Pope Benedict XVI often said that, in today’s skeptical and cynical world, the saints make a more persuasive case for the truth of Christianity than the most sophisticated arguments. One has to wonder, then, why the Working Document (Instrumentum Laboris, or IL) for October’s Synod on Synodality is virtually devoid of references to the saints, or to the Church’s heritage of holiness over two millennia, or to the holy ones who surround us in this third millennium of “journeying together” (a favorite synodal trope).
Perhaps that has something to do with the IL’s seeming lack of interest in the goal of the Christian journey: eternal joy within the light and life of the Holy Trinity, in that never-ending celebration that Revelation 19 calls the Wedding Feast of the Lamb.
This is all the more odd in that the synodal process underway since 2021 is often presented by its managers and proponents as an expression and development of the Second Vatican Council. Yet in the Council’s Dogmatic Constitution in the Church — one of its two foundational texts — we find an entire chapter on “The Universal Call to Holiness,” in which the Council fathers teach that holiness is every Christian’s baptismal vocation. Sanctity is not for the church sanctuary alone. Saints are not only those supremely good people whom the Church honors with the title “saint.” Each of us must become a saint to fulfill our human and Christian destiny.
C.S. Lewis anticipated this conciliar teaching when he noted that most of us, suddenly caught up to heaven, would probably feel a little uncomfortable. Why? Because we are not yet saints. And saints, Lewis suggested, are those who can live comfortably with God forever. How can the saints live that way? Because, in the Eastern Church Fathers’ striking image, they have been “deified.” So the entire point of the Christian “journey” is to cooperate with God’s grace so that we grow into the kind of people who will feel at home at the Wedding Feast of the Lamb: overflowing with gratitude for the invitation, and not feeling like party-crashers.
Vatican II taught also taught that sanctity is all around us. Convinced of this truth, John Paul II reformed the process by which the Church recognizes the saints God has made. In the 1983 apostolic Constitution Divinus Perfectionis Magister (The Divine Teacher of Perfection), John Paul changed the beatification/canonization process from an adversarial legal proceeding to a scholarly historical investigation. The adversarial process sought to disprove the sanctity of an individual proposed for beatification or canonization, with the famous “Devil’s Advocate” acting as a kind of post-mortem prosecutor making the case against the candidate. If the candidate survived this inquisition, his or her sanctity would still have to be confirmed by a miracle. In the new process initiated by John Paul II, the goal is to demonstrate the sanctity of the candidate through the testimony of witnesses, through a serious, critical biography of the candidate — and then, of course, through a confirming miracle.
The point of streamlining the beatification/canonization process was to give the Church more and different examples of those who had answered the universal call to holiness than was possible under the old process. John Paul believed that we need the example of the saints — especially the saints of our own time — in order to live our baptismal call to sanctity here and now. The saints, in his view, are our most important companions on the pilgrimage of Christian life. The saints illustrate the many legitimate pathways of Christian discipleship. The saints also demonstrate that those diverse pathways have a common origin — Jesus Christ, the teacher and model of perfection — and a common terminus: communion with the Thrice-Holy God.
If October’s Synod on Synodality is going to contribute to the evangelization of a world sorely in need of holiness, and if it is going to accelerate the ongoing reform of the Church so that Catholicism more effectively displays such holiness, then the Synod is going to have to take the saints far more seriously than its Working Document does. If the Synod’s “facilitators” don’t invite its language-based discussion groups to explore the many paths to holiness evident in Catholicism today, providing examples of those who have recently trod or are now treading those paths, then the Synod’s participants should do so on their own. Let the Synod talk about what’s right with the Church as well as about what’s wrong.
For if “synodality” is not about fostering sanctity, then it is institutional ecclesiastical navel-gazing, and a scandalous waste of time and money.
(George Weigel’s column ‘The Catholic Difference’ is syndicated by the Denver Catholic, the official publication of the Archdiocese of Denver.)
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![Detail from 'Crucifixion' (c.1315) by Giotto di Bondone [WikiArt.org]](https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/files.catholicworldreport.com/2018/04/4668crucifixion_00000004277-326x245.jpg)
Yes what we need is a Church on its knees humble, broken and Holy. This isn’t the in your face anger and pride that many brethren (both left and right) display. It’s good to listen to each other, but not to the exclusion of listening to God. We need to recognize the true holiness in others and try to live as they do and did. The ones being emulated are the loud and proud , not the hidden humble.
One of the reasons I sought out a venue for growing in my Catholic Faith and Life quite apart from the Novus Order Church was the expose by Church Militant regarding the inspiration for the Spiritual aspect of the Synod. The church proposed the works of “Isaac the Syrian” a man condemned as a heretic for his theory on “Universal Salvation” which was roundly condemned by the wise and holy early church fathers as well as wholly in contradiction to the words in the gospels of Christ Himself. If the spiritual element of the synod proposes Isaac the Syrian then the twig is bent and . . . so grows the tree.
Maybe synodality is not at all about “fostering sanctity,” and more about ass-uming already that sanctity is automatically conferred by the “universal call to holiness”—
…And therefore, in this disintegrated world, more about the safe-space (!) team-building actions of soles “walking together,” even at the expense of souls and the backbone of “standing together”?
After all, St. John Paul II explored the action path in his “The Acting Person,” but while clearly only “bracketing” to the side (as in algebra)—AND still retaining—the magisterium and the central mission of an evangelizing Church. The novelty of the moment, now, is to entirely drop what’s in the brackets, e.g., Veritatis Splendor. So, we have synodal fiddling while Rome and much of civilization burns…
Instead, an American cardinal spoke truth to power when, in launching the 2012 Year of Faith in Rome, he summarized this Big Lie: “It is as if a tsunami of secular influence has swept across the cultural landscape, taking with it such societal markers as marriage, family, the concept of the common good and objective right and wrong.”
All such markers now up for grabs synodally! Today the replacement of conscientious and concrete moral judgments with subjective, circumstantial and even plebiscite decisions. Yes, “navel gazing” and with a fixation on much else anatomical, and with neutered “facilitators” leading from behind.
Good points on deification, perhaps more than a waste of time. Apparently a drifting away from Christ as the revelation of the Father. A new paradigm approach to Christ’s Gospel questions the permanence of truth. Weigel underscores the witness of the saints. That witness long considered a defining feature of Christianity.
Whatever Dude! The Saints are so yesterday. All this repenting stuff is such a drag. It’s backwardist, like previous Popes. That’s why teenagers like me have been invited to vote! Synodaling with our heroes like James Martin and friends skips that yucky crucified stuff. Take that Joel Olsteen! Finally, we will have more people than he does!
Remember the Synod on Synodaling Moto: Let none be shriven since all is forgiven.
Our Lady warned about compromisers like you. “The work of the devil will infiltrate even into the Church in such a way that one will see cardinals opposing cardinals, bishops against bishops. The priests who venerate me will be scorned and opposed by their confreres…churches and altars sacked; the Church will be full of those who accept compromises.” –Message of Akita, 1973
I think you may be misreading the comments by “God’s Fool,” who uses more than a fair amount of sarcasm…
Oh dear, my bad. Consider me shriven. Just some gallows humor JP. Listen to Uncle Carl.
And quite a refreshing change from reading brother George still finding matters “odd” when our “journeys together” has been a clear path for ten years to radically change the Church into what would satisfy the hatreds and prejudices of any venomous Catholicism hater of the past half century.
Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it. THIS is GODS exhortation to sanctification Paul gave to the Thessalonians
The fatally defective Second Vatican Council on which the Synod is based is the problem.
Pope Saint Pius X, in 1910, in a motu proprio, mandated that all Catholic clergy must take an Oath Against the Heresy of Modernism before being ordained to the sub-diaconate on their way to the priesthood Saint Pius X’s order remained in full force until 1967, when Pope Paul VI rescinded it. Do the math: Every single Priest, Bishop, Archbishop, Cardinal, and indeed Pope, who entered the priesthood between 1910 and 1967 had taken the Oath Against Modernism. Fit the math into the calendar: Every single participant in the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), including Pope Paul VI, had taken the Oath Against Modernism.
Cardinal Ratzinger, who had been a peritus (an expert theological advisor) at the Second Vatican Council and who later became Pope Benedict XVI, wrote a 1982 treatise on Catholic theology, Principles of Catholic Theology: Building Stones for a Fundamental Theology. In that treatise, he expressed his understanding that the intent of the participants in the Second Vatican Council’s was to reconcile the Catholic Church with what Saint Pius X had condemned as the Heresy of Modernism.
Putting two and two together yields the inexorable conclusion: It is not possible to accept that the participants in the Second Vatican Council were cooperating with God the Holy Spirit when they intentionally adopted measures in conflict with the Oath Against Modernism—the Oath that they all had taken.
Your caricature of Cardinal Ratzinger does little justice to the total of what he actually wrote on the matter in “Principles of Catholic Theology” (1982/7): the retrospective Epilogue “On the Status of Church and Theology Today” (pp. 367-393, dated 1975).
First, yes, your citation, but largely out of context:
“Let us be content to say here that the text [Gaudium et Spes: The Constitution on the Church in the Modern World] serves as a countersyllabus and, as such, represents, on the part of the Church, an attempt at an official reconciliation with the new era inaugurated in 1789. Only from this perspective can we understand, on the one hand, its ghetto-mentality, of which we have spoken above; only from this perspective can we understand, on the other hand, the meaning of this remarkable meeting of Church and the world. Basically, the word ‘world’ means the spirit of the modern era, in contrast to which the Church’s group-consciousness saw itself as a separate subject that now, after a war that had been in turn both hot and cold, was intent on dialogue and cooperation [….]”
Ratzinger goes on to note the very different perspectives served in the text: the German, the Latin, and the Third World. And then, how all of this unraveled through phases of “euphoria,” and then disappointed “optimism,” and “pessimism,” and fragmentation of the errant Concilium contingent: “The great scholars associated with Concilium–Rahner, Congar, Schillebeeckx, Kung–were not as united as they had thought.”
“[….] An interpretation of the Council that understands its dogmatic texts [the Constitution on the Church, the Constitution on Divine Revelation] as mere preludes to a still unattained conciliar spirit, that regards the whole as just a preparation for Gaudium et Spes and that looks upon the latter text as just the beginning of an unswerving course toward an ever greater union with what is called progress—such and interpretation is NOT ONLY CONTRARY TO WHAT THE COUNCIL FATHERS INTENDED AND MEANT, IT HAS BEEN REDUCED AD ABSURDUM BY THE COURSE OF EVENTS [caps added].”
Summary, parsing Shakespeare’s Cassius: “The fault lies not in our stars and the total of the actual Council and its Documents, but in ourselves and now our ‘unswerving’ synodality!”
Thank you, Peter. I value your daily comments. I do believe that Pope Benedict XVI realized something of what he has written as Cardinal Ratzinger when he advocated in favor of a hermeneutic of reform in continuity with all the timeless truths of the Catholic Faith.
On the Oath-Against-Modernism issue, beside the logic in my own comment, I tend to rely on Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò’s acknowledgement that the violation of the Oath Against Modernism at Vatican II did indeed occur: “I confirm that, according to the canonical norms then in vigor, all the bishops who participated in the Second Vatican Council and all the clerics with positions in the commissions swore the Iusiurandum Antimodernisticum [Oath Against Modernism] together with the Professio Fidei. Certainly those who at the Council rejected the preparatory schemas prepared by the Holy Office and played a decisive role in the drafting of the most controversial texts violated their oath sworn on the Holy Gospels; but I do not think that for them this posed a serious problem of conscience.” (Abp. Viganò on St. Pius X’s ‘Oath Against Modernism’, Its Abolition by Paul VI,” Catholic Family News, Jan. 11, 2021.)
When the rubber hit the road on modernism, it was AB Lefebvre who was driving the opposition. Thank God! The man will be raised to the high altar just as Athanasius was…Rome, come to your senses!!!
Ever since V2 the church has stopped condemning the heresy of Modernism. Why? It’s simple. They’ve embraced it.
Well said! a few years ago, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò agreed with your reasoning. Thet did embrace Modernism.
“The abolition of the Iusiurandum Antimodernisticum [ i.e., the Oath Against Modernism] was part of a plan to dismantle the disciplinary structure of the Church, precisely at the moment in which the threat of the adulteration of Faith and Morals by the Innovators was greatest. This operation confirms the intention of those who, in the face of the ultra-progressive attack initiated at the Council, not only allowed the enemy to have freedom of action but also deprived the Hierarchy of the disciplinary means with which to guard and defend itself. And it was a desertion, a betrayal of unheard-of gravity, especially in those terrible years: as if in the middle of full combat, the commander-in-chief ordered his men to lay their arms down before the enemy just as they were getting ready to invade the Citadel.”
(Abp. Viganò on St. Pius X’s ‘Oath Against Modernism’, Its Abolition by Paul VI,” Catholic Family News, Jan. 11, 2021.)
Mr. Marcin writes that Cardinal Ratzinger, in Principles of Catholic Theology: Building Stones for a Fundamental Theology “….expressed his understanding that the intent of the participants in the Second Vatican Council’s [sic] was to reconcile the Catholic Church with what Saint Pius X had condemned as the Heresy of Modernism.”
IF Ratzinger even seemed to imply the above (I think it most indubitably unlikely.), you really should do yourself and us the favor of supplying the full and complete citation—-edition, chapter, page, paragraph and sentence numbers—so we faithful Catholics can see for ourselves the context of Ratzinger’s writing and discern his true meaning. As it is, we are highly skeptical of what you say.
See the article on the Tradition in Action web site beginning at https://www.traditioninaction.org/HotTopics/P022_Flaw_1.htm .
It’s a three-part article. The site just listed is for the first part, and it enables you to click in to the other two parts.
As a secondary source, TIA cannot adequately verify your claim. If Ratzinger truly said what you say he said, IN the book you said he said it, your veracity and credibility would prove exemplary if you provide the answer to the question I asked. Thanks.
I thought the reason JPII changed the canonisation process was to allow the Head of Opus Dei to be declared a saint. A devils advocate may have uncovered some inconvenient truths.
Thank you George. For the thousandth time, I am deeply grateful for your teaching. It might be a fools errand, but I’ll try to add a less hangry, satirical attempt to shepherd myself.
The Saints never taught that sin was God’s will.
Amoris Laetitia encourages a young Augustine to think that it is God’s will to stay with his concubine for the sake of their son; such enabling loves no one, and seeks to block God’s loving call to repentance. God wants to be united with us. Only our sins prevent this. Amoris Laetitia would not have helped the young Augustine to receive God’s grace of repentance to become St. Augustine. Nor would Amoris Laetitia have helped his concubine who was made for union with God, not to live in sin with young Augustine. Nor would pastoral enabling have helped their son, Adeodatus, who was “given by God” to be a monk with his father. Perhaps least of all, Amoris Laetitia would have undercut Monica the great mother, who was called to be St. Monica by praying and encouraging her son to accept the grace of God given to each of us to be a Saint.
Amoris Laetitia seeks a way to tolerate concubinage. And if we can keep a concubine, why would it be wrong to tolerate or bless other sins? So as a Catholic, I have yet to see a way to implement Amoris Laetitia and remain faithful to Christ. Not even a Pope, a Synod, anything, can dispense from God’s Commandments and His ever abundant grace to repent, believe and be united with Him as the Saints He has called us to be.
Saints Monica and Augustine pray for us.
AL holds that a man can “discern” in the “concrete circumstances of today’s world” it is perfectly “merciful” for him to abandon his family and run away with his mistress and start a second, hopefully, more “loving” family. No mercy for the abandoned family. In the new world of mercyland, the only evil is feeling guilty for the evil that you do. Did I say evil? Oh, I forgot, I am one of those evil rigid types who still believe that evil is evil.
The synods are about secularization and normalizing the sexually abnormal. Period.Taking up the values of the world, and/or socialism, not the values of Jesus. They are not about anything else. It appears important to those in charge in places like Germany that they get an approving pat on the head from the non-churched and those whose morality is at the fringes, at best. You can well like a homosexual person and should always treat them with the same respect that Jesus asks we treat everyone. That does not mean you can give a seal of approval to their sinful sexual activities. Yet that is exactly what these synods intend to do. Because it appears to them that nothing is more important than insuring that nobody is “offended” by talk of sin or by demands that they not overstep a certain line in the moral sand. “Anything goes” as long as you are happy. It is well to remember that some people are “happy” being thieves, wife beaters, and practicing any number of sexual perversions like pedophilia. There HAVE to be moral standards, and the church is the place that should be providing it. For every Bishop or Pope who declines to take an actual and clear moral stand on the issues, because they are charmed by being lauded by the politically powerful or secular society in general, the price is paid in the lost souls of those who never were taught the truth. What price THEIR souls will pay for their betrayal of church values, they will discover in due time.
Thank you, George, for your always helpful commentary. Agree that if synodality is not about fostering sanctity, it’s a waste.
In the view of some, it’s definitely not about fostering sanctity. It appears that the Lavender Mafia has another agenda as Michael Hanby writes in First Things saying “the Synod on Synodality has revealed itself as the Synod on LGBTQ affirmation and inclusion.”
St Peter Damian, pray for us.
Of synodality’s impenetrable Instrumentum Laboris, I readily repent that during my long career in the so-called public sector I also inclined to say everything (!) in one missive or another, with the elaborate products deservedly round-filed. Lord, have mercy!
So, there is, however, an overlooked and poetic refrain throughout the turgid Instumentum laboris (IL). A certain fractal quality whereby each integrative sentence includes all of the others. A certain anesthetic verbosity and circularity.
The most salient code words—which include all the others—are “procedures, structures (46 times), institutions”, and, of course, “synodal” (317 times). So, cribbing from the poetry of Elizabeth Barret Browning’s Sonnet 43: “How do I patronize thee? Let me count the ways…”. Unpacking the code words, what, then, are the ways in which we are patronized, relentlessly? As a cross-cultural version of Chinese water torture, perhaps this funeral dirge:
“…dialogue, characterize, polarize, realize, (de)marginalize, emphasize, tensions, discernment, more discernment, welcoming all, brothers and sisters, concretize, protagonism, contextual and contextualization, globalized, harmonized, ecclesial ministeriality, actualization, graduality…” And, thusly, a synodal Church promotes the “fabric” (good word!) of passing from “I” to “we” (n. 25). Butt, channeling too much the 1960ish psychiatry of “I’m okay, you’re okay?”
In fairness, though, and digging deeper as did the optimistic lad with a shovel who said, while facing a barn totally full of manure, “there’s got to be a pony in there somewhere!”
Mea culpa, also, and I repent.
With all due regard, Peter, BUTT if that was/is poetry, my/your/his/her/their A is G, B, LMNO or P.😶