ROME–Pizza in the Eternal City tends to exemplify a proposition I have long defended: what crossed the Atlantic going west was usually improved in the process. I like Roman pizza, as I like Rome, but I like New York pizza, Chicago pizza, Detroit pizza, and just about every other variant of American pizza–Hawaiian excepted–more. Still, when in Rome, do as the Romans. So in recent years, I have formed the happy habit of dining with a cadre of young friends I have dubbed the Pizza Group on each of my Roman excursions.
We meet in the early evening at the apartment in which I stay, and for an hour, we share wine, snacks, recent personal histories, and observations–sometimes sardonic–on matters ecclesiastical, cultural, and political. Then we decamp across the Borgo Pio to a local trattoria, where most of us order pizza–there is one spaghetti carbonara addict among us–and continue the conversation. The group is largely European, flavored by fellow Americans. Several of them are my former students in the Cracow-based Tertio Millennio Seminar on the Free Society. Others have taken my course on the life and thought of St. John Paul II at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas, the Angelicum. Still others are friends of friends.
Despite the differences in their national backgrounds, educational attainments, and professional experiences, these young Catholic adults display several common characteristics.
They are all thoroughly converted Christian disciples who love the Lord Jesus and Our Lady. They have a deep but not cloying piety. They embody dynamic orthodoxy, meaning that they firmly believe what the Gospel and the Church proclaim to be true, even as they seek ways to make those truths come alive in the 21st-century world. They worry about the toxic waste dump of contemporary culture–not least because they’ve seen the damage it’s done to their friends and relatives–but I don’t sense in them any desire to retreat into the bunkers of sectarianism. They intend, in their various vocations, to try to change the world for the better. They have robust senses of humor and can laugh at the absurdities of the moment without becoming cynics. Each of them would be a candidate for any sane parent’s dream son-in-law or daughter-in-law.
And none of them seems to have the slightest interest in the “hot-button issues” that obsess Catholic progressives.
They believe that the Catholic ethic of human love is life-giving, not cramped, puritanical, or oppressive. Their example invites their struggling or confused peers to conversion, not to membership in the cohorts of the perpetually aggrieved who insist that the Church must conform itself to the libertine spirit of the age to be “credible.” They know there is a virtual infinity of ways to serve Christ and the Church without receiving Holy Orders. They seem to have internalized John Paul II’s vision of a Church of missionary disciples who evangelize culture, society, economics, and politics as Christ’s faithful laity.
They might be deplored in some quarters as “culture warriors,” but my young friends understand that there are wars that must be fought and that the Lord calls the Church in every age to be a culture-reforming counterculture. Those of them pursuing advanced studies in theology and philosophy are equipping themselves to be the intellectual leaders of just that kind of revolution.
And here’s a point to underscore: these are all happy people. They undoubtedly have their trials and tribulations, and they understand that they’re facing stiff cultural headwinds personally, professionally, and in their lives as citizens. Still, they are happy people, and their enthusiasm is infectious.
Across from the Pizza Group, in this particular trattoria on a recent night, were two very senior American churchmen, both fully identified with the progressive Catholic agenda. They were in conversation with two middle-aged men, whom I assumed to be priests in mufti. It was easy to imagine that they were slicing and dicing the Synod on Synodality, which was in its second week, especially in terms of those “hot-button issues.”
And a thought occurred, as I pondered my friends and my pizza diavola: Who’s got the future? Aging proponents of a march back to the Catholic Seventies under the rubric of “paradigm shifts”? Or these young friends of mine, who are inspired by the teaching and example of John Paul II and Benedict XVI and who think we can still learn a lot from Augustine and Aquinas?
Time will tell. But if the goal is evangelizing a broken world with the healing, saving message of the Gospel, my bet is on the Pizza Group.
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I like the line, “And none of them seems to have the slightest interest in the “hot-button issues” that obsess Catholic progressives.” I am an OCIA catechist for +30 years. We are alternately engaged by our pastors or ignored. In neither case, have hot-button issues every been made important. God bless the 10 candidates and catechumen this year. Currently, our pastor is fully engaged and that makes a great impact.
Thank you, Mr. Weigel, and your friends, for the very hopeful respite from our recent Bergoglian fever dream of unrelenting Synodolytrous carnality.
It’s important for us to remember that Bergoglio and his dialoguing minions will not have the last word.
Synodaling: Che pizza!
“God is love.” (1 John 4:16) Sin is not love. Calling sin “love” is a sin. Sin cannot be united to the Perfection of God. The loving God wills our union with Him. As such, we are all called to repent of our sins to be united with God. “The Way to Heaven is Heaven.” (St. Teresa of Ávila)
There is no other way to God than the Way of Christ, the Truth and Life of God. (John 14:6-7) No amount of our words can change the Word of God and His Truth that sin is not loving. Enabling sin with synodal sophistry only leads us away from the life giving grace of God.
Christ calls us to “be perfect as your Heavenly Father is Perfect.” (Matthew 5:48) The super abundant grace of God invites us to personally return His love with love that turns away from sin. Our foremost fear must be the Hell of eternally sinful loss of union with Divine Love. May the will of God be done for each of us to turn from sin by returning the love of God now and forever. Amen.
Who, if having delighted in Roman Pizza, would not be drawn to this essay’s title?
An attention getter with a proposition of Westward improvement. Here I strongly disagree. The difference, Roman pizza subtlty delicious compared to American pile it on voraciousness. How it affects morality we shall see.
Like Weigel, time shall see who prevails. It seems an anomaly that the older veterans referred to priests in mufti to disguise their station are largely those who have taken to the brainchild of Fr Spadaro Pope Francis paradigm shift religion. Weren’t the deluge of Post Vat II heretics clergy from the old school, TLM practitioners. Although seething within with doubt and thoughts of radical change? They’re Weigel’s Roman pizza. What then comports the young Americans to reject the heresy that emitted from the old if not the enormous positive influence of John Paul II and backed and supplemented by Benedict XVI, both heavily imbued with Aquinas and Augustine respectively?
Their legacy is the miracle supported by grace that offers hope for a morally diseased Church bent on reshaping Catholicism in the ancient Eastern error of definition convertibility. That black may become white and the converse. Thus spake Zarathustra. Xi Jinpin’s base ideology. Our young believers don’t buy into it. The good is revealed to their hearts, which instruct their consciences that Good is beautiful, invincible, and permanent.
Yo, Dr. Weigel, why so myopic and backwardist?
Notice that while the Synod on Synodality might dismiss John Paul II and Benedict XVI, it still does recall their predecessor—in that it meets in the Paul VI Audience Hall! And, about meets or meats, consider that your Pepperoni slices, writ large, look a lot like the red-clothed synodal roundtables!
Get with the program! Notice, too, how the Barque of Peter resembles the cruise ship in the movie Poseidon Adventure (1972), flipped upside-down by a rogue wave something like an “inverted pyramid” Church trapped in the zeitgeist. And, too, in the expert kitchen the red-hatted synodal process is scripted to never end! The process IS the message. Like the lyrics in the movie: “there’s NOT [got] to be a morning after!” Coming from the lip-syncing priestess in red pants, Carol Lynley.
So, don’t get spaced-out if next time you find your local pizza inverted and served upside-down on the pizza pan…
“Thyme is greater than space”!
Pope Francis reminds me of a good case of food poisoning. Hopefully, “this too shall pass.”
‘ These are all happy people ‘ – ? the new spring time as predicted , fruit of the labor in the Divine Will , including that of the ones who are seen as ‘old’/ synodal …
still very much a neophyte in taking in the truths as revealed in the very many writings on Divine Will – an example here – https://luisapiccarreta.co/?page_id=6047 the related hard work and responsibility to chew them down to be milk as the hard work that the ‘seniors ‘ are engaged in …and those ‘hot button issues ‘ might very well be the critical ones such as – those happy unmarried young people – could they be in chaste marriages without much struggle … and consider vocations – being more aware of the power of Sacraments …
Requitting the Father Love in the manner and measure we are called to – The Synodal efforts meant to bring an awareness of need to do same to deal with the issues affecting The Church and the world .. faced with trials , instead of running away or falling into evil, knowing that both sides can be taken to The Lord and His Passion for the glory of The Father and for good of souls of all generations, for the reign of the Kingdom .. making ’rounds’ around the pizza – ‘love You , thank You Father for every bite of food and on behalf of all generations..’ that Rosary prayers for example in the Divine Will has the amazing effect as though all prayed , its effects rippling around …that the good will to listen and heed each other with respect can open similar good will in families …and make reparations for the past …