of the 1964 Ecclesiam Suam’s (and Bushman’s) “Awareness, Renewal, and Dialogue”—regarding renewal or conversion, the Vatican II Declaration on Religious Liberty never even uses the attributed and distorting license: “freedom of conscience.”
But the needed and anchoring wording (it seems to me) has to be discovered in another (and higher) document altogether–the Constitution Gaudium et Spes: “Contemplating this melancholy state of humanity, 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 [and explicitly incorporated into the Magisterium by Veritas Splendor, 1993]. Therefore, actions which deliberately conflict with these same principles […] are criminal” (Gaudium et Spes, n. 79).
The Vatican II complexities of committee drafting, with points and counterpoints cobbled together over three years, lend themselves to tendentious interpretations. And, if not contradictions, then patterns of signaling and silent omission. A camel is a horse designed by a committee, and now the camel’s nose under the tent!
And so, THIRD, about dialogue. Synodality is but one thread of a many-faced (both senses) program. Even the tautological Synod on Synodality is sidelined now by study groups which—for worse or possibly for better—have now been assigned the ongoing “hot button” themes (themes?) previously encroached onto the consultative roundtables. Moreover, outside of the apostolic Church, what too, about “fraternity” and a “pluralism of religions”—as either an entre or even as a substitute(?) for the New Evangelization?
Contaminated by a sexual abuse crisis, this collage is also subject to textual abuse in the capstone Fiducia Supplicans’ blessing of secularism’s spear point—one irregular “couple” at a time. A limp-handed harmonization rejected most recently by the Chaldean Church. And formerly by all of continental Africa, Hungary, Poland, Kazakhstan, Peru, Ukraine, parts of France, Spain and Argentina, and by others, and ecumenically by the now-estranged Orthodox Churches.
SUMMARY, still to be fleshed out, then, is exactly how the perennial and Eucharistic Church is to engage the rationalizing and radically secularist/post-Christian world? Not to mention the resurgent and 7th-century fideism of Islam.
How to engage without wilting? The initiatives of John Paul II to protect Vatican II from “divergent interpretations” (the 1985 Extraordinary Synod of Bishops) is not well-served by what seems an invertebrate form of synodality. But, does God writes straight with crooked lines? Will Pope Francis’ further internationalization of the college of cardinals enable a future conclave that has found both its heart and its head, and its soul?
“Awareness, Renewal, and Dialogue.”
And now, back to reality… I was just having dinner with a retired colleague the other night, and we were both commenting on the dramatic transformation of the Catholic priest as a cultural icon in the West. Prior to the 1960s, both film and television portrayed the priest almost universally in admirable or even heroic colors. And this had little or nothing to do with trying to make any dogmatic or religious comment per se. The priest was a sign of contradiction for a world torn by desires, and strife, and destruction. He symbolized love and self-sacrifice. In a word, peace. But with astonishing celerity, the image of the priest was sullied and ridiculed my these same cultural forces beginning in the 1960s. What happened? It is as if trying to be “relevant” and “up-to-date,” to engage in “dialogue” with the modern world instead of preaching timeless verities, the priest lost entirely his character, his appeal, his value. Hmmm … What could have happened in the Church in the 1960s to give the world this impression?
Point well made. And a partial response to your concluding question…
But, historically, Aquinas effectively engaged in dialogue with Aristotle—in order to develop what we now take for granted: coherence between faith and reason (Aristotle rinsed of Islamic additives). And, John Paul II engaged with existentialists and phenomenologists in order to arrive at “The Acting Person” (Reidel Publishing, 1979)—and the message that we become what we are partly by our graced/concrete encounters within the world (while not diminishing supernatural truths and moral absolutes which his methodology preserved intact in brackets, as is done in Algebraic equations). “Man acts [….] The theme of this study has been the person who reveals himself in and through the action…).
As for what has happened in (also “to”, as in Bushman’s “encroachment”?) the Church was partly the split between the “real” Council of the Documents and the “virtual” Council (Benedict’s distinction) of the termites led initially by Hans Kung and still very desperately at work today.
Now, the crisis for evangelization is how to outgrow this infantile and “divergent interpretation,” and (!) to witness convincingly to a paganized and relativistic West that no longer even understands the language or vocabulary of conversion and salvation. Or to a non-Western world that long ago fully replaced the incarnate “Word made flesh” with the anti-Triune and localized “word made book” (the Qur’an, “dictated” in Arabic). Appeals to a distinct and universal natural law (e.g., fraternity) have little traction since this baked-in orientation is so totally confused with natural religion (Pachamama, Gaia, etc.), or with subjective intuitionism, or with Islam’s eclectic poetics.
In the long run, the pluralist game plan of religious convergence—rather than graced and personal conversion—is insufficient and futile. And, YES, flaccid dialogue is pointless. About which Marcello Pera, former president of the Italian Senate and philosophy professor in Pisa, truly dialogued (!) in 2004 with the future Pope Benedict:
“I am urging people to realize that a war has indeed been declared on the West. I am not pushing for a rejection of dialogue, which we need more than ever with those Islamic countries that wish to live in peaceful coexistence with the West, to our mutual benefit. I am asking for something more fundamental: I am asking for people to realize that dialogue will be a waste of time if one of the two partners to the dialogue states beforehand that one idea is as good as the other” (Joseph Ratzinger and Marcello Pera, “Without Roots: The West, Relativism, Christianity, Islam,” 2006).
Most interesting interview, Carl.
The takeaway for me is this excerpt: “Synods are meetings ordered to a communal reading of the signs of the times and discernment about how best to promote the Church’s mission. Thus, on the part of those who participate in them, they presuppose both doctrinal formation and personal conversion, or holiness.”
Now, the question to be asked is whether the participants convened by Francis to these endless Synods meet the acid test i.e. have they had a conversion of conscience and heart. And, if so, how is this evinced in their living the faith and it is recognized by those who are most likely to know?
A corollary to this would be longer lines for the Sacrament of Reconciliation. Have we seen this renewal in the Church? I think not. For my thinking, these Synods are putting the cart before the horse i.e. the participants should first be steeped in awareness of doctrine followed by a personal conversion of heart.
Retrieval of the faith of our Fathers, the martyrs inspires interior conversion and willingness to convey the beauty of that truth. And yes, it’s nurtured and brought to fruition in nothing less than a sacramental life centered on adoration, nourishment of the Holy Eucharist.
Bushman thinks that the logic of renewal has much to offer as an “authentic theology of synodality”. He associates this with the effort of Vat II to evangelize, an effort to motivate Christians, to retrieve and recultivate faith. Bushman responds to Olson’s query about dialogue addressed by Paul VI in Ecclesiam Suam. Paul VI Ecclesiam Suam: “3 The aim of this encyclical will be to demonstrate with increasing clarity how vital it is for the world, and how greatly desired by the Catholic Church, that the two should meet together, and get to know and love one another. The doctrine is already known; it has been developed and popularized in the course of this century. But it can never claim to be sufficiently investigated and understood, for it contains the publication of a mystery, kept hidden from the beginning of time in the all-creating mind of God in order that it may be known through the Church”.
While Paul VI says he doesn’t wish to place constraints on the Council’s effort at examination of our theological consciousness of tradition, the remark begs the question of Ecclesiam Suam restraining tone in deference to revelation. “11 Hence the Church’s heroic and impatient struggle for renewal: the struggle to correct those flaws introduced by its members which its own self-examination, mirroring its exemplar, Christ, points out to it and condemns”.
Bushman perceives a vital nexus, as such implying there must be correspondence with Ecclesiam Suam and the Synod on Synodality. Pope Paul, Bushman says established that there are “three paths that the Church must follow. He names them: Awareness, Renewal, and Dialogue. The order is highly significant. Renewal must be based on the doctrine of Christ’s apostolic Church”. This is to focus on Christ and his revelation to the Church, whereas the Synod as steered by Francis engages in general concepts like mercy, which dilutes doctrine rather than finding deeper insight into established Apostolic doctrine. If the Synod is to have benefit to the aims of the Council and our practice of the faith it must be restructured and redirected in accord to what this essay finds. Otherwise it must be abandoned that the bleeding of the Church’s lifeblood end.
The chief sin against VATICAN II is “quenching of the Spirit” and this is coning from three directions: 1. using the Council to advance secularization (“external movements of encroachment”), 2. blaming the Council for joining in with it and 3. synodalism.
Using. Blaming. Joining.
Suddenly the synodalism movement recognizes what I have said (if it did) yet these things have been said over and over again without the need of the synodalism and a long time prior to synodalism. The repair is not synodalism.
When they were said they were ignored or overlooked.
Edit: …..ignored or overlooked or denied.