#synodality

But what has become of this vision over eleven years later?

The Synod on Synodality, one of the capstone projects of this papacy, is a very self-referential set of processes now three years in the making. Furthermore, this exercise is not only an exercise in self-referentiality, but it is also a distraction from the true pastoral needs of our time. It is a wasted moment when there are so few moments that can afford to be so wasted in the current cultural crisis."

I flagged this some time ago, that in none of the local reports that were sent to the Synod on Synodality was there any significant mention of the Cross. Nor is there any mention of the Cross in the Instrumentum Laboris, the official document that serves as the basis for conversations in the Synod. I argued that this shows the weakness of listening uncritically to people without formation--loving the Cross is supernatural, not something natural.

JD Flynn, reporting from the synod, notices something similar:

"When controversial issues come up in the dialogue surrounding the synod, or in the speeches I’ve read or heard about, I’m struck by what seems to me a clear dichotomy between approaches to the pastoral issues under debate. At the crux of that dichotomy is a question: Are we afraid of the Cross?

If we’re afraid of the Cross — if we don’t think anyone should have to find themselves at Calvary — we develop a broken pastoral theology, one that makes alleviating suffering the starting point of pastoral care, rather than starting from the truth of divine revelation. 

That kind of pastoral care aims to soothe the suffering soul, but too often with panacea, not with the hard medicine that brings a person to a rightly ordered relationship with himself, and with God. 

If we know that the path to intimacy with God runs necessarily through the Cross, then pastoral accompaniment means strengthening a fellow traveler for the journey, and encouraging him to keep to the narrow path.

That kind of pastoral care doesn’t obscure the Cross, because it usually comes from someone already with the Lord in his agony. It is fraternal — it doesn’t imagine it can take the Cross from anyone, but it knows that Christians help another to bear the weight. 

The Cross is the locus of our sanctification. It should be a cause of joy. If we run from it, we can’t hope to share in the Lord’s resurrection.

Eph 2:1-10; Ps 99; Luke 12:13-21

In the lectionary at this time we’re reading from St Paul’s letter to the Ephesians. It’s thought that the apostle wrote his letter during his imprisonment in Rome, so around 62 AD. Just 55 years later, sometime between 107-110 AD, another letter is written to the Church in Ephesus, and the author is the Saint and Bishop and Martyr we honour today, St Ignatius of Antioch. 

Antioch was one of the oldest Christian cities, now in south-central Turkey but just 12 miles northwest of the Syrian border. In Roman times, this whole region was known as Syria and Antioch was its capital. Many Jews lived in Antioch, and from this community came the first Christian converts. The Acts of the Apostles tells us that Christians had fled Jerusalem after the martyrdom of St Stephen, c.36 and they went to Antioch. It was here that St Paul and St Barnabas preached, and it was in Antioch that the name ‘Christian’ was first used (cf Acts 11:26). The Christians of Antioch had strong ties to Jerusalem, which was then the ‘headquarters’, so to speak, of the Church, but Antioch also traced its foundation as a ‘diocese’ to St Peter, who tradition says was bishop in Antioch before he went to Rome and became bishop or pope there. So, St Ignatius, as bishop of Antioch was, in a sense, a successor of St Peter too. 

Hence, among his writings, seven letters were preserved by the early Christian churches, including a letter that had been written to the Ephesians. From this letter we learn that St Ignatius had come from Syria to the coastal Roman city of Ephesus, bound up as a prisoner, and headed for Rome where he would be fed to the lions in the amphitheatre. Ephesus, we know, was the city where St John the Beloved Disciple had lived with Our Lady after the death and resurrection of Our Lord; Ephesus was another apostolic church founded by St Paul and enriched by apostolic teaching. St Ignatius’s letter tells us that the bishop of Ephesus was someone called Onesimus. This name should ring a bell because St Paul writes his letter to Philemon, one of the writings of the New Testament, and in it he tells his friend Philemon that he had met Philemon’s runaway slave Onesimus in prison, he had converted him to Christianity, and he asked Philemon to treat Onesimus, upon his return to Philemon’s household, as “a fellow man and as a brother in the Lord.” The tradition is that this same Onesimus had become a successor of the apostles as bishop in Ephesus when St Ignatius passed through on the way to his execution in Rome. 

St Ignatius mentions the bishop because one of the central themes of his letter to the Ephesians, as with St Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, is that of unity among Christians, and the focus of that unity, which is not merely spiritual but concrete, is the bishop who he says is put in position “by the will of Jesus Christ”. Just as St Paul says that, through grace, we are each to become “God’s work of art, created in Jesus Christ to live the good life”, so St Ignatius also uses an image drawn from the arts to describe the ‘good life’ for a Church community. 

St Ignatius writes, “you should act together in harmony with the mind of the bishop, as you are in fact doing. For your priests [are] attuned to the bishop as strings to a lyre. Therefore in your unanimity and harmonious love, Jesus Christ is sung. You must join this chorus, every one of you, so that by being harmonious in unanimity and taking your pitch from God you may sing in unison with one voice through Jesus Christ to the Father, in order that he may both hear you and, on the basis of what you do well, acknowledge that you are members of his Son. It is, therefore, advantageous for you to be in perfect unity, in order that you may always have a share in God… Let us be careful, then, not to set ourselves in opposition to the bishop, in order that we may be subject to God…  It is manifest, therefore, that we should look upon the bishop even as we would upon the Lord Himself.” 

There is a dissonant cacophony, and one that repels others from the Church, therefore, when Christians place themselves in opposition to their bishops, and this disunity is certainly not from God but from the Enemy who seeks to divide us, scandalise onlookers, and drive people away from Christ’s holy Church. 

Therefore, the voice of today’s apostolic Martyr recalls us to unity in the Church, to treasure it, and to seek it, and to work for unity, as he said, “by being harmonious in unanimity and taking your pitch from God you may sing in unison with one voice through Jesus Christ to the Father”. And the key here is to take our pitch from God. Neither the bishop nor the priest nor the lay person has the song or even sets the pitch. Rather, these come from God, and so we must all, as Christians, listen to him. 

The Gospel, therefore, warns those who are rich – and we have been made rich in grace, and our bishops and Church leaders have been made rich in their responsibilities and gifts – to remember always that their riches come from God, and that they must account for their lives and their stewardship of things before God. Likewise St Paul says to the Ephesians: “it is by grace that you have been saved, through faith; not by anything of your own, but by a gift from God; not by anything that you have done, so that nobody can claim the credit.”

Alas, specifics and ultimate goals have not been a strong suit of this entire synodal process, unless you think “synodal process” is specific and “synodal process” is the goal. In which case, you can simply mumble: “The synodal process is about change, bringing about more synodal processes.”

And, really, isn’t that the point for so many of the key synodalites? To create a state of flux that calls into question what has been clear and established for millennia, while trying to concretize “processes” that are as ambiguous as they are absolute?

We are told that one goal of synodality is “mission.” But isn’t it more than a bit strange how so many synodalites squirm and scream “prosyltyization!” at almost any attempt to explain, promote, or defend Church teaching? And then have no qualms about enforcing top-to-bottom changes in the name of synodality?»

This raises the thorny question of where Pope Francis stands in all of this. He has said in the past that he opposes any approach to synodality that will treat it as a super parliament for debating opinions on various doctrines. He has said that he will uphold the orthodox teachings of the Church on all of the issues that Cardinal McElroy says must be changed. And just this past week, in an interview with AP news, he was very critical of the German synodal way, which he said is a process being carried forward improperly and in not helpful or serious ways because it is being orchestrated by elitist ideologues. In those comments, he is most certainly correct and they therefore should also stand as a rebuke to the elitist ideologues in the American Church as well, who are advocating that the upcoming Synod on synodality take on the tonality and content of the German synodal path.

But it is Pope Francis who has elevated McElroy to the rank of Cardinal. In so doing, he deliberately eschewed giving a red hat to more conservative prelates from large Sees normally associated with its bishop being a Cardinal. And it is Pope Francis who has made Cardinal Hollerich the relator general of the Synod, even though he too, based on his public comments, seems cut out of the same cloth as the Germans and Americans like McElroy.»

They have produced a 45-page booklet which presents its account of the discussions of the first stage of ‘listening and discernment’, held in many parts of the world, and it is one of the most incoherent documents ever sent out from Rome…”