Participants in the Synod on Synodality spent two days before the start of its final session in a closed retreat that ended with a “penitential liturgy.” The synod office also provided the participants with a list of seven “sins” for which forgiveness would be sought. It did not say who would do the forgiving.
To put it bluntly, all this struck me as a rather odd way to launch a meeting. Consider a couple of the sins on that list:
“Sin against peace”
“Sin against creation, against indigenous populations, against migrants”
“Sin against poverty”
It is easy to declare opposition to big, impersonal abstractions, but I don’t know anybody who would admit to personal responsibility for anything on that list. And although the synod office said the individuals reading out the sins would request forgiveness “in the name of all the baptized”–and I admit guilt for lots of stuff—I respectfully decline to participate in taking the rap for misdeeds I didn’t commit.
But I’m more than willing to propose another question that somehow didn’t make it onto the list.
“Sin against preserving good elements of the Catholic tradition, including seemingly callous abandonment of liturgical use of Latin, and failure to stem the frightening decline in individual confession—private sacramental confession, that is, with forgiveness of personal sins, not a non-sacramental penitential liturgy.”
Let us hope that the Synod’s final session will move on quickly from this unfortunate start.
It opened October 2 and will close October 27, and it is entirely safe to predict that it will conclude with what Pope Francis convened it to deliver—a resounding endorsement of synods and synodality that the Pope will happily endorse.
And right now? Now we run into a gag rule imposed on the synod participants by its managers “in order to guarantee freedom of expression.”
No, I’m not making that up—here’s what the synod rules say:
In order to guarantee freedom of expression…each of the participants is bound to confidentiality and discretion with regard to both their own interventions and the interventions of other participants….This obligation remains in force even after the synodal assembly has ended.
In what was no doubt considered a generous gesture, the rules add that participants are welcome to share the synod office’s press releases and “official images” with media back home “in order to promote the circulation of information.” The document neglects to note—perhaps because its writer or writers don’t realize—that the response from serious journalists will be, “No thanks.”
All this takes me back to 1962 and the first session of the Second Vatican Council. Then, too, the Vatican incomprehensibly sought to keep what was happening at the council a secret.
Predictably, of course, it didn’t work. Thanks to the pseudonymous Xavier Rynne and others, copious leaks were soon pouring out. And, the Vatican bureaucracy having learned its lesson, from that point on the council adopted a sensible information policy that reflected credit on Vatican II, the Holy See, and the Church.
Will the same thing happen this time? I can’t predict. But I do expect that there will be people in the synod assembly who won’t take kindly to being gagged and that experienced journalists, supposing they judge the Synod on Synodality a story worth covering, will get that story and share it with anybody who might be interested.
And if that happens, I hope today’s would-be news managers will learn a lesson from it, just as their predecessors did in 1962.
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One should never attempt to place a “gag order” on the work of the Holy Spirit (if it is, indeed, the Holy Spirit who is guiding the work of the Synod as it is claimed).
Saint John, the beloved Apostle, said it well:
“GOD is light and in Him there is no darkness at all.
If we say we have fellowship with GOD, while we are walking in darkness,
we lie and do not do what is true.”
1 John 1:5-6
Honest Catholic Christians are totally transparent, nothing in us is hidden; we are conspicuous by our fullness of honesty, faith, trust, and joy in The LORD.
The LORD Jesus Christ draws us more and more into the Light.
In contrast: occultists committed to satanic ritual abuse, witchcraft, freemasonry, paganism, and other miscellaneous spiritisms, together with those engaged in every form of skullduggery & criminality, cherish and depend on secrecy.
Wherever secrecy is fostered within the Church, we are serving the enemy not GOD.
Always seeking to hear & lovingly follow King Jesus Christ; blessings from marty
Though, of course, Jesus issued several gag orders regarding His supernatural and salvific impact to those He most trusted, to those He had healed, and even to demons. He did so appropriately.
In charity, we can understand that partial and precipitous comments about the synodal sessions could hijack a truer and more accurate telling of the synodal work. Media portals are often deliberate in disparaging the Church and excel in subterfuge and would run with a phrase or two that could potentially harm or confuse the faithful.
Those requesting vocal prudence (the gag), are probably aware of the significant scepticism regarding the synodal way and of a press that thrills in creating controversy.
The Catechism states (2478) that everyone should be careful to interpret insofar as possible his neighbor’s thoughts, words, and deeds in a favorable way: Every good Christian ought to be more ready to give a favorable interpretation to another’s statement than to condemn it. But if he cannot do so, let him ask how the other understands it. and if the latter understands it badly, let the former correct him with love. If that does not suffice, let the Christian try all suitable ways to bring the other to a correct interpretation so that he may be saved.
However, we are understandably interested in what is happening in those synodal sessions and will be pleasantly surprised if no harm is done to our long held faith as preserved in the Catechism.
Jesus issued “gag” orders to His most trusted confidants, to some of those He healed, and to demons. Jesus’ reasons for doing so are appropriately nuanced according to whom He is speaking.
It is understandable that the synod session managers are concerned that parcial and precipitous comments could cause confusion when twisted by uncharitable and hostile media platforms. Speaking with prudence is normal Christian practice demonstrated by the Master Himself.
The Catechism states (1478) “Every good Christian ought to be more ready to give a favorable interpretation to another’s statement than to condemn it. But if he cannot do so, let him ask how the other understands it. and if the latter understands it badly, let the former correct him with love. If that does not suffice, let the Christian try all suitable ways to bring the other to a correct interpretation so that he may be saved.”
On October 6th, 2023 the journalist Diane Montagna asked at an official Vatican Press Briefing a long question including:
‘…repeatedly Synod officials…have talked about the Holy Spirit as the ‘protagonist’ of the Synod…How is this assembly discerning whether something comes from the Holy Spirit or from another spirit?’
Full reply from Paolo Ruffini:
“I can respond by citing the Creed, which you know: “I believe in the Holy Spirit.” For the rest, it is the People of God on a journey that is meeting to pray and converse together. In history, as in prior history, moments happen when the People of God gather, pray, God with them and the Holy Spirit helps them to discern.”
Diane Montagna: But how do we know that it’s the Holy Spirit?
Christiane Murray (vice-director of the Holy See Press Office): Thank you, thank you Dr Ruffini. Are there other questions? No, then… tomorrow there’s another meeting here.
Oh dear !
An illuminating insight. Thank you dear James Scott.
Thanks to the journalist Diane Montagna for highlighting the hiatus.
As dear Paolo Ruffini, Christiane Murray, et al. confirm:
“Whatever goes the way we want it, that is the will of The Holy Spirit! Our will overides the Apostolic Witness of The New Testament & The Catechism of the Catholic Church. In fact our will submits GOD’s will to the will of the spirit of this world!”
“As Pontius Pilate said: ‘What is truth?’ Our truth is GOD’s truth! To disobey is to obey! Sin is holiness! Evil is good! Wrong is right! Errors are correct!”
The arrogant PF ecclesial bully-boys are revealed as much in what they will not say as in what they do say.
Come soon beloved King Jesus Christ, we desperately need you, LORD.
Ever seeking to submit to GOD’s Word; love & blessings from marty
Time is greater than space. Synodaling requires hiding from God. The transparency of the German Synodalweg is pure pride, too out and open.
It is rather ironic that sins against indigenous people should be listed beside sins against migrants since, of course, sins against indigenous people are committed by migrants, and sins against migrants are committed by indigenous people. Unless, of course, they are committed by some mysterious shadow people who are neither from here nor from away.
Mark, which only illustrates how much gobbledygook emanates from this papacy.
No, my “sin” is to call the indisputable petulant pride of Pope Francis, who it has now been revealed as the author of these moronic concepts of sin, is performing a grave insult to the Deposit of Faith and the entire heritage of the Catholic religion. And I will refuse to my dying day to never apologize for taking offense at Francis’ insistence that his idolized indigenous peoples of the Amazon did evil in burying children alive and his insistence that this matter not be discussed at the Amazon Synod.
Well said, Mark. I appreciate your irony.
This reminds me of Stalin’s show trials in which supposed enemies of the people would publicly confess their highly dramatic sins against the revolution in a bid to save themselves from the firing squad.
They would say whatever the regime wanted to hear, and the whole world knew that it was a sham.
Perhaps not surprisingly, we see many similarities in today’s Synod on Synodolatry.
I am glad you wrote it; I made a similar comment (but more detailed and graphic) a day ago and it was not published, it seems. I wrote there that “the public generalized confessions” of the members of ‘the S of S’ look almost identical, in spirit, to the confessions of the members of the Communist party just before the period of “firing squads”. It was a time when people would not get arrested/imprisoned/shot yet but would be “judged and condemned” at the “Communists Synods” for “not being vigilant enough” because they failed to see in their comrades “a deviation to the left line” or “sympathy for the right” or whatever – and thus publicly excluded from the Communist Party.
The language of those “Communist Synods” was incredibly similar to one which we hear now. The thinking members of the Communist Party (and sincere in their convictions) had one persistent thought, “Don’t they see how idiotic all those accusations and confessions are?” Yet they were mostly silent, paralyzed by a vague fear; those who asked that question were immediately shut up by the accusers, in a way that defies human logic. That very phenomenon, of triumphant absurdity of accusations/sins and silencing anyone who tries to speak logically with even more absurdity, is what I experienced during the local S of S sessions.
I perceive that it is important to establish the difference between “a soft period of public confessions” and a period of hardcore repressions that followed it, in my homeland because it allows us to see a vector of the current events. Right now ‘the S of S’ engages in showing to all the world how nice they are via public confessions, ticking the boxes in the list of the appropriate, for a good citizen of the brave new world, qualities. The brave new church thus sanctifies those qualities creating something like a new Credo. (in a covert way, as everything it does). These actions naturally identify those who are unwilling to do so because “the nice list” has nothing to do with Christ. I am quite sure we will see “a kind of repressions”, i.e. not in a form of “firing squads” but an attempt to make invisible those who disagree with the party line, via putting them into a virtual room labelled “not us” akin to those designed for mentally disturbed, with soft and sound-protected walls – done with great nicety and concern for our well-being. Something totally invisible or visible only via a reference.
Russell Shaw speaks truth, especially about transparency vs a cyclops perspective on synodality.
And, yet, if papal scribes were more intent on evangelizing than on such manipulation, might they try harder to articulate what Vatican II also only began to struggled with, over half a century ago? That is, in our compact world, how does the perennial Catholic Church shine an adult light on BOTH individual sins of “commission” and on emerging, less deliberate, and more convoluted sins of “omission”?
From Vatican II, these two different-but-identical goalposts in the same Gaudium et Spes (1965):
FIRST, “[c]ontemplating 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 [moral absolutes as in the Catechism 1992/4, and Veritatis Splendor, 1993!]. Man’s conscience itself gives ever more emphatic voice to these principles. Therefore, actions which deliberately conflict with these same principles, as well as orders commanding such actions, are criminal. Blind obedience cannot excuse those who yield to them” (n. 79).
SECOND, again and then more
“Furthermore, whatever is opposed to life itself, such as any type of murder, genocide, abortion, euthanasia, or willful self-destruction, whatever violates the integrity of the human person, such as mutilation, torments inflicted on body or mind, attempts to coerce the will itself; [AND THEN] whatever insults human dignity, such as subhuman living conditions, arbitrary imprisonment, deportation, slavery, prostitution, the selling of women and children; as well as disgraced working conditions, where men are treated as mere tools for profit, rather than as free and responsible persons; all these things and others of their like are infamies indeed. They poison human society, but they do more harm to those who practice them than those who suffer from the injury. Moreover, they are a supreme dishonor to the Creator” (n. 27).
OBSERVATION: Apart from the need for a more morally-rooted political and economic culture—the “distinctive role of the laity” (Gaudium et Spes, n. 43)—the interrelated and possible sin of ecclesial synodality, would be to overreach into matters of more secular “prudential judgment”. Or even, to omit (a sin of omission!) needed criticism and rejection of unilateral (anti-synodal?) edicts like Cardinal Fernandez’s Fiducia Supplicans.
Why can’t we go back to the old days and have them discuss how many angels can fit on a pin head, instead?
Hey!
What about sins against babies who are in their mothers’ wombs?
Sins against sexuality-confused children?
Sins against America?
Sins against sovereign borders?
Sins against the gift of fossil fuels?
Sins against Donald Trump?
Sins against the Mass as it has been celebrated for myriads of centuries?
Sins against Catholic doctrine?
Bergoglio and his Dark Vatican have much to atone for.
Brineyman: You’re a truth-speaker!
Summed up by Francis’ prime theological principles, probably borrowed from his appreciation for the Hindu goddesses (equal to the Trinity we now know), God is not omniscient, but synodal séance committees discerning “a spirit” that Francis appoints are, and God’s opinion about truth is not immutable, but seance committees Francis appoints directing the future of humanity, discerning “a spirit” are infallible, even when their findings need to be reversed in accord with Francis’ expectations. And for this we shall go forth for a new form of consensus, even when unanimously rejected by everyone but Francis.
May I preach a sermon to the readers? I begin. A reading from the gospel according to the Apostle from Buenos Aires, “Thou shalt not Sin against peace, Sin against creation, Sin against indigenous populations, Sin against migrants, Sin against poverty”.
Sons and daughters, I realize this requires some thought. Be comforted that you’re not alone. Remember, new wine is not meant for old wineskins. In this instance anyone whose reached the age of reason.
What could possibly be expressed in a Synod that the participants don’t want anyone else to hear? So, a “synodal church” is one that does not want others to hear what is expressed. Does anyone in the “synodal church” see the disconnect, the contradiction? Perhaps those who want their voice to be contained among a tiny, select group of the elite – maybe they should not be the ones who build a “synodal church.” And perhaps it should dawn on the participants that the notion of a “synodality” that must be contained is not synodality at all … and, above all, be scrapped as silly, even demonic.
Yet, dear jphays, this is just one of so many unresolved, organizational, double-minded hypocrisies that we Catholic parishoners have to live with every day.
Isn’t it these failures that should be the proper object of honest, Holy Spirit-directed synodality; not the anti-Apostolic novelties of PF & Co.?
How many hear our LORD calling: “Clean up My house, I’m coming soon!”
What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas!
Dear Doctor Baker, your work in biolinguistics “priniciples and parameters” had a huge impact on my intellectual development. The principles of Freemasonry are to explode the Catholic Parameters from within the Church… Obviously that objective has nothing what-so-ever to do with the synodal new Church.
This assembly in Rome should be referred to as the SynodalCircus since it is a convocation of clowns.