In a recent interview with The Pillar, Dr. Frank Ronge, a veteran German Catholic bureaucrat who coordinates the German Synodal Path, described the Synodaler Weg’s rationale and work. Many of those deeply engaged in the Synodal Path imagine it as a model for the world Church–or at least those parts of the world Church that aren’t a bit behind the cultural curve as construed by enlightened Germans. It’s thus worth asking some questions about the German experience of “synodality,” with an eye to what that experience might suggest about other paths of renewal in other ecclesial circumstances—or indeed about the path to be taken by Synod 2024 in Rome over the next month.
The first question involves the origins of the Synodaler Weg, which began, Dr. Ronge said, as a response to revelations of sexual abuse of the young by German clergy – revelations that made the proclamation of the Gospel “impossible.” Really? Judging by the plummeting levels of Catholic practice throughout Germany since the 1960s, one might have thought that the proclamation of the Gospel had been on life support long before the abuse crisis broke in Germany in 2010.
Moreover, and for all the pain, embarrassment, and disruption the abuse crisis caused in the United States, the proclamation of the Gospel continued in America, and the crisis prompted serious reforms, not least in seminaries. Was that impossible in Germany? Or did some German Catholics use the media assault on institutional Catholicism’s coverup of gross wickedness to weaponize the abuse crisis, making it the rationale for creating a New Model Church that would be more “acceptable” to post-modern society and culture?
Then there was Dr. Ronge’s claim–an echo of a persistent theme at Synod 2023 last October–that synoding, so to speak, is just a matter of listening to the Holy Spirit. Catholics, Dr. Ronge said, must “hold onto the Holy Spirit” and say, “Holy Spirit, guide us.” Many Catholics, of course, pray that every day, and the Holy Spirit remains as capable of surprising us as when those tongues of fire descended on the Upper Room at the first Christian Pentecost. But why does the Holy Spirit, speaking in Germany, always speak in the language of German Catholic progressivism?
Can the Holy Spirit really be calling the Church to abandon structures of ecclesial governance whose evolution over time the Holy Spirit presumably inspired? How can the Holy Spirit teach us one thing about the ethics of human love and the nature of marriage for two millennia, and then “surprise” us by calling the Church to jettison that teaching in the twenty-first century? Can the Holy Spirit contradict the Holy Spirit?
As for the German Synodal Path’s relationship to the world Church, Dr. Ronge noted that, among the questions “we ask the pope and the whole world to discern,” are those involving the ordination of women as deacons and priests: “We have asked the pope not to close that question.” But the pope has indeed said that the diaconate question is closed, so why hasn’t the Synodaler Weg gotten that memo? (The same might be asked of the folks at America Media, which was agitating the women-and-diaconate question in the weeks before Synod 2024, despite the pope having removed it from the Synod’s agenda.)
Dr. Ronge says that the Germans just want these matters discussed. They have been discussed for decades, however, and the answer to that discussion was given by Pope John Paul II in the 1994 apostolic letter Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, which taught definitively that the Church has no authority to ordain women to the priesthood. And if Holy Orders is one sacrament with three grades (as the Catechism of the Catholic Church 1593 states), the Church’s inability to ordain women to the priesthood must extend to the other two grades, diaconate and episcopate, as well.
The truth of the matter is that Ordinatio Sacerdotalis is one among many authoritative teachings that the German Church (and others) have not “received”–which is the polite term for saying “have rejected.” Why not admit that, rather than calling for another round of “dialogue” analogous to kittens chasing their tails? Why not proceed to the serious discussion, which is about affirming women in their many roles as evangelists, while calling those parts of the world Church where that evangelical role is stifled to reform?
More candor about the motivations of the German Synodal path and its vision of the Catholic future would be helpful in determining what, if anything, it has to offer the world Church at Synod 2024.
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In my simple understanding of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit is the love between the Father and Son which love is so perfected as to constitute a Third Person. The Holy Spirit, as TRUE love always does, unites persons. Yet, the synodalling Church of Germany (despite its referencing of the Holy Spirit) is divisive, goes its own progressive way, and departs from the Tradition and time-honored Magisterium of the Catholic Church.
Christ instructed us to look at the fruit when judging the health of the vine. It seems to me that the fruit of the Church in Germany is such that it is a shadow of itself having so many Catholics who have left the Church in Germany in droves. The Church in Germany divides, instead of uniting. They pretend to be inspired by the Holy Spirit but all we hear about the Church in Germany is divisiveness. It seems to me that they are the descendants of Luther more than anything else.
The people involved in the Synod in Rome, (as in Germany) are apostates, who reject the commandments of Jesus about sexual morality, as explicitly stated by the spokesman of the Synod, and of the Pontiff Francis, His Eminence Cardinal Hollerich, SJ.
They preach “a different gospel,” from the mind of McCarrick.
They are to be confronted, publicly corrected and otherwise ignored and rejected for their apostasy.
We read: “The truth of the matter is that Ordinatio Sacerdotalis is one among many authoritative teachings that the German Church (and others) have not ‘received’–which is the polite term for saying ‘have rejected’.”
What is this backwardist idea “authoritative”? What about der Synodal Weg (SW) and “gradualism”?
AS IN the Synod on Synodality (SS!), itself, adopting SW’s mongrel composition of a former “synod of bishops;”
AS IN a possibly non-ordained female diaconate, as the half-way house to later ordination (just as civil unions devolved into “gay marriage,” and as in the similar fluidity of Fiducia Supplicans);
AS IN SW’s demand for a continuous German synod metastasizing into a possibly ongoing SS–when the spin-off expert “study groups” (SG) leave the exhumed “hot-button themes” on the table forever (yes?) in June 2025; and
AS IN the schismatic SW getting everything it spawns by flowing into the SS of a still-universal Church; and with the SW procreating itself through the “irregular” coupling of the SS with the ongoing SG (shared proceduralism IS truth!);
AS IN the individual successors of the Apostles, then, being displaced by experts and national conferences of bishops, and maybe the “continental” assemblies of polyhedral synodality—the “paradigm shift” of Continental Drift!
Under an anti-backwardist reading of “The Joy of the Gospel” (Evangelii Gaudium, 2013), might the four Gospels devolve into the four Gradualisms: “realities are more important than ideas [synodal nominalism?]”; “time is greater than space [synodal historicism?]”; “unity prevails over conflict [synodal clericalism?]”; and “the whole is greater than the part [synodal globalism?].”
QUESTION:
At its 1700th anniversary in 2025, and about the nature of GOD, will the definitive and exclusivist Council of Nicaea (rejection of Arianism) find itself somewhat demoted and ceremoniously embalmed in fluid synodality?
Likewise, what of the real Vatican II, and the nature of MAN: “Christ the Lord…by the revelation of the mystery of the Father and His love, fully reveals man to himself [!] and makes his supreme calling clear” (Gaudium et Spes, n. 22).
“. . . one might have thought that the proclamation of the Gospel had been on life support long before the abuse crisis broke in Germany in 2010.”
Same as in Belgium.
A synod that denies The Unity Of The Holy Ghost, is , in essence, a synod which denies The Divinity Of The Most Holy And Undivided Blessed Trinity, and is thus, a synod of apostasy , for it denies the very essence of Perfect Life-affirming and Life- sustaining Salvational Love.
The Faithful must Call for the anathema of this anti Christ synod.
We can’t underestimate the depth of the wound on the German psyche due to Nazism and Germany’s 1945 civilian holocaust, a kind of reparation for the Vernichtungslager holocaust, engineered by Lutherans and Catholics, former Catholics in the forefront Heinrich Himmler, Joseph Goebbels, Adolf.
As an occupation soldier first hand the sense of apathy seen in the response to clergy despite the heroic acts of some prelates like Blessed Bishop August Graf von Galen. Forest chapels left grown over with vines. Dr Ronge represents the apologetic response to a visualized failed Christianity. Der Synodaler Weg the Second reformation more accommodating and progressive than Luther’s yet proclaiming similarity regards justification on an attitudinal faith rather than doctrinal strictures on behavior.
George Weigel’s question whether German progressivism means abandoning structure built centuries under guidance of the Holy Spirit? Yes. Guilt for the past, a collective feature in Germany is a strong if furtive impetus. The less structure and commands the less Nazi like. Germany’s Synodale direction is toward the horizontal peoples Church, a Volkskirche for the people and by the people. A template phenomenon of the direction taken by the Vatican Synod on Synodality.
As to the participation of Catholics in Nazi ideology, we can’t exclude from the list of prominent Catholic Nazis high ranking SS officer Reinhard Heydrich. As a youth Reinhard was an altar boy, attending evening prayers and Mass every week with his mother as part of the Catholic minority in Halle. As an adult Heydrich chaired the January 1942 Wannsee Conference which formalized plans for the Final Solution to the Jewish question.
Why Catholics the majority murderers of Mankind within the ranks of Nazism? It’s said from where I’m from, NYC that when a Jew or a Catholic turns to evil they excel. It would seem that those of us who have tasted the goodness of God and turn away, by nature of what’s rejected, turn to the epitome of its opposite. Further speculation, simply opinion, would it then be reasonably foreseeable that the Antichrist would emerge from the ranks of Catholicism? Not at all to imply a German. Rather perhaps someone less anticipated.