Pope Leo has a subtle way of taking out the trash. Synodality reduced to a style and an attitude. A vague concept becomes vaguer still courtesy of the Pontiff.
Damning With Faint Praise Indeed
- Donald R. McClarey
Donald R. McClarey
Cradle Catholic. Active in the pro-life movement since 1973. Father of three, one in Heaven, and happily married for 43 years. Small town lawyer and amateur historian. Former president of the board of directors of the local crisis pregnancy center for a decade.
Glad for synods and synodality and synodalism to be left in the pages of history. These things are just another way for our Church leaders not to take accountability and do their jobs and…lead…leaving it up to the congregation. If that happened in a family environment then the kids would run riot.
Case in point.
The sooner this Protestant inspired synodality stuff goes away, the better. The Germans and some Euros are the only ones who like it, and that’s so they can get their hearsay into the Church. Next to go should be the China deal.
Meant “heresy” in my post, darn auto correct!
I’m somewhat amused and irritated with those who complain that Pope Leo isn’t just lighting the previous pontificate entirely on fire and throwing gasoline on it.
Would it be more cathartic? Absolutely. Is it realistic? Not in a million years.
Be … Church? How hip and with it! As if “Church” is a state of being, like being happy, or hungry, or disgusted … as in being disgusted with grownups using trendy phraseology in a vain attempt to attain relevance.
One can go to church, be a member of a church, or even be baptized into THE One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church that Christ Himself established, but when someone talks about being church, they’re being something else. (IMO)
Synodality is a legitimate feature of the Church throughout history: our Melkite bishops are having a synod right now.
The problem is, what the previous pontificate proposed had only the slightest resemblance to how synods have historically worked. Eastern observers at the Synod on Synodality flatly told the Roman participants, in effect, that they were doing it wrong. Christian parliamentarianism is what Francis was proposing, and it’s inevitably a disaster. One does not put up everything to a voting free-for-all.
If the Latin Church ever gets to doing synods the right way, they will be a positive boon. Dishwater-dull for the most part, but very helpful.
“Listening” was never the problem.
Suggesting that everything was malleable was.
IMHO “synodality” was supposed to be the next fig leaf to cover the next round of idiotic changes- like Vatican II has been used as a fig leaf for idiotic change for six decades. The brilliance of the new and improved fig leaf was that it would not be a document to which one could refer, but a “spirit” that you dare not oppose.
Maybe, just maybe, the danger has passed and I can stop designing my “F*** the Synod” t-shirt….
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“Synodality is a legitimate feature of the Church throughout history: our Melkite bishops are having a synod right now.”
Yes but don’t Eastern Synods only involve Bishops and clergy. Which in the Roman Catholic Church we have typically call a Council. The Melkite Church is a deeply conservative and traditional arm of the Church and involving laeity with liberal views to consult on the “modern” Church is not a feature of their gatherings.
The Synods under Pope Francis had liberal professors, university students, and the average Joe Bloe involved in consulting on church matters. We don’t need a million opinions from those with no Church authority, historical knowledge or theological understanding.
Perhaps what the Catholic Church needs to do is gather as a Council, and only with Bishops, Priests and discuss Church matters. There should be no consultation from the public or wide-reaching viewpoints expressed.
After all the Church does not need updating to “get with the times”. Which is essentially what Pope Francis was trying to do.
I’m with CAG. “Church” should not be a verb.
Blessed Mary, Mother of God and Perpetual Virgin is the Church.
Mary, Exterminatrix of Heresies, pray for us.