The synod is coming, hurrah, hurrah, all hail the coming synod -- on synodality to boot. Buckle up, all ye pew-sitters . . .
The cardinal of Chicago can start you off . . .
Pope Francis has insisted that for the church to be true to itself, we must act in a more synodal way. This is in keeping with the vision of renewal promoted in the teachings of the Second Vatican Council, which stressed the common dignity and mission of all the baptized for understanding the mystery and mission of the church.
That’s a start. Vatican 2 invoked. Renewal, a go-to word, widespread disagreement about what that means. Dignity of pew-sitters, another go-to word. They have a mission. To do what? Understand the church, specifically its mystery and mission. They have a mission to understand a mission. Ho-kay.
All Catholics . . . not only journey [travel] and gather together, but also have the responsibility to actively [not passively!] share in [join] the mission of proclaiming the Gospel.
Ho-kay again. They are supposed to get in there and pitch, not just watch what’s going on.
He brings in a major, official theological commission and its 2017 document — “very helpful,” he says — on the matter under discussion. Synodality, the document says, has ancient “roots” and “is rooted” in revelation. Heavy stuff, not to be taken lightly.
He quotes said document — “synod” is a combination “[c]omposed of a preposition ‘syn’ (with) and the noun ‘ódós’ (path) . . . [It] indicates the path along which the people of God walk together.” Points the way? The word synod does this.
As on the “journey” above. Beware milking an image much in use by him and his religious superior, the Jesuit bishop of Rome.
“Equally,” he continues, . . . it “refers to the Lord Jesus, [sloppy, sloppy, sloppy — the good cardinal wants to say it refers to what Jesus says when he] presents himself as “the way, the truth and the life” (Jn 14:6) . . .
. . . which is making quite a leap even then. Getting out of hand, this soliloquizing on one word . . .
Not done yet. The word also relates to Christians being called “followers of the Way” In support of which, see Acts 9:2; 19:9, 23; 22:4; 24:14, 22).
What’s more, the fathers of the church consider the word “a synonym for the church,” he wrote, “as we see in the writings of St. John Chrysostom, who observes that ‘church’ is the name for “walking together (synodia).”
OK, OK, Your Eminence. We get it.
But he feels obliged to get to another aspect of synodality and its contents or rather discontents. Yes, even faced with the “very helpful theological background” on which he has just expatiated, some have found it necessary to point out what they consider flaws, “taking issue” with the whole business.
“Among [their] mistaken assertions,” he writes, is that the coming gathering in Rome this October “will radically alter church teaching and practice, will align both with secular ideas and result in schism.”
These naysayers resort to “fear tactics,” when indeed they “resist any kind of renewal that involves change.” In any case, he noted, quoting the “saintly” Saint Pope John XXIII, who said at the start of Vatican 2 about his nay-sayers, they are nothing but “prophets of doom who are always forecasting disaster.”
What’s more, in this case, wrote the cardinal, they “totally mischaracterize” what the synod is about, which is to determine “how to remain faithful to Christ’s . . . plan for the church,” a question John Paul II insisted the church must continually raise.”
Meanwhile, one prophet of doom sees the situation as the launching of “a Potemkin synod.” . . . Coming up . . .
And while you’re at it, consider this:
Sunday sermons, weekday observations
Religion by the week and by the day
A progressive explains: Majority unnecessary. Control procedure, and you win every time.
Jim Bowman Uncategorized March 13, 2022 1 Minute
The explainer dealt in church matters — Vatican Council II in the ‘sixties. But the comment might have come from a 2022 political operative.
In his [Vatican II Notebook], on November 10, 1962, Father [Marie-Dominique] Chenu [OP] notes this sentence by Father Giuseppe Dossetti, one of the main strategists on the progressive front: “The winning battle is run in dealing with the procedure. I have always won in this way.”
The author, Roberto de Mattei, comments:
In assemblies the decisional process does not belong to the majority, but to the minority which controls the procedure. Democracy doesn’t exist in political society and even less so in religion.
As for church matters,
Democracy in the Church, observed the philosopher, Marcel De Corte, is ecclesiastic Caesarism, the worst of all the regimes.
Specifically, says de Mattei, at the 2014 Synod on the Family, called by Pope Francis,
the existence of this ecclesiastic Caesarism is demonstrated by the atmosphere of heavy censorship which has accompanied it until now.
Read the rest here . . .