A synodal Church

Yesterday the internet was all a-flutter with the news that Pope Francis had called for a more synodal church and a redefinition of the role of the papacy.

I'm not sure there's much to worry about at this point.  Francis says a lot of things and little of it sticks around.  He has a well-known habit of preaching to the choir.  For instance, while on a plane with journalists, most of whom are secular in outlook and lifestyle, he famously criticized people who breed like rabbits only to turn around a few days later when speaking to a Catholic audience and say that large families are a blessing.  So last week he spoke to a bunch of people involved with the synod on the anniversary of Pope Paul VI establishing the synod as a permanent feature in Church life and said synods were awesome and the Pope is just a guy, you know?  Sure.  This after unilaterally changing the annulment process in the Church a month ago.  Next week he'll be wrapping up a divided and fractious synod by telling them that his opinion is the only one that counts.  Like he did last year.

So who knows what he's going to do.

This has been dealt with in some depth by the "Letters from the Synod" published in the United States on First Things magazine's website.  The "Doubts about Devolution" segments were written by George Weigel, who I am hardly worthy to read, let along critique, so I'll take a slightly different tack.

The first thing to say is that you're thoughts about devolution probably depend on where authority is devolving from and where it's devolving to.  If you think your local Bishop or Bishop's conference can be trusted to uphold the faith and, perhaps are even being held back by flacks in Rome, then you're probably OK with it.  If you think your local Bishop or conference won't do the job, then you'd probably rather keep the authority in Rome. If you don't think either group is up to the task, then you're probably not really Catholic anyway.

So in the United States most Catholics are skeptical of the USCCB and are hard pressed to see any upside in giving them more authority.  Most liberals only see Bishops like Chaput and Dolan and Cordelion using the USCCB to further their culture wars.  Most conservatives remember with dismay the activist conference from the 1970's calling for unilateral disarmament and the current banality that is the USCCB voter's guide.

Theoretically, liberals should be loving the idea of a more synodal Church because, with more Francis appointments on the way, they can anticipate the day that their issues will find favor with the majority of the USCCB which can then ram that policy down the throats of the remaining B16 Bishops. In theory, conservatives would fear synodality for the same reason, but with the added tedium of endless discussion groups and committee reports that the liberals will force on the Church until the conservatives are ground down.

The second point is that there's a tiresome fascination with Churchy matters that don't much apply outside the parish grounds.  If the New Evangelization is supposed to be more than a marketing gimmick (which looks less and less likely), then we should quit focusing on internal battles and turn our attention to where the real work needs to be done.

Father Barron addressed this when speaking about the reason Ratzinger et al left the Concilium journal (today seen as a liberal "Spirit of Vatican II" outpost) to form Communio (today seen as a rock-solid orthodox journal)

...Balthasar, Ratzinger, and de Lubac decried the “Concilium” board’s resolve to perpetuate the spirit of the council. Councils, they stated, are sometimes necessary in the life of the Church, but they are also perilous, for they represent moments when the Church throws itself into question and pauses to decide some central issue or controversy. We think readily here of Nicea and Chalcedon, which addressed crucial issues in Christology, or Trent, which wrestled with the challenge of the Reformation. Councils are good and necessary, but the Church also, they contended, turns from them with a certain relief in order to get back to its essential work.

The progressives in the 1960's and 1970's wanted an eternal Council.  They wanted to push ahead with the momentum from Vatican II and keep on talking until the Church was just how they wanted it.  But Ratzinger and the rest saw that internal struggles can suck up all the oxygen in the room.

In the United States we have the USCCB and can readily see how useless and irrelevant it is.  Perhaps that is not the case in other countries.  Maybe they are blessed not to have a national bureaucracy that gets in the way of the local Ordinary and his flock.  So perhaps they simply don't know what they are wishing for when they want more synodality.