The Broad and Level Synodal Way

 

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What Exactly Is the "Synodal Way"?

 Spoiler alert: It's postmodernism.

The Secret Agenda behind "Synodality"

I increasingly sense a great awakening in the culture. Everyone turning back to Christianity and even specifically Catholicism. I see it among celebrities in my internet feeds, and I see it daily among people I encounter. There has been a general collapse of standards in the culture. Many institutions are being discredited by the increased availability of information through the Internet; the Epstein files are now delivering one more mighty blow. People are craving the eternal verities, by which men are men and women are women, and some things are sacred. That is what Christianity, an Catholicism, are there for, and all about. It is the moment for that light to shine from the mountaintops.

And it is unspeakably frustrating that, at this very apocalyptic moment, the church itself is, with Pope Francis’s “synodality,” throwing any and all its traditions into question in favour of following the “continued workings of the Holy Spirit.” No direction, just when the flock is pleading for direction. What can they be thinking?

And under Pope Francis, the Vatican began more aggressively suppressing the traditional liturgy of the church, the Latin mass. Just when people have been flocking to it, when the traditional Latin mass parishes have been the centres of growth within the Church.

 A friend of mine, prominent in the local diocese, condemns “traditionalism” outright, in favour of the “charismatic movement.” As if they are opposed. Traditionalism must be suppressed because it supposedly is intolerant of “the charismatic movement.”

THis came as a surprise to me, as I have always thought of myself as both a traditionalist and a charismatic.

Making me suspect that “charismatic movement” is being used here as some kind of euphemism, a code word for something that dare not speak its name.

In my own parish, a “Beta” course advertised as intended to deepen parishioners’ understanding of their Catholic faith turns out to be a repurposed set of “Life in the Spirit” videos, designed for a charismatic prayer group. They say nothing at all about either doctrine or liturgy, nothing about the sacraments, nothing about the Catechism, but instead stress over and over again the immediate experience of divine forgiveness, the unconditional love of God, and the need to forgive others, with no mention of repentance.

And the catechists for kids in the parish are instructed that they are to convey one message, and one message only: that God loves you.

Why this abject failure of the church hierarchy to read the room and the zeitgeist? Why this failure in the church’s evangelical mission?

I think I suddenly understand why. 

In a recent interview, I heard Milo Yiannopoulos casually claim that all Catholic bishops should be assumed to be gay.

Yiannopoulis is a controversialist; he makes wild claims. And he was himself, until recently, openly homosexual. It is my impression that gays imagine they see fellow gays everywhere.

On the other hand, he has connections, both gay and Catholic. He may well know of what he speaks.

Today, I was listening to a John Henry Westen “Faith and Reason” panel, including one priest, and one panelist remarked, without objection from the others, that probably 70% of the clerical establishment is indeed gay. Westen’s panels are traditionalist, but not sensationalist; he tries to convyr the sense of being fair and balanced.

And if this is true, doesn’t that explain everything? What if the great majority of the current church hierarchy are themselves actively gay. And they are there, in large part, perhaps primarily, for sex. For them, the actual church tradition must be a burden, and in particular a burden on their conscience. It cannot feel good to know you are a hypocrite. 

So they have a vested interest in downplaying and discounting and ideally dispensing with tradition.

 “Synodality” and “the charismatic movement” are their perfect alibis: never mind all those troubling rules and doctrines. They are going with the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is alive and always working; he supersedes tradition, for he is God himself. How can that be wrong?

Fortunately for them, it is easy to conflate “listening to the Holy Spirit” with going with any of your natural urges in the moment. 

And of course, they want to stress that God loves us all unconditionally, as we are; even if this is not Biblical. That means they can continue being actively gay, consciences free. The bad guys are those who would focus on sin. Aren’t they refusing to forgive? Aren’t they denying the infinite love of God?

This all makes sense, too, of the recent history of the church.

In the crisis of faith produced by Vatican II, there was a great falling away of vocations. In that time of “free love” and “if it feels good, do it,” the seminary ranks were probably largely filled with active gays. I know this to be the case for one graduating high school classmate of mine. This generation of novitiates did not take the religion seriously; this was a party opportunity, like joining the navy or merchant marine. But the church needed priests, and was also no doubt influenced by the freewheeling atmosphere of the times.

Under Paul VI and John Paul II, the hierarchy averted their eyes.

This, however, led to the “pedophilia” scandals. The problem was never heterosexual pedophilia. It was homosexual predation on post-adolescent boys, by members of this new cadre of actively homosexual priests. But nobody could say that; it was not politically correct to blame homosexuals.

Faced with the scandals, the cardinals then elected Benedict XVI to restore order and lay down the law. In his sermon to open the conclave, he aggressively condemned pedophilia. And at around this point, according to what I was hearing at the time, the clergy was still only about 30% gay.

But the Sixties and Seventies generation was rapidly rising to become bishops and cardinals and the leaders of seminaries. Within a few years, they were able to neutralize Benedict. He told a visitor that his real authority went no farther than his office door. Finally, he felt obliged to resign, and promise to go along with whomever else the cardinals wanted to choose. The velvet mafia had tipped the balance of power.

Whether or not gay himself, Francis was chosen to take the opposite tack: to support the gay clerics in their “charismatic” approach. And so we now have “synodality” and the suppression of the Latin mass.

The good news is that this may be a generational thing. The Baby Boomer generation of clerics may have been the problem, and now they are aging out of the hierarchy and the net conclave. Granted that they will have done their best to recruit other gays into the priesthood during their tenure. But a shortage of vocations has continued to be a problem, and the seminaries have generally had to take all comers. Meaning, I hear, that young priests under 35 now are almost solidly traditionalist, reflecting the mood of the flock from which they come. Moreover, being gay is now so mainstream that gays have little incentive to become priests as some kind of cover. I hear there is a growing shortage of “progressive” priests to elevate to the hierarchy.

The Holy Spirit may indeed be moving.

Why Francis Suppressed the Latin Mass

A friend is a fan of the late Pope Francis and his synodal way. He supports the suppression of the Latin mass. This has never made any sense to me. Why is it a problem, when it was the traditional form of the liturgy for hundreds of years, and dozens of other non-standard liturgies are well-established. 

It is, my friend says, because it causes schism in the Church. 

This makes no sense to me. If one group is continuing to do as they always did—traditionalists, by definition—and another group is starting to do something different, surely it is the innovators who are promoting schism?

And how can a difference in liturgy matter? If there is some theological or doctrinal conflict, surely the proper approach is to address that doctrine, not the liturgy.

The problem, he elucidates, is that traditionalism opposes the charismatic movement within the Church. 

For those who do not know, the “charismatic movement” is a movement to Pentecostal forms of worship within the Catholic church. Lots of singing and laying on of hands, perhaps speaking in tongues. The idea is to evoke the presence of the Holy Spirit. A more free-form style of worship.

This supposed conflict comes as news to me. I have always considered myself both a traditionalist and a charismatic. I love charismatic forms of worship. But again, surelty different liturgical forms can coexist within the Catholic Church, as they always have. Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict both endorsed charismatic prayer, and they are traditionalist heroes. Traditionalism opposes modernism, surely, falling away or turning away from traditional doctrine, not pentecostalism.

But wait... The charismatic movement emphasizes the ongoing action of the Holy Spirit. Francis’s synodality movement is about groups supposedly listening to the Holy Spirit—and then discussing doctrine. 

So this looks like a jump from pentecostalism as a style of worship to something else, something deeper.

Of course, to a traditionalist, this too should be no problem. It is the Holy Spirit who has spoken through the prophets, through the Bible, and through the apostles, to bring us to where we are today. Obviously, the Holy Spirit is not going to suddenly contradict itself. 

The problem is, however, unlike the Bible or the established magisterium, anyone can claim, falsely, to be guided by the Holy Spirit to propose anything he might want. This has been, historically, the case. The Holy Spirit has told some they had the right to take multiple wives, or to overthrow the government of China, or to kill themselves by drinking poisoned Kool-ade. And the Bible warns us of this danger—that there will be false prophets. This is why private revelation has never been allowed to supersede the magisterium. If something proposed goes against the established teaching, that proves it is the demonic voices speaking, not the Holy Spirit. This is how you “test the spirits.”

So far so good—but if this is your position, what is the possible point of holding these synods? As nothing can change, they are a waste of time.

Cardinal Zen made this point at the recent consistory of bishops in Rome: “the continual reference to the Holy Spirit is ridiculous and almost blasphemous. They expect surprises from the Holy Spirit; what surprises? That He should repudiate what He inspired in the Church’s two-thousand-year Tradition?”

In other words, it seems “the synodal way” is an attempt, through the alibi of the charismatic renewal, to smuggle in changes in church doctrine. And when “charismatic renewal” is understood in this sense, it is indeed opposed to traditionalism, and traditionalism must be opposed to it.