ACI Prensa Staff, Oct 1, 2023 / 14:34 pm (CNA).
Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, the Vatican’s new chief of doctrine, predicts that “those who expect big changes” to come out of this month’s Synod of Bishops will be “disappointed.”
But the Argentinian prelate, speaking Saturday in an exclusive interview with ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner, left the door open to such changes happening at a later date.
Fernández, the prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, made the remarks during the traditional courtesy visits that took place after he and 20 others received their “red hats” as cardinals from Pope Francis at a consistory in St. Peter’s Square on Sept. 30.
Speaking just days before the Oct. 4 opening of the 16th Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, he predicted that those on both sides of the Church’s polarized wings will not get what they want, or fear.
“People who are afraid of strange or misplaced doctrinal advances, and people who, on the other hand, expect great changes, are going to be really disappointed,” he said.
The Synod on Synodality, he said, “is not conceived in this vein.”
“At least not this year,” he added. “Afterwards, we will see what emerges, and next year we will see what happens, but for this synod, this year, we cannot expect too much.”
Nothing for the headlines
What can be expected, the new cardinal assured, is “deepening of our self-awareness, of what we are as Church, what the Lord is asking of us, and what the world of today expects as well, and how we can better reach people with the same message we have always had.”
“If we manage to attain a light that guides us, that orients us, for the future of what we have to be before the people of God and before the world, I think that would already be immense, but it will not attract anyone’s attention. You can’t make a headline out of it,” he reflected.
The former archbishop of La Plata, Argentina, who since September holds what is perhaps the most powerful position in the Vatican after the Holy Father, suggests that “everyone, including journalists” should “lower their expectations” because, he asserted, “there will not be much new” from this synod.
Profoundly spiritual call
As for being named a cardinal, the 61-year-old Fernández told ACI Prensa that his appointment to the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith was “more shocking.”
“It implies very intense work, which I do with pleasure, because for the most part, it involves theology, which is something I am passionate about,” he explained. “I dreamed that after I turned 65, I would return to studying and teaching. In reality [with this post,] I am not going to teach, but I do have to study, and that is something I enjoy.”
The cardinal went on to praise his “very good team” of specialists and theologians at the dicastery, which, he said, gives him “more security.”
But the cardinal’s hat, “it seems to me, wasn’t indispensable,” Fernández added. “As Pope Francis has ‘his own ideas,’ he could have left me as a prefect without this title.”
Nevertheless, the call to be a cardinal has “that symbolic meaning of the donation of blood,” he said. “A call to a fuller, more courageous [surrender], more liberated from one’s own ego and one’s own needs.”
This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.
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We read: “People who are afraid of strange or misplaced doctrinal advances, and people who, on the other hand, expect great changes, are going to be really disappointed.” Of course, for the non-amnesiac, something enlightening might be gained by simply reading history…
Take, for example, the historian Christopher Dawson who—nearly a century ago—said things quite compatible with Laudato Si, AND even with the neo-Marxist critique of amoral forms of acquisitive capitalism…AND about the coupling of economic conquest and sexual aberrations of all sorts–as in the LGBTQ lifestyle assimilated by synodality itself!
Dawson:
“[The idealism of the great bourgeois thinkers] ended win the materialism of the acquisitive capitalist society….What we are suffering from is the morbid growth of a selfish civilization which has no end beyond itself—a monstrous cancer that destroys the face of nature [Laudato Si: Our Common Home!] and eats into the heart of humanity [septic Secularism]. As in the days of ancient Rome, but on a far larger scale, men have made themselves masters of this world, and find themselves left with nothing but their own sterile lusts.
“For this ‘leisure civilization’ in which the people sit down to eat and to drink and rise up to play is the dark world which has turned its face from God and from which God’s face is hidden [….] the Kingdom of Mammon [economic avarice] and the Kingdom of Belial [sexual lust] are one [!], and it matters little which of them is the nominal master, so long as the world is theirs.”
To what extent is compassionate and welcome-mat synodality the unwitting stooge of this coupling? Even with brilliant leadership and governance, our historic moment of malignant disruption would overwhelm, despite the good start between 1978 and 2013 with the Catechism and Veritatis Splendor and such…
So, what really, should happen even in the first Synod 2023? Why does Cardinal Fernandez discount this initial synod? Is it because the process managers fear adult voices who might successfully challenge their ancient doctrine that: “process and image prevail over truth every time”?
“Move along folks, there’s nothing to see here.”
We’ve already witnessed the fruits of this Sinod before it’s even began: the Sinod has alienated a significant segment of the Body of Christ; it has created division in the Church. Good work. Christ is pleased, I am certain.
The actual headline of this article is buried in the article itself – “…At least not this year,” he added. “Afterwards, we will see what emerges…”!
That’s the actual plan…..
And he knows this… how?
Apparently Tucho has been given a preview of the “Holy Spirit’s” will for this Synod.
Which means that the whole thing is a prima facie fraud.
The Dark Vatican has its agenda, which has nothing to do with the Holy Spirit.
To paraphrase: “This is just the opening act. Wait ’til you see the main event.”
I read this as, “Go to sleep so we can lay the groundwork this time unhindered and then pull a fast one next time”.
If nothing new will come out of this expensive travel game play to the world’s peripheries, then WHY? What was the reason for the filling of time and space? Why the 3-4 years of Vatican bluster?
‘No, folks, there’s nothing to see. Pay no mind. DON’T LOOK AT ME/us/him!’
If there’s NOTHING to see, touche, why deny the press permission to LISTEN to Synod proceedings?
OF COURSE the faithful WILL OBSERVE, and we shall SPEAK AND ACT. WE SHALL LOOK AND REASON AND JUDGE. Though some see us as INDIETRIST AND BACKWARD, we know a wolf by his smell and his howl. Jesus said. “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves.” Disguise. Always a disguise. Lucifer may appear as an angel of light, or as a snake, a wolf, or a disciple.
In one sense, Fernandez is correct about nothing. As Aquinas once said, “Evil is the privation of good.” Evil is nothing good.
“People who are afraid of strange or misplaced doctrinal advances . . . are going to be really disappointed,” he said.”, how comforting! We’re still spinning from an identity crisis of magnificent proportions coming out of the mid-1960’s. What a joy to know that we can expect changes, even slight ones, moving forward. Hold on to your hats, folks, and your stomachs.