Vatican City, Oct 2, 2024 / 12:17 pm (CNA).
Pope Francis opened the second assembly of the Synod on Synodality on Wednesday with a Mass concelebrated by over 400 priests, bishops, and cardinals in St. Peter’s Square in which he warned synod delegates against imposing their own “agendas” during the nearly monthlong discussions.
“Let us be careful not to see our contributions as points to defend at all costs or agendas to be imposed,” the pope said in his homily on Oct. 2.
“Otherwise we will end up locking ourselves into dialogues among the deaf, where participants seek to advance their own causes or agendas without listening to others and, above all, without listening to the voice of the Lord,” he added.
The second session of the 16th Ordinary Synod of Bishops, running from Oct. 2–27, marks a critical phase in the Church’s global synodal process that began three years ago.
Building off of the discussions in the October 2023 synod assembly, the 368 voting delegates in this year’s session are expected to produce a final report to advise Pope Francis on how to enhance the “communion, participation, and mission” of the Catholic Church.
With some of the most controversial issues off of the agenda for the synod assembly, discussions are expected to focus on concrete proposals for instituting a listening and accompaniment ministry, greater lay involvement in parish economics and finances, and more powerful parish councils and bishops’ conferences.
The synod’s opening Mass began at 9:30 a.m. under partly cloudy skies with a procession that included 76 cardinals, 320 bishops, hundreds of priests, and lay synod delegates. The pope presided over the Mass on the feast of the Guardian Angels, emphasizing the importance of listening and harmony in his homily.
“Ours is not a parliamentary assembly but rather a place of listening in communion,” Francis said.
“It is not about majorities and minorities … What is important, what is fundamental, is harmony, the harmony that only the Holy Spirit can achieve,” he added. “The Holy Spirit is the master of harmony and is capable of creating one voice among so many different voices.”
The assembly format mirrors that of the previous year, with daily prayers, theological reflections, and small-group discussions organized by language. However some of the more controversial subjects discussed at last year’s assembly, including women deacons and “synodal” formation for future priests, have been delegated to the competency of 15 study groups formed starting late last year.
The synod assembly is the culmination of a multiyear global process that has involved diocesan, national, and continental stages. The discussions this month are anticipated to cover a range of proposals, from expanding the role of women in diocesan leadership to whether bishops’ conferences should be recognized as “ecclesial subjects endowed with doctrinal authority.”
In preparation for the assembly, participants engaged in a two-day retreat that concluded with a penitential vigil in St. Peter’s Basilica where individuals shared experiences of trauma related to sexual abuse, war, and indifference to migrants.
In his homily, Pope Francis used the word “listen” or “listening” nearly a dozen times. The pope encouraged delegates to “receive all the contributions collected during these three years with respect and attention, in prayer and in the light of the word of God.”
“With the help of the Holy Spirit, we must listen to and understand these voices — that is, the ideas, the expectations, the proposals — so as to discern together the voice of God speaking to the Church,” Francis said.
In a surprise announcement at the end of his homily, Pope Francis revealed that he will personally go to Rome’s Basilica of St. Mary Major on Sunday to pray the rosary for peace on the eve of the one-year anniversary of the Hamas attack on Israel.
Pope Francis also called for a global day of prayer and fasting on Oct. 7 amid the escalating violence in the Holy Land.
“Brothers and sisters, let us resume this ecclesial journey with an eye to the world, for the Christian community is always at the service of humanity, to proclaim the joy of the Gospel to all,” he said. “We need it, especially in this dramatic hour of our history, as the winds of war and the fires of violence continue to ravage entire peoples and nations.”
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The Synod should begin with every participant receiving the Sacrament of Reconciliation in individual confession of sins.
With the help of the Spirit we must listen to and understand these voices [participants], God speaking to the Church (encapsulation of Francis I seemingly on participants’ prophecy).
Elsewhere I’ve noted the difference between improvement, innovation subject to reason as compared to prophesy. Apparently, prophesy according to Francis is the voice of God to the faithful, whereas prophecy is witness to Christ. Or should we say Pope Francis is referring to revelation? When did opinion become God’s voice? When did it become revelation? Are we still seeking revelation after 2000 years of witness to the truth?
If it’s enlightenment coming from above what is the measure by which we determine its validity? If it’s practical knowledge the measure should be reason. If it’s God’s revelation, the rule, the measure remains reason. However, reason in such a situation would also have to reconcile with faith. Faith that has revealed we are to look for no new revelation.
The entire “synodal” enterprise has been a personal agenda from the start, personal agenda of Pope Francis, his Jesuits, the theological academy abandoned to a post-Christian ideology including feminism, LGBTQ, pantheism, et al. With this pronouncement it rises to the level of a tragic joke, but only the nefarious are laughing.
The authentic faithful mourn.
Isn’t the whole thing his personal agenda? Self-awareness is not his strong suit.
How about warning against your agendas Francis and the agendas of your circle of friends you put in charge of your synodal parliament?
Easy to criticize Francis, but how about supporting him for standing up and taking a lot of flak in Belgium for defending the Church’s position on the place of women in the Church and sexual orientation etc?
Defending the church’s position on sexual orientation? You mean the same pope who protects known sexual predators and meets privately with James Martin multiple times? I don’t think so.
Words are cheap and for a Peronist like Bergoglio part and parcel of his ideological control. Bergoglio’s actions in favor of weekly lunches with transgender prostitutes and incessant letters to LGBTQ+ promoters like James Martin, S.J. are just the opposite, like the very Synod that is unfolding in front of you with its waves of heresy.
The Peronista strikes again.
This is a conference of apostasy and sodomy and queer politics.
It has no communion in Christ…only with the one who tempted Him in the desert.
Pope Francis invented Synodaling to overcome the personal agendas of all previous pontificates.
Counter-Proposal:
“Brothers and Sisters,
Let us walk in the Way of Christ, who became like us that we might know the Truth, to set us free of from our slavery to sin, and that we would become like Him, and be a light to the world, which He so loved.”
He should take his own advice.
See in the report, the Pope is offering a -another- fundamental defining item:
‘ What is important, what is fundamental, is harmony, the harmony that only the Holy Spirit can achieve,” he added. “The Holy Spirit is the master of harmony and is capable of creating one voice among so many different voices.” ‘
He is repeating Catholic and naturalistic things over and over again inside a synodalistic gathering -allegedly a synod- and insisting that under his command there is a harmony that is the Holy Spirit which is matter of discernment and of discerning for the baptized.
Whatever rights and wrongs, he could do the same things in a non-synod format like a prayer meeting or with no format only the weekly Mass as a backdrop.
So many years have passed with tens of thousands of pages getting printed and the Pope is only just now lending some kind of outline which as it is, hasn’t quite been the “synodal output” recorded in the contents in the thousands of pages.
The Pope has shifted language -apparently, possibly- from mani-gnostic Pelagianism to personal agenda. He “sees” something that is integrally (?) or incipiently (?) baptismal-sacramental or to be equated in sacrament at the baptismal level.
Could be it means that if you’re “not synodal” you’re automatically narcissist resisting Jesus and bent on hell? But the non-baptized can have “synodal divine inspiration”? Going into the 11th year of the Pontificate continuing unresolved.
Now just WHO are the theologians sprouting all of that?
Sorry to all the DeLubac, Bouillard and Von Balthasar fans out there, but the theologians who are spewing the Blondelian philosophy of action, would be the ones who have passed it down to the current older clerics – such as any who speak of the desire and needs of the faithful under the Spirit of Christianity.
I find your comment helpful Joanne thank you.
One of the prohibitions of the Holy Spirit is demonstrated in St. Paul in a way different to what Pope Francis indicates in his own “exegesis”. St. Paul wanted to go to Spain and could not because the Spirit got him detained into the scenario which had brought the Jerusalem community into a fix. Following upon St. Paul’s intervention there, he was then made a permanent hostage.
This problem of isolating certain ideas in order to prove a particular point, is common to the protagonists and antagonists of synodalism. Very hard-going grouped mentalities. The Holy Father speaks about the signs of the times yet those are THE TIMES and THE SIGNS. The Holy Father feels it is an imperative to give them both an extended attention AND a prominence.
Fair? Impartial? Comprehensive? Authentic?
Not to mention the building up of an edifice of “exegesis” held as unassailable -or, of “magisterium”.
As to your mention Joanne of those 20th Century philosophers and theologians, I note that they were actually applying themselves to questions proper to Aquinas and theology (I do not mean Thomism). To a large extent their forays have remained preliminary for them and in the areas they identify; however, others have taken up with the language and ideas and have been turning out a huge mess of combinations, to try to make of it what would not follow and justify themselves.
It doesn’t require so much time, attention and effort, to get it corrected. Or recognize it. Yet the Holy Father came on the scene and proclaimed “Make a mess!” and “Lets synodalize time, space, whole, parts, reality, ideas, unity and conflict!” with and without giving the lead.
“And let’s be joyous!” he says, because “It’s pentecost all anew!”
https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2024/10/09/pope-prohibitions-of-the-spirit-ensure-church-unity-is-not-driven-by-personal-viewpoints/