Polls, as a rule of thumb, should be taken with a grain of salt. Or even, at times, with a salt shaker.
That said, the recent online poll by @Synod.va—the official X (formerly Twitter) account of the Secretariat of the Synod—was surprising. When I took a screenshot of it on the afternoon of Friday, July 26, nearly 6,000 votes had been cast. And they were overwhelmingly negative—to the tune of 88% voting “No” to the following statement: “Do you believe that synodality as a path of conversion and reform can enhance the mission and participation of all the baptized?”
Not long afterwards, after some 7,000 votes had been registered, the poll was removed.
A couple of days later, I was on the phone with a priest who had worked in the Vatican for several years and is now the pastor of a large parish in a large U.S. city. “No one really cares about it,” he said when I asked what his parishioners think about synodality. “Nobody really knows what it means,” he said, “and it has little or no bearing on their daily lives as Catholics.” Again, polls should come with salt and anecdotes are limited. But synodality—the Pope Francis, current Vatican version of it—seems to hold little interest for many Catholics.
The New Synodality
Part of the problem is, I think, simple enough: if you’re going to claim that Product Z is a new and improved version of Product A, you’d better be able to explain what it is, how it works, and why it is better. And why it is necessary.
In my April 18, 2023 essay on this site, titled “Ambiguity and Clarity in the Age of Synodality,” I noted that the meaning of “synodality” is important “for many reasons, not least that we’ve been living in a ‘synodal Church’ since sometime in October 2015.” That was when Pope Francis, at a commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of Pope Paul VI instituting the synod of bishops, stated:
A synodal Church is a Church which listens, which realizes that listening “is more than simply hearing”. It is a mutual listening in which everyone has something to learn. The faithful people, the college of bishops, the Bishop of Rome: all listening to each other, and all listening to the Holy Spirit, the “Spirit of truth” (Jn 14:17), in order to know what he “says to the Churches” (Rev 2:7).
Synods, of course, go back to the early centuries of the Church. But the idea of a “synodal Church” is, again, very new. Also new is the quickly expanding lexicon used to explain that concept, including “synodal process,” “synodal listening,” “synodal conversion,” “synodal path,” “synodal journey,” “synodal life,” “synodal method,” “synodal perspective,” “synodal practice”—well, you get the synodal idea.
And yet, oddly enough, the synodal flood of synodal adjectives, rather than shedding light, appears to have mostly bewildered, befuddled, confused, or annoyed many Catholics (at least, those who have paid attention). Ironically, while “listening” (or “synodal listening”) plays a major role in the synodal process, one has to wonder how many are listening.
The 2024 Working Document
On July 9th, the “Instrumentum laboris” for the Second Session of the 16th Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops (October 2024) was released. It will be the document discussed for four weeks this fall, focusing on “how to be a missionary synodal Church.”
Some context: back in January 2023, I wrote a critical piece on the Working Document for the Continental Stage (DCS) of the 2023 Synod on Synodality, describing it as “the most incoherent document ever sent out from Rome.” In April 2023, I wrote an essay about how even those touting and lauding synodality seemed unable to really explain it. Then, in October 2023, I penned a critical essay about the Instrumentum laboris for the 2023 Synodal gathering in Rome, stating:
It is difficult, frankly, to see the current synodal documents as anything other than third-rate, flawed texts that water down or ignore completely central aspects of ecclesiology, soteriology, and eschatology, as found in Sacred Scripture and Tradition in general or in the Vatican II documents specifically. If the Synod is to lead to a deeper understanding of the Church, her role in salvation, and her desire to expand the Kingdom of God, it will have to free itself from the bureaucratic brambles and laborious drivel that dominate its documents.
And in December 2023, I opined on the Summary Report from the October 2023 meeting, again noting the struggle to define synodality and to explain why a “synodal Church” is suddenly needed after 2000 years. It was evident that “experience” was a key word and emphasis from the start, and one that continued in the December report:
… it’s not surprising that “experience(s)” appears almost 80 times in the synthesis report, and that the favored term “discern(ment/ing”) is used 38 times. Which is quite a few more times than words such as “teaching” (18), “truth” (8), “doctrine” (6), or “dogma” (0). Experience certainly has its rightful place, and proper discernment is a good thing, but there are questions aplenty about the basis for making proper judgments and decisions.
So, is this new Working Document an improvement over previous documents? The short answer is, “Yes, but…” The longer answer is, first, that it didn’t take much to improve on the earlier documents and, second, with some modest exceptions, the improvements are quite minor. It’s the sort of improvement you see when your operating system goes from 9.3.1 to 9.3.4. And there are still plenty of bugs.
A Thousand Words Is Worth a Synodal Picture
Like previous synodal documents, this one is fairly long, at over 20,000 words. And, as expected, the same words and jargon show up on a regular basis. The words “process/es” (60), “experience” (32), “dialogue” (30), and journey/ing (35) appear often. “Listen/ing” (48) is, of course, quite popular, while “hear/ing” (1) is not. There is substantial focus on “discern/ment” (61), “service” (38), with “unity” (89) and “communion” (148) appearing very often.
Three “c” words crop up several times: “context” (50), “concrete” (31), and “culture/cultural” (43). And so we find passages such as this:
As it exists in service to mission, synodality should not be thought of as an organisational expedient but lived and cultivated as the way the disciples of Jesus weave relationships in solidarity, capable of corresponding to the divine love that continually reaches them and that they are called to bear witness to in the concrete contexts in which they live. Understanding how to be a synodal Church in mission thus passes through a relational conversion, which reorients the priorities and the action of each person, especially of those whose task it is to animate relationships in the service of unity, in the concreteness of an exchange of gifts that liberates and enriches all.
There’s surely some good stuff in there, but the synodal process seems to have buried it!
The emphasis on “witness” (14), “mission” (44) and “missionary” (37), is heartening, although it is strange that “evangelize/evangelization” (5) are rarely used. One of the better passages hones in on the Trinitarian nature of missionary work and proclaiming the Gospel:
“The pilgrim Church is missionary by her very nature, since it is from the mission of the Son and the mission of the Holy Spirit that she draws her origin, in accordance with the decree of God the Father” (AG 2). The encounter with Jesus, the adherence in faith to his person, and the celebration of the sacraments of Christian initiation lead us into the very life of the Trinity. Through the gift of the Holy Spirit, the Lord Jesus enables those who receive Baptism to participate in his relationship with the Father. The Spirit with whom Jesus was filled and who led him (Lk 4:1), who anointed him and sent him out to proclaim the Gospel (Lk 4:18), who raised him from the dead (Rom 8:11) is the same Spirit who now anoints the members of the People of God. This Spirit makes us children and heirs of God, and it is through the Spirit that we cry out to God, calling him “Abbà! Father!”.
To understand the nature of a synodal Church in mission, it is indispensable to grasp this Trinitarian foundation, and in particular, the inextricable link between the work of Christ and the work of the Holy Spirit in human history and the Church: “It is the Holy Spirit, dwelling in those who believe and filling and ruling over the Church as a whole, who brings about that wonderful communion of the faithful. He brings them all into intimate union with Christ, so that he is the principle of the Church’s unity” (UR 2). (#22–23)
However, this demonstrates a characteristic evident throughout this document and previous documents: the forced quality of using “synodal” to describe realities that have been a part of the Church since her founding. Again and again, various activities—witnessing, discerning, listening, caring for the poor, showing respect for women—are treated as though they are somehow new, previously undiscovered and not practiced. At risk of dating myself (yes, I was in high school in the 1980s), it reminds me of the massive 1984 campaign for “new Coke,” which resulted in consumers essentially saying, “Naw, we don’t like it. We want the real Coke.”
Doctrinal Disconnect
Further, while a handful of theological passages are good to see, they also have a forced quality to them, precisely because they don’t inform or suffuse the majority of the document. I suspect that some of this is due to the nature of texts-by-committee, but I also think it reflects a deeper problem. Namely, that there isn’t much interest in emphasizing the dogmatic, doctrinal, and confessional qualities of being a Catholic and what that means for the Church as the Body of Christ (mentioned seven times, while “People of God” appears almost 50 times). While there is much emphasis on personal charisms (26 mentions), divine revelation (1), doctrine (1), dogma (0), deposit of faith (0), “teaching” (2), and “catechesis” (2) are given short shrift. Experience, again, is in heavy rotation.
And, as in previous documents, the fuller nature of redemption and salvation does not come into focus. In fact, “salvation” and “sin” are never mentioned; “redeemed” appears once. Virtue is never mentioned and “holiness” comes up just twice. Once again, the eschatological character of faith and of the Church is pushed to the fringes, if not buried altogether.
Finally, it’s troubling that a document about the Church and her mission never quotes any words of Jesus Christ or, really, anything at all from the Gospels. The sense of detachment, overall, is curious. Granted, this is a working document and I suspect very few of the 7,000 people who voted in the aforementioned poll have read it. But passages such as this one (many others would have also sufficed) suggest the detachment and the disdain of many for things synodal:
A synodal Church is a relational Church in which interpersonal dynamics form the fabric of the life of a mission-oriented community, whose life unfolds within increasingly complex contexts. The approach proposed here does not separate but grasps the links between experiences, allowing us to learn from reality, which is reread in the light of the Word of God, from Tradition, from prophetic witnesses, and also reflects on mistakes made.
Further, many Catholics aren’t interested in documents that talk a lot about “transparency” (15) and “accountability” (19) when men such as Fr. Marko Rupnik continue to apparently enjoy the favor of Pope Francis. Mistakes are made, of course, but some mistakes are far more troubling than others, especially when they happen repeatedly.
“The synodal conversion of minds and hearts,” the Working Document states, “must be accompanied by a synodal reform of ecclesial realities, called to be roads on which to journey together.” Well, okay. Or, as the first pope said at Pentecost, in proclaiming the Gospel to those present:
And Peter said to them, “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is to you and to your children and to all that are far off, every one whom the Lord our God calls to him.” And he testified with many other words and exhorted them, saying, “Save yourselves from this crooked generation.” (Acts 2:38–40)
(Note: This essay was published originally on the “What We Need Now” substack and is reprinted here with kind permission.)
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 sense of detachment, overall, is curious.”
Not so curious when you realize what this whole Synodolatry thing is all about.
It’s not about “listening” or “discerning” or “experiencing” anything. All of that is intended to distract from the business at hand.
In my opinion, Synodolatry is about changing what the Church stands for. It’s about transforming the Church Jesus founded into a massive leftist organization dedicated to social activism.
Mr. Olson’s informative word tracking exercise affirms that God’s will, Jesus’ teachings and the workings of the Holy Spirit are nowhere to be found in the synodal list of objectives.
Again, Mr. Olson and his estimable CWR provide a very fair assessment of Bergoglio’s exercise in Synodolatry, concluding that the purpose of this prodigious exercise is not as has been claimed by “this crooked generation.”
Whether I am right about the actual purpose will soon be apparent.
God preserve us.
Brineyman;
Your statement “all of that is intended to distract from the business at hand.”
IOW – sleight of hand.
From The Vatican?
Yes, Terence. From the Vatican.
Thank you Mr. Olson for this very interesting and informative article and also for your wonderful reflections on the Sunday readings, they are truly a Blessing.
If I may add my own words to your closing statement from St. Peter
Save yourselves from this crooked Papacy.
Thanks be to God
We read: “if you’re going to claim that Product Z is a new and improved version of Product A, you’d better be able to explain what it is, how it works, and why it is better. And why it is necessary.” but, might we consider why “synodality” is not at all confusing…
Instead, synodality simply displaces definitive doctrinal content, for example, with an anti-definitive and provisional process. Not unlike an ever renewable “provisional agreement” with the Chinese mainland. So, there is no need for confusion over undisclosed content. There is no content, but rather a provisional “style.”
The fluid style, itself, IS the new product!
Thinking ecologically, we might consider the rodent known as the packrat….“In the forest ecology of the Rocky Mountain area we find a large bushy-tailed rodent termed a “packrat” (Neotoma cinerea). Equipped with a big mouth he hoards his findings, often replacing (!) one thing or another with whatever—bait and switch. In human society, is there another Packrat Factor? Is there a Big Lie where we deny an inconvenient truth and replace it with something else more palatable?” (From Beaulieu, “A Generation Abandoned,” Hamilton Books, 2017, Ch. 2).
SYNODALITY: “It all depends on what the meaning of is, is.”
Fr. Peter Morello recently focuses us of the DOXOLOGY…”Through Him, with Him, and in Him [!], O God, almighty Father [!], in the unity of the Holy Spirit [!], all glory and honor is yours, forever and ever.”
Indivisible…
But, today do we tend to incrementally divide both God and his Church in concrete practice, discounting and even displacing the permanence of the Son? This with a synodally novel and fluid Holy Spirit?
The “virtual” council of Hans Kung tribalists displacing the “real” council of the Documents? Much of the Church is taken aback, so to speak (“backwardists”!), by the anathematized and synodally reincarnated fictions of Joachim of Flora (A.D. 1135-1202)—who also presumed to PERIODIZE the Trinitarian, living, and indwelled Church, into a succession of three ages: the Age of the Father (the Old Testament), the Age of Christ (everything between the Old Testament and A.D. 1260), and the new Age of the Holy Spirit (everything after A.D. 1260)…or as some now imagine, everything after the Second Vatican Council (A.D. 1962-65).
So, about the meaning of what “is, is…” Even a council—and any lesser synodal “style”—is something that a dynamically engaged Church DOES, but not what the coherently Eucharistic Church IS.
THE RIDDLE is always how to MANIFEST BOTH? The Second Vatican Council’s indivisible unity of “ressourcement” and its “aggiornamento”—fully both together—is not well-served by an alliance of amnesiacs and termites inside the Barque of Peter.
“It’s about transforming the Church Jesus founded into a massive leftist organization dedicated to social activism.”
That would be bad enough, hijacking the Church for Marxism! IMHO it is worse; it is about transforming the Church into a Synodal Superlodge which can be subsumed as an irrelevance into the One World of Freemasonic AntiChrist.
Check out the sculpture of Angel of Light enthroned inside the Basilica of Saint Mary of angels and martyrs in Rome….
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=angelo+della+luce+ernesto+lamagna&iax=images&ia=images&iai=http%3A%2F%2F1.bp.blogspot.com%2F-2ZWSxCBF8MU%2FVDwHrW7QBcI%2FAAAAAAAA7gQ%2F7DpnPfuwDl4%2Fs1600%2FDSC_0063%252B(Copia).JPG
Appears demonic.
I would say that the “Synodal Church” is the ecclesial equivalent of “guitar Masses.” They both emanate from the same 1960’s touchy-feely, experiential, “it’s all about me” mindset in our culture.
Once again, the Catholic Church ought to be informing the pagan culture – not the other way around. Christ said He came to make all things new. He did not say that He’d come to reinvent the Fall in the Garden.
One is reminded here of the old saying “if you can’t dazzle them with facts, baffle them with …”, well – you know what I mean.
As Mark Twain accurately quoted, there are lies, damned lies, and statistics.
Numbers are MADE to be manipulated, and ARE.
As a now-deceased pastor once told me, “Figures lie, and liars figure.”
Hate to double up on posts, but this pontificate excels in writing gobbledygook documents lifted from my old employers, the US govt. bureaucracy, and before that, the US Army, where we called it,”baffle ’em with BS,” and only meaning is what is convenient or expedient for the writer at time and place of their choosing….sophistry…pure sophistry.
Where, last I checked, a teaching office is to provide clarity. This is what happens when brainless functionaries lacking any spiritual life past iffy rote routine take the reigns of power in a religion.
Bob, thanks for doubling up—spot on.
Synodaling bureaucractise that surrenders to the secular culture rather than proclaiming Jesus Christ and Him alone as our Lord and Savior.
Synodality is the modern church’s word salad sowing confusion and distraction from the Life, the Way and the Truth of God. It begins with the classic challenge “Did He really say that?l sowing doubt, then confusion, then disobedience as the wolves in shepherd’s clothing dispersing by the flock into the wilderness.
Peter’s words at first Pentecost hone the point as Scripture strikes like a sword: Peter “…exhorted them, saying, ‘Save yourselves from this crooked generation.'” (Acts 2:40)
If each and every Catholic with ears would hear and continually take Peter’s words to heart, NO ONE would hear any more from such movements of synodal sham within the Church.
Synodality definition: Getting through the back door what you can’t get through the front door.
Exactly, while framing it as being loving and inclusive.
The premise of Synodality as envisioned by former archbishop Milan Cdl Mario Martini SJ was and is modernism. Martini, ecstatic when his disciple Archbishop Bergoglio agreed to his candidacy and was expected to be elevated to the pontificate [word from the Saint Gallen Group assured the Cardinal efforts confirmed all was set]. Soon after, as if to say, Lord now you may dismiss your servant and let him die in peace, Martini departed this world.
Carl Olson demonstrates that product Z does not offer reason to believe it’s an improvement of product A. In fact, incoherence then must not be a debility in the mind of the Synodal theorists. Rather a feature of opinionated listening. Brambles and drivel are welcome signs. Their target the expectation, disingenuous or actual, the divine sanction of a commonly held denominator. Assuredly the work of the Spirit.
Consensus among the disenchanted faithful has been, Which spirit? Olson completes his analysis citing the absence of Christology amid the vagary. What the Laity sense in their disinterest in the process is the absence of the Christ they know, and which they interiorly hunger for even if remarkably reduced due to Church mismanagement. The current mismanagement called Synodality simply deepens the darkness of that disparity.
As a concept Synodality has one marked defining feature. That is seen in simply putting up for discussion the teachings of the faith absent of Christological, anchoring reference. Laity, clerics, the Church at large will assume no doctrine has permanence. That defining feature: New ideas [consequently for many any ideas] are as good or better than the former.
We read: “As a concept Synodality has one marked defining feature. That is seen in simply putting up for discussion the teachings of the faith absent of Christological, anchoring reference.”
EXACTLY SO, and what more about this unnecessary confusion?
How about a thought experiment….The Galileo universe was confusing only to those who adhered to the Ptolemaic universe with the sun rotating around the earth. (Note that with its many adjustments the Ptolemic universe was still 99 percent accurate in its predictions!) But, suddenly, a “paradigm shift” (Thomas Kuhn, “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions,” 1962).
So, now, what about the Christological and perennial Catholic Church, as compared to the synodal “style” of being Church? A Ptolemaic synodal style? Does coherence in Faith and Reason—or even Christian anthropology—genuflect to such a backwards transplant? The misappropriated abuse of natural science’s “paradigm shift”?
ANOTHER WORLDVIEW
For our thought experiment, might we be reminded of yet another paradigm—not from the natural sciences but from the so-called social sciences?
Yours truly recalls in a graduate-level sociology course studying the typical rural village of Long Bow in northern China (one of countless such villages). During the Communist takeover of the late 1940s—and under constant loudspeaker repetition—Chinese villagers eventually broke and denounced their friends, then their families, and finally their very concrete selves, anything that clung to continuity and personality. The word for such “coming over” is “fanshen.” (The textbook by an American Marxist, William H. Hinton, “Fanshen: A Documentary of Revolution in a Chinese Village,” 1966).
Having emerged from a totally secular university education, it’s perhaps too easy for yours truly—from here in the back bleachers—to slip into the “thought experiment” on how “synodality” might devolve into a synonym for “fanshen”….Not by intent or design, surely, but as a subliminal, incremental and (some say) manipulated outcome amidst a poorly formed laity and a few too many get-along-go-along clergy.
CRITERIA OF AUTHENTICITY
Moreover, at what point is Synodality, itself, reduced to a decoy from the breakout Study Groups working the so-called “hot button themes”? Other thought experiments that will continue long after Synod 2024 fades down the memory hole. So, what about the ten study-group “themes”:
1.About the “East,” will the Eastern Orthodox Churches (estranged by Fiducia Supplicans) be sacrificed to a secularist/homosexualized Latin Church?
2. About the “cry of the poor,” how to not exclude those who are impoverished spiritually and culturally (Centesimus Annus, n. 57), and how to respect “the right of the faithful to receive Catholic doctrine in its purity and integrity” (Veritatis Splendor, n. 113)?
3. About the “digital environment,” how to preserve analogue reality—like the Reality of the incarnate Jesus Christ—over a Nominalist digital cosmos and Kantian/Rahnerian theology?
4. About a “missionary perspective,” how to not displace the Deposit of Faith with more of a plebiscite sociology?
5. About “ministerial forms,” how to respect the “hierarchical communion” (Lumen Gentium) and not split from sacramental ordination a non-ordained female diaconate–as an unwitting stepping stone toward an Anglican-style (c)hurch, just as civil unions were a stepping stone toward the oxymoron “gay marriage”?
6. About “ecclesial organizations,” how to not dilute or eclipse the institutional/personal accountability of each Successor of the Apostles (Apostolos Suos,1998)?
7. On the selection, judicial role and meaning of “ad limina visits for bishops,” how to transcend zeitgeist intrusions into the particular (more than “polyhedral”) Churches?
8. On “papal representatives” in a missionary synodal perspective, how to conform a missionary “style” of listening to the prior and inborn natural law (!) about which the Church is neither the author nor the arbiter (Veritatis Splendor, n. 95)?
9. About the use of “theological criteria,” how to housebreak self-anointed theologians who would, procedurally, elevate their criteria/opinions above the Magisterium?
10.About the “ecumenical journey/ecclesial practices,” how to outreach, surely, but without eroding the contours of the sacramental Mystical Body of Christ, or the internal and serving “hierarchical communion” (Lumen Gentium, Chapter Three)?
SUMMARY
Might the above ten questions serve as “criteria” to ensure that the Synod-on-Synodality shell game doesn’t mutate into some sort of fanshen? Fr. Morello’s Christological anchor, versus whatever?
j.M.J.
The Word Of God As He Reveals Himself In The Deposit Of Faith is not up for debate.
No doubt, the purpose of this synod is to make it appear as if The Word Of God is up for debate.
I cannot even imagine the extent of Christ’s grieving as He witnesses The Great Apostasy, and the counterfeit magisterium that was created by the unfaithful to usurp The Papacy which was instituted by Christ, so that Christ’s Church remains, Through The Unity Of The Holy Ghost (Filioque), One, Holy, Catholic, And Apostolic.
“Strike The Shepherd, scatter the sheep.”
“To whom much has been given, much will be expected.”
To remain silent in the face of apostasy, is to be unfaithful.
Why spend your time in a stalemate when The King of Kings is on the line?
The desire to change The Deposit of Faith, so that our Religious Liberty is no longer relevant?
https://www.lifesitenews.com/opinion/what-motivates-pope-francis-attempts-to-normalize-homosexual-relationships/
https://mirrorofjustice.blogs.com/
By their fruits you will know who is for Christ and who is against Christ.
“Caritas In Veritate”; “Veritas In Caritate”, Through The Unity Of The Holy Ghost (Filioque) Amen
The language of the synodal documents quoted reminds me of a Carl Rogers-led encounter group, as described in William Kirkpatrick’s “The Emperor’s New Clothes.”
The past decade seems lost in the 1970s with Carl Rogers trained facilitators attempting to run things.
We can take some consolation in the fact that virtually no Catholics are paying attention to any this mumbo jumbo.
“…the poll was removed.”
With that fact who can provide an ounce of credence to this synodal enterprise? To this “new paradigm?” To this confection “The Synodal Church?’
The writing is on the wall, plain to see. The reality has been in front of us for sixty years but we adverted our eyes. We trusted an enterprise unworthy of trust. This crew of academic, globalists, secular materialists in collars have outed themselves.
The contrast between removing the poll and the state purpose of this synod is appalling — actions speak loudly. Words are meaningless in this pontificate.
Glad someone has the patience to analyse this verbiage.
Thanks, Carl.
I second Carl Olsen’s point about being “not interested” in documents pontificating about “transparency” and “accountability” generated by a Pontiff and “his circle” who favor sociopath abusers like Rupnik (and McCarrick and Grassi and Inzolli and Zanchetta and on and on and on).
I am not only uninterested in their documents, I oppose them for what they have revealed themselves to be, which are wolves in shepherds’ clothing, who have a mind and heart set against Jesus, and who as a pack of wolves are threatening my family and my children.
There seems little that could be added to dear Carl Olson’s expose of the misuse of ‘synodal’ under the papacy of Francis 1st. The diverse comments responding to his incisive article fill out the tragedy of subtle (and not-so-subtle) ecclesiatical & theological frauds being so scandalously imposted on the Catholic body, today.
It might be healthy for us to contemplate the central, unshakeable, eternal synodality bestowed by our LORD on every true Catholic. For example, as in 1 Corinthians 12.
“Now you together are Christ’s body; but each of you is a different part of it.” v27
“The parts are many but the body is one.” v20
“Just as a human body, though it is made up of many parts, is a single unit because all these parts, though many, make one body, so it is with Christ.” v12
“If one part is hurt, all parts are hurt with it. If one part is given special honor, all parts enjoy it.” v26
With Jesus Christ, our crucified, resurrected, risen, ascended, reining, Holy Spirit-anointing, soon-returning GOD & KING as our Head we, though constituted from many diverse, faithful Catholic persons, are one body.
There can be no greater, no more significant, nor a more all-embracing synodality than that.
In our mutual participation in Holy Mass and our receiving the holynflesh of Christ that is “REAL FOOD” and His Precious Blood that is “REAL DRINK” we enact & celebrate our deepest common Catholic identity in Christ Eternal.
Our mutual incorporation in The Lamb of GOD is more synodal that anything else on earth could be.
In KING JESUS CHRIST, and ONLY in Him, do we have a journey in common unto the eternal joy, of a life that is, at last, REAL LIFE!
The papacy’s current anti-Apostolic teachings & actions, and its shameless promotion & protection of libertinism are incompatible with basic Catholic synodal identity.
Maybe this is why Pope Francis’ ‘synodal way’ rings so hollow to sincere Catholics?
It requires a greater & more holy mind than mine to prophesy where this will end.
Always under the grace & mercy of King Jesus Christ; love & blessings from marty
Bishop Schneider proceeded with a structured critique from an episcopal perspective, June 29 2023:
1. Church’s constitution
1. Moral law
3. Mission and life
4. Other aspects.
In spite of having these insights and reflections and others like it, since that time, the process continues unmoved and unrelenting.
https://www.thecatholicthing.org/2023/06/29/a-new-synodal-church-undermines-the-catholic-church/
The Synod on Synodality organizers set them themselves up when they effectively asked for a vote of confidence about their plans and ideas. As with most confidence tests, it was also a test of how well those ideas and plans have been communicated, understood and accepted, along the lines of “How well are we doing?” At close to 90% negative, the results represent a decided thumbs down.
A competent, sensible organization would see those results and scrap or significantly rethink their plans. Even if one considers possible problems with the online survey format, the limitations of letting any online user participate, problems with analyzing survey data,etc., those results are disastrous.
What’s incredible to me is that whatever group constructed the survey question was bold enough to start it with language reminiscent of the Creed, asking “Do you believe ..”? Only they aren’t asking if the intended respondent (who is presumably Catholic) believes in one God, in one Lord Jesus Christ the Only Begotten Son of God, in the Holy Spirit the Lord, the giver of life, or in one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church. They are asking if people believe in an abstract concept called “synodality” that has been talked and talked about for nine years now. Ultimately, what the Synod leadership is wanting to know is … Do you believe in what WE are doing, in what Pope Francis sees as his vision of synodality and in what WE are trying to deliver for him? The question thus comes across as a bait-and-switch with Synodality now as the object of belief, , which is unsettling, especially at this late stage of the synodal program.
If you count the 2018 Synod of Bishops on “Young People, the Faith and the Discernment of Vocation” as the first serious attempt to implement the Pope’s vision of synodality, that make, what … three attempts to anchor synodality in the hearts, minds, souls and faith lives of Catholics. Nothing seems to have advanced further past the original October 2015 declaration at a synod-related event quoted near the beginning of the article: “A synodal Church is a Church which listens, which realizes that listening “is more than simply hearing”. It is a mutual listening in which everyone has something to learn. The faithful people, the college of bishops, the Bishop of Rome: all listening to each other, and all listening to the Holy Spirit, the “Spirit of truth” (Jn 14:17), in order to know what he “says to the Churches” (Rev 2:7).”
Nine years later, it’s more than fair to ask of the Synod leadership “Then what?” Listening, walking together, more listening, but no more information about what gets done as a result of the walking and talking. Walking,listening, something called “discerning,” holdig hands, sitting at round tables and making vague allusions to consulting the Holy Spirit in some fashion. That looks like all they’ve gotten to. My impression is that since then, the synod organizers and participants have been treading water.
If I were one of the apparently small constituency in the Church that still believes synodality is the way to “rescue the Church,” I would be depressed. Fortunately I am not and I have no reason to have to believe in it because we have somethingor Someone better to trust: our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
Thankyou, dear Mary E. for your well reasoned & lucid analysis.
Less elegantly: one might recall our Lord & Savior Jesus Christ instructing us that – “My sheep hear My Voice. I know them, they follow Me.” [John 10:27]
Whilst – decoded – Pope Francis seems to insist – “Listen to my pseudo-synodal cacophony, so you won’t hear Jesus and will follow my improvement of The Gospel!”
As you imply, for every Catholic the queston of the day is: “Who do I follow?”
In the perfect love of God in Christ Jesus; blessings from marty
I am glad that you appreciated it!
I will add that although it seems that I am coming down heavily on “listening,” that only refers to how it is being used (maybe distorted) in the Synod on Synodality. Listening is an essential activity. Good listening takes experience and skill acquired over time, when it is done well, it not only provides essential information but strengthens bonds between people and helps develop our own understanding. Many people consider Mary to be the model for good listening, but for me, it is Jesus Christ Himself.
The problem is when “listening” is regarded as a self-contained process that provides its own conclusion. Specifically, when people slip into thinking that the process of “listening” will automatically provides the correct answer, such that all you have to do is listen well enough then you’ll know what to do and are done. It won’t, but that looks like the operating assumption in the synodal documents.
This may be a modern preoccupation brought on by the tremendous emphasis put on being “heard” as a necessary activity for human thriving, and even worse, as a guarantee that you’lll get what you want. Listening is a start, yet those who have just listened are free to draw conclusions that the person who has been “heard” may not like. That is why I am bothered by the amount of emphasis being put on listening as the answer to what ails the Church.
“Finally, it’s troubling that a document about the Church and her mission never quotes any words of Jesus Christ or, really, anything at all from the Gospels.”
If this “Synodal” project was designed to transform the vestiges of the once Catholic Church into an irrelevance based on the Freemasonic Lodge principle, enabling it to be subsumed as an irrelevance into the One World Freemasonic Anti-Church, would it be otherwise?
Preceding synodalism was the application of organizational management principles into dioceses and parishes. I think this was going on from the Eighties. Some of it was incidental and topical and some of it was very adaptive. In the adaptive category you later found professional practitioners like Lencioni. The Lencioni link below is but a sample, Lencioni has multiple showings online.
Some time later was a large international conference in Australia where people like Pell and Vigneron came up with ideas to better embody the Church’s position on mission, under VATICAN II.
As all that was happening, someone or a small group, was distilling the organization approach into something they hold to be “truly spiritual”. “Synodality” appeared in my Archdiocese in the late 1990’s and this is well ahead of the seminar in Australia by more than a decade. They are now trying to have it settled upon everyone and the whole Church as “THE PARADIGMATIC movement of the Spirit from VATICAN II providential for the era, as a universal and a prodigy”.
The last point is significant as further adaptive of organizational principles. In that a “synod on synodality” is meant to preempt all future local synods, to determine them in one thing and another -strategic. Yet, even as that is now exposed, it can be seen to be overtaking the apostolic freedom of bishops now and in the future; and this is not the Church and can never be the People of God or its role.
https://amazingparish.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/catholic-fg.pdf