Synodal Why: Vatican 2.1 or Roman Holiday?

Barron Mind, A Series of Grievances

With the much-anticipated assembly meeting of the Synod on Synodality fully underway, I’ll admit to a fair amount of ambivalence. For one thing, as a decidedly low-church cradle Catholic of the “share your bread with the hungry” variety, I’ve never been a particularly zealous member of the Roman-curious. For another, much of the fresh rhetorical and stylistic air swept in by Francis’ open-window papacy (Joy of the Gospel! Laudato si!) has, over the past decade, been met mostly with hand wringing, arm folding intransigence from the entrenched hierarchy—not least by most of the very bishops chosen by the USCCB to represent their malignant interests at the Synod itself. And, with the synods on the family, the Amazon and young people already under the current papal belt, there’s a fair bit of sensible self-preservation in predicting that this latest round of dialogue (uniquely inclusive though it may be) will produce, at best, a lovely document and little else.

Which would be a shame. To appreciate the stakes, consider another synodal delegate from the US conference, selected not by his bothersome brother bishops but instead by the Holy Father himself. An undisputed papal ally who continually runs afoul of the anti-Francis, anti-progress cult, Cardinal Blase Cupich has, in many ways, served as avatar for every pent up pre-Synodal anxiety and aspiration (depending on your theological bent). All that fell away on Monday of the Synod’s inaugural week, however, when he and his archdiocese were rocked by the untimely death of Chicago Auxiliary Bishop Kevin Birmingham, who passed in his sleep days shy of his fifty-second birthday. Death, especially sudden death, has a way of placing the harried, false urgency of daily mundanity in sharp relief. In many ways, it did the same for the Synod that week. By Friday, this high-profile US delegate found himself far from the haughty hullabaloo and back home, thrust wrenchingly into the humble yet profound business of being church: shelter the homeless, visit the sick, bury the dead.

This business is not open to all. As it stands, for many, there can and will be no gentle balm of belonging and acknowledgment and ritualized faith in times of sorrow or joy (at least, not without all sorts of fine print and hidden fees): no marital blessing, the funeral rite, no path to genuine sacramental communion among a people and institution which perpetually demeans, diminishes and denies their worth under God. It’s the awesome, awful heft of this spiritual and corporal malpractice against which the high-minded proceedings will be weighed, either elevating them to an ecclesiological kairos, or ultimately condemning them as a case of fiddling in some skylit papal court while Rome (and Gaza) burns.

Synodal Perch
Perhaps the most hopeful sign for the former, of course, is just how pissed off conservatives seem to be about it. Earlier this week, The National Catholic Register griped that the practicalities of the Synod’s small group discussion structure will result in the exclusion or diminishment of “representative” voices (re: hardline culture warriors) from live-wire synodal topics such as LGBTQ+ inclusion, the role of women and other matters on which these cromagnonic dunderheads are in no way qualified to contribute. As with most right wing histrionics, it’s a coordinated narrative: earlier this week, Pillar Catholic released a “not the bombshell you think it is'' breaking news bulletin on the leaking of “confidential records from the Vatican’s October synod.” Uploaded to “an unsecured cloud server,” per Pillar the materials consist mainly of quotidian working group reports and “membership rosters for the small discussion groups.” Pillar’s lukewarm take? That “such information appears to be withheld even from senior synodal participants, but freely available online,” raising “significant questions about the synodal secretariat’s approach to internal information sharing and security.” (Nothing frustrates the TradCath male quite like  “withholding” and unsecured servers.)

To be clear, the charge here is that democratization of the deliberative process, inclusion of voices with actual experience and expertise on the topics at hand, and management of information flow to preempt insider procedural and media manipulation is unjust and exclusionary. Naturally, all of this drips openly of disgruntled insincerity, as do the recent rantings from Philadelphia archbishop emeritus Charles Chaput. No stranger to his own frustrated desires, here he cautions against synodality itself, which, he asserts, “risks further fragmenting a Church.” Chaput, we should note, seemed wholly indifferent to such “fragmentation” when he labeled the US President an apostate and accused “any priest” who administers Communion to him of “hypocrisy.” But it’s his co-signing of the “creeping infallibility” charge against Pope Francis—“the most authoritarian pope in decades”—which really tips his hand:

“Whatever their flaws, Paul VI, John Paul II, and Benedict XVI used their authority in a centripetal way. They each sought to pull a centrifugal Church back together after Vatican II.”

It’s worth noting that the Wojtyła-Ratzinger “centripetal” black hole for which Chaput pines featured such restorative gems as the ousting of bishops deemed too conciliar in their pastoral approach, turning a blind eye to sexual abuse and clamping down on the liberation theology championed by the poor and indigenous Catholics being murdered by their own governments. So, to summarize: inclusivity is authoritarian because it doesn’t privilege Chaput’s personal views, while iron-fisted uniformity is fine because clericalism, heterosexism and dogmatic rigidity happen to be his jam. Chaput explains all this away, of course, asserting that, “The primacy and authority of the Petrine office are vital to the Church—so long as Peter remains faithful to the Word of God and consistent Catholic teaching.” (As determined by him, naturally.)

The more intellectually honest approach would be to just walk away, as progressive (or merely sane) Catholics have done consistently for decades. But then he’d have to relinquish all the considerable power and privilege afforded even to an emeritus Prince of the Church, something these disdainful dissenters can never quite muster the gumption to do.

Vatican Skew
Per Chaput’s own framing above, the real enemy here is the Second Vatican Council. It’s fairly stunning to consider that, sixty years since Sacrosanctum Concilium set the fully participatory vision for liturgical reform and Gaudium et Spes affirmed the Church’s bond to all human experience and suffering, people are pissing and moaning about Traditional Latin Mass and whether the Pope is being mean enough to gay people. Most Vatican II opponents within the Church will never openly draw so straight a line (again, because of moral cowardice), so it’s actually almost refreshing for Chaput to concede his view of the Council not as a movement of the Spirit but instead an unwelcome modernist disruption, the fracture from which the Church must be “pulled back together.” Still, like the rest of them, he directs most of his ire less towards the Council reforms themselves, but instead to the first pope in nearly half a century to actually take them seriously.

Catholic media, of course, can’t afford such open hostility and still hope to maintain some semblance of neutrality—let alone any broad assemblage of insider access. So, as with Bishop Barron, the common approach is simply to rewrite the Council narrative and circumscribe its implications. That’s certainly the case with Pillar’s JD Flynn, who recently accused his theological opponents of “trying to replace the texts of the ecumenical council with their own flimsy ideas.” Of course, he immediately goes on to present his own highly edited version of Council intent while pointing to Evangelii nuntiandi as “probably best represents the actual ‘spirit of Vatican II’—in the sense of its intensely Christocentric and missionary vision for the life of the Church.” Flynn, it should be noted, seems to share a Communion-denying affinity with Archbishop Chaput, so it’s perhaps no surprise that he skips over the actual method of said evangelization: the lived witness of “Christians who, in the midst of their own community, show their capacity for understanding and acceptance, their sharing of life and destiny with other people, their solidarity with the efforts of all for whatever is noble and good.” (EN 20)

It’s not merely a sin of omission. In the same column, Flynn takes shots at the “Vatican II is still unfolding” crowd and undercuts what most in his field regard as a momentous synodal occurrence as a mere “meeting” (i.e.: its lack of authoritative documents implicitly render it irrelevant). This could be read as pragmatic reassurance for his apoplectic readers (and perhaps it is), but it serves conveniently to preempt any narrative of actual synodal impact. Taken together, Flynn and Chaput set forth the modus operandi for spiritual schism with the Francis papacy: anything short of full magisterial authority can (and should) be ignored, but anything coming from this Magisterium can (and must) be rejected as inconsistent with Church Teaching.

Road Warriors
Perhaps this is why the US Church feels increasingly like the synodal Upside Down. Excluding the remarkably pastoral and humane “Guidelines for Pastoral Accompaniment of Sexual and Gender Minorities” out of the Diocese of Davenport, Iowa (of all places), stateside the Church has embraced little of the peace, love and listening-for-understanding ethos radiating across the Atlantic. Quite the opposite: on Tuesday, “cool priest” and all around handsome devil Fr. Mike Schmitz led a major (and majorly obtuse) Eucharistic procession through the streets of Manhattan. Lest I be accused of carrying an anti-devotional bias, I should note that Schmitz himself expressed trepidation regarding the whole affair, wisely commenting that such a public display “could be massively misunderstood” and that he’s “not convinced it necessarily evangelizes the way that maybe we hope it evangelizes.” Very true, but he went ahead and did it anyway, asserting that, “There is someone who has to take the lead when it comes to changing our culture.”

Stunning egoism aside, Schmitz is either negating his own accurate observation that this in no way shares the Gospel, or is admitting that “evangelization” isn’t the actual agenda: it’s all about cultural backlash. A similar slip of the mask can be observed also in “Why a Church?”, the fourth installment of the frightfully boring “Jesus and the Eucharist Small Group Study” resource from the National Eucharistic Revival. The Revival, you’ll recall, is framed as an effort “to heal, renew, and unify the Church and the world…[by] uniting us once again around the source and summit of our faith in the celebration of the Eucharist.” Here, apparently, such healing includes blaming increasing mental health challenges on a decline in religiosity (and not, say, everything being terrible), condemning atheism, secularism and Communism as leading causes of war, and defending (I shit you not) the Church’s handling of the sexual abuse crisis. 

And none of this even addresses Bishop Barron’s recent bullshit, which includes appointing “own the libs” Angry White Male™ Matt Petrusek as Senior Director of the Word on Fire Institute and featuring Jordan Peterson, Tim Tebow and [quickly Googles] Jim Wahlberg as speakers for his audaciously named “Good” News Conference. You might be forgiven for doubting that this USCCB-selected Synod delegate is entering a process intended to “enable the Church to better witness the Gospel, especially those who live on the spiritual, social, economic, political, geographical, and existential peripheries” in completely good faith. (But hey, at least he’s able to leverage the trip to produce some killer content. Make sure to smash that sub button, Barron Bros!)

Vatican or a Vatican’t?
Combined with the innate remoteness of Vatican affairs, all this performative, pugnacious provocation doesn’t offer much hope for the October proceedings—at least in terms of practical implications for our local church. In a recent interview with the Jesuitical podcast,* Emilce Cuda, Synod delegate and Secretary of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America observed that ideology is too often presented as theology, leading to what she calls “theological politics.” It’s an apt description of much of the US formal and cultural church hierarchy, for whom ideology, theology and politics hold little distinction. Cuda notes, also, that Pope Francis’ “unity in difference” social, political and ecclesiological ethic runs counter to the totalitarian impulse of using “unity to kill the difference.” And here, again, we find both a spot-on schema for understanding both the power center of the US Church and its violent thrashing against any practically or theologically inclusive pastoral shifts. For them, unity is synonymous with domination and assimilation, and the primary objective is to come out on top.

Flynn aptly typifies the right wing tact to preserve the status quo. Taking to ‘Twas-er, he draws a firm line between “inclusion” as a general lack of dickishness (all well and good, in his estimation) vs. a substantive theological proposition (“Boo!”). He poses this distinction with faux-moderate amiability, yet when it comes to matters of Church, theological intransigence is, by definition, the conservative position. (It’s why, for him, there functionally is no “spirit” of Vatican II, just a “set of guiding and authoritative documents.”) In challenging this practice/theology binary, Where Peter Is contributor DW Lafferty correctly notes that, “Inclusion SHOULD present a theological challenge. That’s where it gets real.” But  “getting real” is exactly what these pious purveyors of pomp and circumvention fear. The great theological question facing the Church today is also an existential one: why, exactly, do we even exist? Are we a “country club” or “field hospital”? Are the sacraments and God’s very graces medicinal, or mere spoils for a sneering spiritual aristocracy? Pope Francis has posed this issue from the infancy of his pontificate, and, for nearly as long, many in the Church’s clerical class (as well a vocal contingent of said country club laity) have criticized, subverted and even flatly refused to entertain it. 

The question facing the Synod, then, both in terms of the Church’s internal machinations and its place in a pluralistic, wounded and exploited social, ecological and economic order, is whether the institution will continue to devour itself or—to echo the late Bishop Birmingham’s episcopal motto—actually open the doors and “tend God’s people.” The “success” of this latest Synod isn’t necessarily predicated on answering that question (here, shudder, I agree with Flynn: it likely won’t), but whether both the mode and fruits of this assemblage will actually set the Church on a path to genuinely embrace and respond to reality. In short: will this actually get us anywhere?

Cautiously pessimistic,

G. Fault

*I hesitated to link to this Jesuitical episode. Though a great interview with a wise and inspirational figure, it’s prefaced with a summation of the Israel-Palestine conflict which anonymizes and dehumanizes the Palestinian victims and exudes almost palpable indignation that the Pope’s initial calls for peace didn’t sufficiently (to the hosts’ minds) side with Israel. For my part, I am horrified and heartbroken for the victims of both the Hamas terror attacks and of the Israeli siege and occupation. As a USian who came of age during the “war on terror,” I also think recent history has much to teach us about allowing fear and Islamophobia to drive you to embrace a lack of prudence, restraint and humanity.