The reports of the various language circles of the Synod (“walking together”) are out. 

The reports of the various language circles of the Synod (“walking together”) are out.  HERE

Just try reading for a while.

 

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27 Comments

  1. Angelo Tan says:

    Relatio – D

    “Fourthly, the issue of the liturgy found a good deal of resonance with our group. On the one hand, we acknowledge that for many young people, in various parts of the world, the liturgy can seem tedious and distant from life. In some cultural contexts, this has led the young to abandon the Catholic Church and to embrace the livelier worship offered in the Pentecostal churches. On the other hand, many younger Catholics witness to the extraordinary power of the liturgy to draw them into a sense of the transcendent. We strongly affirm those sections of the IL that reference Taize prayer, devotional practices, and music both classical and contemporary that brings people to God and evangelizes them. Some in our group insisted that we have to improve our catechesis in regard to liturgy, teaching young people what the Mass is and how precisely to participate in it. Others said that we have, perhaps, put too strong a stress on the horizontal dimension of the liturgy at the expense of the vertical. The result is that many youths appreciate the Mass as a sort of religiously-themed jamboree and not an encounter with the living God.”

    FINALLY there’s some realization that they’ve robbed us of proper and beautiful Liturgy. But I lament that our bishops think the youth need a Liturgy that suits them, just like contemporary worship of the 80s. LOL. Yet they miss the point. The Liturgy is for God; a holy and universal worship of the holy Church. Though some issues of inculturation still lingers, we need to have a vertical approach of the Liturgy.

  2. Fr. Charles A. F. says:

    Circulus Gallicus B, end of section 3 speaks of ‘crafting a ritual of Eucharistic celebration for young people’. Gallicus C and Germanicus ask for a ‘strengthened role for women in the Church’, which will require ‘profound and radical changes’… Prayer and fasting are in order, it seems.

  3. WmHesch says:

    So Taize prayer is going to get a mention, but not TLM? Taize is for old people…

  4. Elizabeth D says:

    English group A “Our Group discussed extensively the challenges and questions surrounding the Church’s vision of the body and human sexuality. We have offered a modus to paragraph 197 on this issue which seeks to present the Church’sbeautiful, yet challenging, vision, teaching and anthropology of the body, sexuality, love and life, marriage and chastity. At the same time, we restate the Church’s opposition to discrimination against any person or group, and Her insistence that God loves every young person, and so does the Church!”

    English group B (moderated by Cupich, who else) “We discussed the issue of Catholics who experience same sex attraction or gender dysphoria. We propose a separate section for this issue and that the main objective of this be the pastoral accompaniment of these people which follows the lines of the relevant section of the Catechism in the Catholic Church.”

    English group D: “it became eminently clear that young people crave holiness of life and desire practical training that will help them walk the path of sanctity. In this regard, we felt that a section on the virtues would be useful addition to our document. The classical virtues, both cardinal and theological, should be taught and the habits that inculcate them should be encouraged.”
    “no one, on account of gender, lifestyle, or sexual orientation, should ever be made to feel unloved, uncared for. However, as St. Thomas Aquinas specifies, love means “willing the good of the other.” And this is why authentic love by no means excludes the call to conversion, to change of life. Indeed, in St. Mark’s Gospel, practically the first word out of the mouth of Jesus is metanoiete (convert, turn your life around). Jesus finds people where they are, but he never leaves them where they are; rather, he calls them into the deep, into fullness of friendship with him.”

  5. Imrahil says:

    As for Taizé, let’s give the topic the nuances it deserves.

    I am told that, in Taizé, where I have never been, the so called “Taizé songs” are actually used as what they look like: as antiphons to the singing of psalms, repeated before the psalm, after the psalm and maybe a couple of times within it – for example, for the Liturgy of the Hours. That is certainly a legitimate devotion, and these antiphons are probably of actual good use there.

    On the other hand, there is the “Taizé spirituality” which we do know, which means singing these antiphons four times in a row then proceeding to the next one – four times, exactly long enough for being boring and much too short for being meditative, in my view, with the chief effect (apparently) of evoking nostalgic Taizé remembrances in the attenders who had been to Taizé previously.

    That, obviously, are two different things.

  6. SanSan says:

    Our Youth need clear, concise, concrete Catholic formation. It starts with the parents and then with well formed Catechists/teachers (that are able to get by the current gatekeepers).

  7. Amerikaner says:

    Sounds like an NGO.

  8. Kathleen10 says:

    I can’t. I tried. I peeked at one, I forget which, Headache-icus Hereticus maybe, and scanned it, losing my focus on nebulous 70’s religio-phrases and syrupy sycophancy, more cloying odes to the pope. One could only write such things if one was suffering Low-T.
    None of this would have attracted me to the faith. The faith I discovered way back with Mother Angelica was focused outward, and on Christ and His Mother. These people are navel gazers, and they are teaching those young people to be navel gazers. Just as bad, they are going to make big changes, but we knew that was coming.
    Oh well, it was a nice church while we had it. As far as I’m concerned, this church needs to be starved to death. Let’s see if they can keep it going when faithful Catholics snap the purse shut. And friends, that is one of the strongest pillars of our weaponry. We better learn to deploy it. What feeds this beast is currency. Don’t give it to them. They’ll only use it against us.

  9. FrAnt says:

    So I guess we are going to keep doing what has been proven not to work. It’s the late 60’s again, only gayer.

  10. SanSan says:

    I was deeply moved by the letter of this young Italian girl, Sara Mansardo, to the Bishops on the occasion of the Synod on Youth. It was highlighted in the Moynihan Letters. It speaks of the hunger of young people – of all people – for the meat of sound doctrine, the doctrine that gives life. Woe to those leaders who would water down the Gospel, who act as if the Blood of Christ has gone anemic! I will let this stand on its own, with only this link to the letter in its original Italian.-Charlie Johnston

    “Dear Bishops, do not be fooled …

    “At the outset of the Synod, the whispers of the media also began and, looking at what the newspapers report, this Synod on Young People will speak above all of migrants, LGBT and of course premarital sex, because chastity is said to be the main reason young people move away from the Church.

    “But we young people deserve much more.

    “We are no longer content to hear homilies full of politics, of the common good, of current events, of ecology.

    “And above all we are not attracted by shortcuts on premarital chastity: there is already a whole world that gives us permission to live our sexuality in any way.

    “We in the Church expect credible and persuasive reasons to understand and choose a different sexuality, which knows how to wait, how to choose, how to bear fruit.

    “We do not distance ourselves from the Church because it prevents us from having sex before marriage…

    “We move away because in the Church we find nothing different from what they tell us outside, nothing more exciting, nothing worth living and dying for.

    “Instead, we re-approach the Church when someone explains to us why he chose chastity (and it is never ‘because the Church says so’).

    “We draw closer when someone makes us open our eyes on our lives, when someone tells us words that burn like salt on the wounds, but that are words alive, true, strong.

    “We draw closer when someone gives us a testimony of lived and true faith.

    “We draw closer when someone shows that he loves us and wants our good, helping us grow as people from every point of view, even showing us the burden that makes us sad and dissatisfied.

    “We draw closer when we see courageous people, who make extreme choices, who know what they want, who experience sexuality as a gift and a responsibility.

    “We draw closer when someone tells us that making love is an experience of paradise, and it should be done well.

    “Not to possess someone else, not to make the other happy, not for fun, not for habit.

    “And precisely for this reason, he choose to become one flesh with the only person who he has really chosen once and for all, for eternity.

    “Because young people know that love is forever, otherwise it is not love, it is something similar, a beautiful friendship, or a surrogate.

    “Dear bishops, do not be fooled by the headlines.

    “Do not be conditioned by what the world would want from you, but dare.

    “Dare to be fathers.

    “Have the courage to be careful and merciful guides, have the courage to say great things, that challenge us, that reveal the mystery to us, that speak to us about the infinite.

    “Dare to ask us, young married couples, young engaged couples, young priests, young consecrated persons, young people in search.

    “Have the courage and the patience to ask us the reason for our choices, to ask us the “for Whom” we live, and then, to the young people who come to you, tell us that it is possible to be happy, live fully, make great choices, go against the current.

    “Have the courage to form future priests and future spouses aware of what they choose, in love with Christ and the Gospel, ready to give testimony to those distant young people, wary, undecided.

    “Who will not approach a Church in line with the world.

    “They will approach a beautiful and holy Church, which lives what it believes and has the courage to show it.”

    Sara Mansardo

  11. Unwilling says:

    No “Latin”. One “silence”.

  12. majuscule says:

    SanSan—

    And then there was the letter submitted by Australian youth that (I just read on Twitter) no one recalls seeing.

  13. Gaetano says:

    Among the Biblical examples the Instrumentum laboris provided, we saw certain ones as out of place:

    #77: Joshua succeeds Moses, but then he leads an army of conquest

    #81: The call of Samuel is actually a poor example of the dynamics of a young person seeking his vocation.

    #83: The prayer of Solomon is beautiful, but his later life is not an example for young people!

    #83: The Esther example is also full of violence and trickery.

  14. jazzclass says:

    Read “Group B” and then read “Group C.” Group B is the blatently non-substantial hogwash we’ve experienced for 60 years. Group C is substantive, hard-hitting, and frankly, Christological. Christ is mentioned twice in B, while he is the head of most of the paragraphs in C.

  15. maternalView says:

    Of course, if you’re going to gut the Church of it’s teachings you have to fill it with something. What is sad in all this is that this is a big waste of time. They don’t need to look for new ways to bring people to church. They can use what has always been available–the Church’s teachings along with its glorious rich traditions! Instead of trying to engage people on a secular level they could try the spiritual! Authentic spirituality of the Saints. But no. I don’t know that there’s a real sincere desire for that. Many of these participants are the cause of our current predicament. They seem to believe even more of the same is what will ignite the faith. Huh. They don’t see anything wrong with what they’ve been doing they just think they need to try harder!

    And Taize. Could we please put that to rest? There’s so many beautiful devotions in the Church and yet I see people running after this as if it’s the key to a spiritual life. (Where I live it seems to be popular in certain types of parishes. If some of these parishes embraced the “old” devotions there’d be no time for Taize!)

  16. Ave Maria says:

    Amen! to Sara Mansardo! If only those ones pushing unchastity would listen to this but they have closed ears as there is another outcome they desire, one that “justifies” some of their own choices.

  17. jaykay says:

    The fact that they’re even having this Synod on “yoof” may perhaps mean that they finally realise they lost them, most of them, decades ago. But really, it doesn’t. They’re not going to get them back, and they’d better realise that, despite this farce – it’s like a Young Workers’ “conference” in the Eastern Bloc round about 1985. The real tragedy is that they don’t seem to realise it at all.

    I’m 58. I’m travelling on one of the Caminos in Spain, and attended a Mass yesterday evening, in a 70s church. It was actually full… of people older than me, mostly. The noise level before the Mass began was unbelievable, no reverence whatever, it was like the town square. Canned music during the Communion. Awful, like the Spanish entry for the Eurovision song contest circa 1978. Some young children there, ill-behaved. Why wouldn’t they be? Everyone else was – even before the Priest left the Altar the noise ramped up again. I practically ran out, it was that bad.

    In 20 years, I predict, that church will be derelict, a fitting monument to all the BS that’s currently going on in Rome, and has been for a long time.

    I’ll be in London shortly, and really looking forward to Westminster Cathedral, and the Oratory Mass on Sunday. Both will have numbers of young people, who realise what the future really is. Because the future is what it always has been – reverence and solemnity, the best we can give to God, not to ourselves. When will the penny finally drop? Ummm… probably when the last penny has dropped into the lawyers’ account for all the abuses.

  18. msc says:

    Ubi est Circulus Latinus? Quando apparebit?
    WmHesch: at least where I am, Taize is popular among our university youth group. I don’t much like it, but a good number of the young seem to.

  19. WmHesch says:

    How do they assign Group A, B, C? Does the Moderator pick teams like a gym-class bully?

    NOTA BENE: there used to be a Latin language group until about 10 years ago. NOT having a Latin language group marginalizes bishops who don’t speak the dominant languages. No one invites them to the Synod. Sad.

    If the Synod was conducted entirely in Latin, they might actually have to think before they speak.

  20. MrsMacD says:

    @WmHesh I think you bring up an important point. This brings me to another project what can we do so that the next generation of Catholics is able to hold a conversation/ read a document in Latin?

  21. Marion Ancilla Mariae II says:

    “Kerygmatic proclamation should be welcoming, even (and especially) to those who might feel excluded — communities themselves should demonstrate warmth, friendliness, places of relationship”

    Talk about euphemism!

    I’ve learned that “those who might feel excluded” is code for one of two things: “those caught up in a way of life featuring same-sex sexual activity,” or “Catholics civilly divorced and remarried outside the Church.”

    And I’ve learned that “those feeling excluded” is the object of the sentence; the subject of the sentence is left unspoken. I believe in most such instances, the subject of the sentence is the perennial teachings of the Church about marriage and human sexuality.

    Tap dancing around the identity of the population you’re worried about others excluding, as well as around forthright mention of the perennial teaching of the Church that many persons would find an obstacle to their feeling welcomed, is never a good sign.

    Why not mention the specific population and the specific perennial teachings? The failure to mention these isn’t insignificant: isn’t that failure an implication – not that the relevant populations need to convert and conform their ways of life to the perennial teachings of the Church, but that instead the perennial teachings of the Church about these sinful ways of life have be “converted,” and conformed to the world?

  22. Il Ratzingeriano says:

    This synod is not for or about youth. It is for and about old, unchaste and often homosexual bishops seeking to justify their own corrupt choices.

  23. Andrew says:

    English French Italian Spanish German: That’s it? Is that everybody? That’s the whole world? That’s Catholic? As in Universal? Latin used to protect small nations against the powerful ones. Now that Latin is gone, let’s form a club: a handful of “major” players: English French Italian Spanish German. Everyone else, join the club or you’re out.

  24. ususantiquor says:

    The bishops, the heirs of the apostles, might emulate the Apostle:

    “When I came to you, brothers and sisters, I did not come proclaiming the mystery of God to you in lofty words or wisdom. 2 For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified. 3 And I came to you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling. 4 My speech and my proclamation were not with plausible words of wisdom, but with a demonstration of the Spirit and of power, 5 so that your faith might rest not on human wisdom but on the power of God.”

    I believe it is the Holy Spirit Who ultimately attracts souls, young and old (age doesn’t matter). Paul preached Christ crucified for love of us, and the Spirit did the rest. It is the same today.

    I fear that this Synod may turnout to be another dog and pony show with a predetermined outcome just like the last one. Cardinal Pell, during the first synod on the family, said in a televised interview that the issue of communion for the divorced and remarried was just a stalking horse for their real target—the intergration of “homosexuals” into the Church. Look what they did to him! Robert Royal in his column this morning for The Catholic Thing comes to pretty much the same conclusion about the purpose of this synod.

    I have no connection to the FSSPX, but I have read about Archbishop Lefebvre and I have read many of his sermons and it seems increasingly clear that he saw very accurately not only what had happened during the council and its aftermath but also what the future of the Church would be. We may be profoundly grateful to him for preserving the faith, as well as Catholic culture, for us as the destruction continues under and, perhaps, after Francis. They have just received this year 65 aspirants to the priesthood—the largest class of seminarians in their history.

  25. kram2181 says:

    To read some of these statements and then look at the group of fools in robes wearing foam rainbow crosses, can anyone really say these men are the “successors of the apostles?” I mean, really? Then to have Cupich commenting on how to “accompany” homosexuals is like having the Marlboro Man lead a tobacco cessation therapy group. What a joke. The words showing up in synod-speak – accompany, diversity, inclusivity, gifts – might as well be ripped from the UC Berkely student affairs webpage. Oh, and then is it true that the Germans held a youth “mass” using the Whitney Houston song “One Moment in Time” for the communion hymn? LOL! Shows how out of touch these old bishops are, thinking that the “youth” connect with Whitney Houston? Perhaps in their days at seminary, they would unwind together whilst listening to the latest Whitney tunes, dreaming, basking…ahh, how they must long for their 70s and 80s seminary days!

  26. jflare29 says:

    What really bugs me is, much of these relatio seem to essentially be a shorter regurgitation of Vatican II, without actually referencing Vatican II. That is to say, they present much of this as though the Church did not have any knowledge of the course of events since 1965, like it’s all brand new.
    Vatican II presented many good ideas; now is not the time to restate the obvious. Now we need to know how they aim to IMPLEMENT these ideas without losing their minds.
    Much of this language worries me; much of my generation already left because of the “modern” interpretation of the faith.

  27. riverrun says:

    Perhaps sacrosanctum concilium did not quite have the correct emphasis when it presents the situation as if it was sufficient to simply get the liturgy right in order to have the rest of Christian life fall into place. One is required to raise the lady to the level of the liturgy- not keep them in there during Sunday and hope for the best.

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