I would love to have coffee with Sister and have her on my staff. But as I listened to this podcast and she and others speak about synodality, I hear very little about God, about God’s personal relationship with each of us; about God’s grace that enables us to be saved from sin and death. I hear nothing about listening to Scripture and Tradition and making the Deposit of Faith central to our personal and communal lives.
For the most part, this nebulous and academic discussion of synodality and the absurdity of a synod on synodality caused my eyes to glaze over!
If I heard about Jesus and the mission Jesus gives the Church, the conversion of the world to Jesus Christ, I would not feel as annoyed and bored by the sociology of the synodal process.
It’s all about process and not critically looking at outcomes. That’s what has happened to the Church since Vatican II. A significant number of Catholics in all aspects of that term, love process, love politics, love deal making, as do politicians by the way, and they think little if not at all at outcomes.
You have to be my age to remember all the “chapters” that religious life had after Vatican II to “renew” and “update” their lives to “conform” to Vatican II and its “spirit.”
The process for these religious orders is what was the god of these processes. It was done within prayer. It was done within listening to each other. It was done with consensus. But what about those religious who were “rigid” and “unwilling” to compromise their life as religious. They were the problem, because the rigid can’t manipulated, so you have to break them. The rigid can be broken as the word implies whereas flexibility allows for greater manipulation without damaging the person too much. It is called “brainwashing” in some sectors and has all the hallmarks of the inner workings of a “cult.”
Thus, look at all the religious orders that were “powerful” in numbers and influence in the Church and the outreach of the Church in hospitals, schools, universities and charities, establishing good will in the world among believers and non-believers alike. What happened to their “chapters” and listening and arrogant decision to renew? WHAT WAS THE OUTCOME FOR THEM?
These religious orders are on life support today. The undertaker of the last member will have to turn out the lights as he wheels the last religious out of the convent or monastery on a stretcher.
And a Jesuit pope who is a religious and knows well about the processes I write above continues to think this is the way to go and thus we have to have a “process” on “processes” regardless of the outcome, the polarization and the decline and fall of the group that is synodal.
IT IS A FARCE AND IT WILL FAIL AS HISTORY SHOWS US IN THE PAST 50 YEARS.
Why? BECAUSE WHAT IS WORSHIPED IS PROCESS, SYNODALITY, DIALOGUE, WALKING TOGETHER, ECCLESIOLOGY. WHO IS SET ASIDE AS A FOOTNOTE IS THE FATHER, SON AND HOLY SPIRIT, JESUS CHRIST; THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY AND THE ANGELS AND SAINTS.
How do you spell disaster for religious orders and the Church? SYNODALITY.
10 comments:
In Robert Altman's classic 1975 film, Nashville, there is a character we never see, who is running for president. However, we hear him speaking through pre-recorded messages coming from a loudspeaker attached to a van, attempting to create public awareness of this candidate.
Anyway, at one point, he complains that Washington has been run by lawyers for years. He then goes on to observe: "Now if you ask a lawyer what time it is, he'll tell you how to build a watch."
Probably unfair to lawyers, but it sure seems to describe the "professional Catholics" who are constantly trying to rewrite our perception of the Church!
Anyway, you nailed it. It's all blah, blah, blah, blah being preached to a public that by and large, doesn't even care.
Amen Father. As I have commented before, you only have to look to the Dominican Sisters of St Cecilia in Nashville. Over three hundred (300+) in habit in a Motherhouse bursting at the seams and with regular Postulant Classes exceeding 10-12 each year. Is there another community in the USA growing like this? Are they "rigid" in the sense of having a standard and not bending? Yes, but it is this clarity and stability that I contend is attracting the young women today who are searching for truth in this fractured world. HFPF and "Sister Synodality" are from a bygone era desperately clinging to a failed implementation of a wonderous church council. Out with the old and in with the new I say!!
Chapters to "update and renew" the religious orders updated and renewed many of them into near oblivion. The Church would better off spending her time trying to figure out why the OF does not instill belief in the Real Presence for a significant portion of her flock.
This seems like a thinly veiled attempt at democratization and creation of a Peoples Church in a sort of Unitarian or LDS manner.
What is often overlooked or forgotten is the fact that, in the Church's history, religious orders have always come and gone.
A small number, including Jesuits, Benedictines, Franciscans, Poor Clares, Dominicans, Daughters of Charity, Crosier Fathers, have been around for several centuries. The great majority of the orders around today are much younger with foundation dates in the 1800's.
(I had two (!) members of the Crosier Fathers as seminary professors, Fr. Robert Zylla, who taught moral theology, and Fr. Joe Fichtner, who taught systematic theology. I had never even heard of the Crosier order, founded in Belgium in 1210, until I met these men.)
So, the "undertaker" for religious orders has been alive and well and working regularly over the centuries. That he/she should still be employed today is, first, not surprising, or, second, not an infallible indication that something is terribly, terribly wrong.
Fr K,
No sale, we have never seen anything like what has happened in the last 60 years: collapsing Mass attendence, religious orders and institutions. Even the Protestant Revolt did not wreak this kind of havoc.
When everything is negotiable process is king. When everything is relative ditto. The idea is that since there is no truth we need agreement so each side or all sides give something and may be every side gets something and all are satisfied. Relativism leads to heresy, heresy to schism and that is what happened in Germany. Astonishingly, or not, the HF must have liked the German performance because now he he wants everyone one to participate in the same game.
Father K,
No response? Tell us how “pro life” Biden is. We need a laugh today
As much as Pope Francis insists that we must "listen to the Spirit" (I don't often hear "Holy Spirit") it strikes me that his listening skills seem to be a bit prejudiced or even tone deaf.
Perhaps the Spirit is speaking to us when we examine the devastating loss of vocations that has crippled the Church.
Perhaps the Spirit is speaking to us when we dare to face the loss of faith.
Perhaps the Spirit is speaking to us when we look at the billion dollar plus price-tag that pervert priests have hung around our necks.
Perhaps the Spirit is speaking to us when we see the tremendous loss of stature and respect the Church has suffered in the secular world for the sins of Her priests.
Perhaps the Spirit is speaking to us when we see brazen, failed political leaders proudly proclaiming their "Catholic identity" and embracing abortion rights and institutionalized perversion simultaneously.
Yes, perhaps the Spirit is trying to get our attention about deviating from the teachings, traditions and practices that God obviously blessed for centuries. Maybe the Spirit is trying to get us to see that we are to conform ourselves to Christ instead of trying to reshape our Church to conform to the world.
Maybe the explosion of young people who attend the Traditional Mass and the few young people forced to attend the Novus Ordo (while they snicker at the tacky music of the aged boomers) is telling us something too.
What could be more rigid than a group of leaders who refuse to see their failure?
What could be more rigid than an insistence that loss, decline and decay are a "New Springtime"?
What could be more rigid than trying to stifle the one division of your company that shows growth because, "Damn it, we told you 50 years ago we won't tolerate doing it the old way ever again!"?
Who is listening?
Who refuses to listen?
Jerome Merwick,
Well said!
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