I HOPE THIS IS JUST DAMAGE CONTROL/COURSE CORRECTION AND NOT JUST MORE GASLIGHTING

 Press for the Pillar’s summary and analysis: 

Why is the Vatican reassuring bishops over the synodality synod?

Two central figures in the global synodal process released a lengthy letter to the world’s bishops Monday.

LUKE COPPEN

January 30, 2023

What’s the context?  Concerns about the bishops’ role in the process were reportedly aired in August during the consistory of cardinals in Rome.

Reservations were expressed again in October when synod organizers unveiled the “Document for the Continental Stage” (DCS), a text intended to guide deliberations during the continental phase. 

• Summarizing the concerns in a Pillar analysis, JD Flynn and Ed Condon wrote that, rather than being asked to engage in discernment, diocesan bishops were being invited to be “cheerleaders and stenographers, called to make a good report about what their people had to say, and then send it up the ecclesiastical food chain.”

In a blistering article written shortly before his death, Cardinal George Pelldescribed the Synodal Process as a “toxic nightmare” and the DCS as “one of the most incoherent documents ever sent out from Rome.” Former Vatican doctrinal chief Cardinal Gerhard Müller, meanwhile, described the initiative as a “democratization, a de facto Protestantization.”

Prominent supporters of the process have suggested that the international synods in 2023 and 2024 will be the forum for watershed debates on issues such as women priests.

What’s next  The cardinals’ letter to bishops is an effort to address and allay doubts about their role in the Synodal Process and the initiative’s agenda. 

Synod organizers will be looking to see whether the intervention dims the tide of criticism. They will have a glimpse of an answer at the continental assemblies and a firmer idea when the bishops descend on Rome in October.