Selective Hearing

There’s been a lot of conversation over the past week or so about Cardinal McElroy’s piece in America and, by extension, once more, the synod on synodality. I often wait to enter these discussions, first because, it’s tedious to just jump in if you don’t have anything new to say – and it usually takes me a little while to be able to articulate considered opinions, rather than my usual, long-brewing reactions. Secondly, I can always trust that others will come forward and express my opinion far more ably that I can. And guess what? If someone else does it…I don’t have to.

That’s happened with this matter, as per usual. I do have a few points to add that I haven’t seen anywhere else (not that I’ve looked everywhere), and I’ll do so by playing off what others have said.

So this is going to reflect McElroy’s essay as well as the latest news on the synod.

First, The Sacramental Nature of Authority and the Limits of Synodality:

The shared insight of Jorge Bergoglio and Joseph Ratzinger is that the center of the Church is outside of herself; she exists in order to faithfully bear witness to the mystery of Christ. A Bishops’ Synod on Synodality is quintessentially a self-referential exercise. Of course there are times when a look inward or a reform of structures is appropriate. The difficulty arises when this exercise of looking inward (and reforming structures) is presented as the most essential thing. 

Secondly, from Carl Olson: Dialoguing with the most incoherent document ever sent out from Rome

In his piece, Olson refers to Mark Regnerus’ study of the recently produced “Document for the Continental Stage.” I think this is a very important piece, one that summarizes much of what’s problematic about this situation, primarily from the standpoint of process

In short: this current primary reference is a mediated synthesis – not a summation of data. And therefore of no value in objectively determining any sensus fidelium.

The DCS is the Vatican’s interpretation of the data and a document that will be the focus of the seven “continental” meetings scheduled over the next few months. It serves as a precursor to the instrumentum laboris (or working paper) that the October 2023 synod’s participants will discuss and debate. In other words, it’s an important document. I also refer to it as the “Frascati report,” because it was the product of two weeks’ worth of work in late September by its authors at a retreat center in Frascati, Italy, not far from Rome. It was there that a few dozen select interpreters—mostly theologians—were asked to “authentically” synthesize the national reports made by 112 participating episcopal conferences from around the world. Hence, it’s a powerful group.

…Making sense of interview and focus-group data from a solitary parish is not a simple task. Add another 10,000 like it from across the globe and you have an impossible challenge. Then ask for “syntheses” instead of summaries? What results is a very expensive, time-consuming set of interpreters’ personal opinions, with little accountability (and no public access) to the original data…

….“We’re not inventing anything new,” asserts journalist, papal biographer, and Frascati participant Austin Ivereigh. And yet the Frascati group employed an “empty chair” at their meeting to symbolize “missing voices,” enabling them to inject further subjectivity. Did they? We have no idea. If the data were competently collected from a representative sample of the targeted population, then who the analysts are should not make much difference. But if the data come from a multi-stage, unrepresentative cluster sample of self-selected participants from an unclear target population, then who the data analysts are and what they intend means everything…

….But I would caution against confidence that what the synod fathers start with—the product of unwieldy data in the hands of partial mediators—is stable ground for discerning divine intention, let alone the Good, the True, and the Beautiful. Let it instead be a guide for the mission field….

Now to McElroy.

From Fr. Robert Imbelli, at First Things: “A Bodily Faith.”

And so I suggest that prior to any talk about “enlarging the tent,” Catholics and particularly their bishops should strive to realize anew whose “tent” it is, and the doxological end it serves. If it is the tent where God’s glory dwells, then Paul’s imperative must apply: “You are not your own; you were purchased for a price. So, glorify God in your body!” (1 Cor. 6:19–20). As ever for Paul, the “body” is both the body of individual Christians and the ecclesial body of Christ into whom they are incorporated, initially by baptism and ever more fully in the Eucharist. But each must seriously examine him or herself, that each may discern the condition of the body: for those “who eat or drink without discerning the body eat and drink judgment upon themselves” (1 Cor. 11:29). As is evident in Paul, this discernment concerns both sexual and social conduct. For both reveal the self we are becoming or failing to become.

This is not rigidity; it is simply the cost of discipleship.

At The Catholic Thing, from Stephen White of Catholic University: “A Road to Nowhere”

As I’ve written before, nowhere is the individualist strain in American Catholicism more manifest than in the ubiquitous belief that reception of the Holy Eucharist is a private matter rather than a fundamentally ecclesial reality. Here we see it from Cardinal McElroy in its starkest form.

And now, the barnburner, from Larry Chapp.

Chapp has published two pieces about this, one at the Pillar here and the other at Catholic World Report: “Cardinal McElroy’s Grand Deception.” From the second:

There is nothing different or new in McElroy’s language. What it all amounts to is code for the ascendancy in the Church of the moral ethic of secular modernity and its imposition on everyone in the Church via the pathway of deceptively pre-engineered, faux democratic processes designed to produce predetermined results. And since the conclusions reached are putatively democratic, in our modern ethos, that means the Holy Spirit is speaking here in the “voice of the people.” Which means if you object to it all, you are against God himself. And those who are anti-God cannot be in the Church.

This is precisely the move that is now being made by McElroy, Austen Ivereigh, and others, with regard to the synodal “listening sessions” which they characterize as expressions of the movement of the Holy Spirit. Why is this? Because the opinions trickling up from the listening groups are coming from “the people of God”. Never mind that only 1% of Catholics worldwide participated in the synodal sessions. Never mind that the vast, vast majority of Catholics worldwide probably do not even know there is a synodal process. Nor would they care if they did know. Never mind that the questions asked in the sessions were not developed according to the now well-established scientific protocols for developing polling questions. Never mind that the 1% who did participate were also not selected according to any scientific metric for gathering a truly representative sampling of opinions. Never mind that the collating and curating of the various results is being done by a small group of ecclesial elites who are well-versed in the language of Cardinal McElroy ecclesial double-speak. And never mind that there appears to be no forthcoming promise of total transparency in publishing in-full all of the various responses…

….(He quotes from Lumen Gentium)

This is hardly a description of a process of revolutionary synodal change wherein a few random voices of average lay people will be raised to the level of the very voice of the Holy Spirit. Yet, even if the voices so expressed do not represent or even evince the “universal agreement” Lumen Gentium says must be present for it to count as a movement of the Holy Spirit, they will stipulate to it all the same since it is the results that matter and not really the process, a process which is at the end of the day a mere ruse and a stalking horse for a much broader agenda. It is all very cynical, mendacious, and deeply manipulative.

In reality, what McElroy is advocating for is a synodality that is a kind of crypto Vatican III where the progressive wing of the Church will finally have their day absent the peskiness of a universal meeting of bishops in Council, and where the Holy Spirit will be, apparently, quite busy “doing a new thing”.

I wrote this in 2021 – an invitation to use discernment when people in leadership and ministry talk about the movement or presence of the Holy Spirit. In short – it can be weaponized, and often is.

Is there anything in life easier to weaponize, because we are yearning so deeply, than the promise of something new, coming to us via the warm assurances of those who identify the movement of the Spirit – good! – with whatever they want to happen next?

Resistance to “new” can, indeed, be resistance to the Spirit. It can also be fidelity to Christ. Whether that thing is “new” or not has absolutely nothing to do with the authenticity of the moment, idea or expression. “New” as I said before, is not a meaningful category for discernment in either a positive or negative sense, and neither is “old.”

Now. A few more thoughts:

• I really can’t agree more strongly about the, well, uselessness of this synod, as it has evolved, for getting any understanding of what the Church- over a billion people – thinks or believes about anything. Really, those who present it as meaningful for that purpose should be mocked. That’s borderline insane. Ridiculous.

• I wish there were a few bishops out there who would look at all of this and just #Resist. Any of us could probably come up with a list of at least 293 more pressing needs in this broken, hurting world than the “need” to spend a lot of money and, more importantly, untold amounts of human energy and time in this self-referential exercise. It’s shameful. The organizers obviously see this process a witness to the Gospel, but they might consider the possibility that it functions as a counter-witness, as a sign of indifference and cowardice.

• I am very interested in watching the weaponizing of the action of the Holy Spirit, the implication, as Chapp points out, that questioning the process is somehow an act of faithlessness and a lack of trust in God. It’s something I take note of and contemplate when I study history. I say: Always be suspicious when people in power in the Church pull out this rhetoric, and I don’t care from what side.

But specific to this issue, considering it is, using shorthand, “progressives” who use this tactic, I will point out some irony, because irony is one of my favorite things. I would bet money that the same people who attempt to label questioning of the context and modalities of this synod process as a lack of faith have, in their day, done plenty of contextual analysis of everything from the Scriptures (Well, what Paul was really talking about here was…) to practically every single Church council, act of authority and yes….synod in the past. The conclusion always being: You have to understand this thing in its historical and cultural context. That’s where our analysis begins – and that’s what determines how we’ll accept the usefulness and applicability of this decision/teaching/practice in the present.

Which…I don’t argue with, mind you. (Much). It’s kind of what I do. All I’m saying is that, hey – if you’re going to tell me that I not only can, but must examine the Church’s past with an eye to social, historical and cultural context, and it’s permitted to critique them on that basis – well, then it’s permissible to do it in the present as well. Necessary, even. Might save us time later.

In short: if the process is questioned or critiqued ….try answering those questions in a reasonable and mature manner, treating the interlocutor as the mature, intelligent member of the laity you keep telling us we all are.

Or, to put it more bluntly: If we’re allowed to interrogate Church teaching and practice, we are allowed to interrogate the Synod process as well.

• I haven’t even addressed the whole presumption that this process will – the organizers clearly hope, even as they deny it – result in a Church that is more reflective of the actual lives and beliefs of its members – as synthesized by the committee.

In support of what this could or should look like, surveys are often cited that indicate strong levels of support among Catholics for all the permissive takes on the hot button issues. There!

Well, guess what: surveys also consistently show that almost 2/3 of American Catholics believe that it’s moral to use capital punishment.

So what is it, folks? Sensum Fidelium for that, but not for this? Prophetic, counter-cultural witness for this, but not to that?

Or maybe there is something to this consistent, coherent vision of apostolic Christianity that calls for prophetic witness across the board because we are all slackers and yes, the way actually is narrow?

Finally:

• I have never really understood how these people cannot see that in their vision, they are planting the seeds of their own destruction. First of all, you would think that the suggestion that current teaching and practice be dramatically shifted away from the Church has been about for two millenia would merit some substantive justification, something more than, “The Spirit! Is moving! Times have changed!”

Also: guess what, guys in red hats : if you are going to tell us that the grounds of authority are simply sand and infinitely shifting, and that you can flip off what we’ve been taught is rooted in Revelation and Tradition – just because you say so, well we might just eventually draw some conclusions and turn around and ask – well, then where’s your authority? You expecting anything from me – attention, assent, support – doesn’t jive meaningfully with my lived experience. I’m not really understanding why I should listen to you anyway. Come to think of it, I’m not really understanding why any of these rituals you’re talking about have any meaning at all.

How far can you go….indeed.

Related: A 2021 series on Eucharistic Coherence.