Take a few minutes – right now, not later – and read the piece over at the ever valuable The Catholic Thing by my old friend Msgr. Hans Feichtinger. This is outstanding in its perspicacity and in its concision. There is hardly a word wasted (which is good because the policy of The Catholic Thing is to keep their daily offerings under 1000 words).
I’m going to presume on my friendship with both Msgr. Feichtinger and the editor of TCT Robert Royal and read this piece for you, so that you can listen to it easily in your car or elsewhere… perhaps several times. Their webpage has a button to hear a computer generated reading but I think I will be able to manage a slightly more interesting recitation.
A taste:
What Are Synods Good For?
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The very idea that evangelization needs more synodality is, in fact, questionable. Evangelization needs witness, prophecy, holiness. For synods to have a place in the work of evangelization, they need to stay away from political ways of thinking.
When people engage in a lot of Church sociology, it’s a sure sign of being stuck in a confused nostalgia about Christendom, and in approaches that have been failing for some decades: pace Cardinal Radcliffe, but the reasons why bishops, clergy and laity in Africa (and not only there) reject Fiducia supplicans are deeply biblical and doctrinal, not “pressure” they feel from Orthodox, Protestant or Muslim groups in their countries, bolstered by Russian, American, or Arab money.
Such a statement is theologically shallow, and Marxist in its reductionism of all things to power and money. On closer inspection, it’s even a kind of a conspiracy theory and/or a projection. The pressure from people with power, influence and money, endlessly pushing an LGBT agenda, is much stronger in North America and Europe. This ideological colonization is by now exhausting even the papal patience.
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