A “Potemkin Synod” (“fake walking together”)

Run don’t walk to read a piece by a chap of whom I had not heard just a few short months ago.

Larry Chapp has a great piece on the great façade of the upcoming Synod on Synodality (“Walking together about Walking together-ity”).    He calls it a “Potemkin” Synod (“walking together”).

Young people or those of you from Columbia Heights might not be familiar with terms like “Potemkin village” (or “Manchurian candidate”…  let that rest).  A Potemkin village is a fake construction to make people think the situation is better than it is.  It comes from a story about Gregory Potemkin, a lover of Russian Empress Catherine II who had fake villages which were just facades constructed along their travel route to give a false impression that all was well.    In the sphere of debate one might think of “straw man” arguments.  You set up a false point and then knock it down while claiming a victory.

Here’s the piece at CWR by Larry Chapp… or just samples…

The false front is showing on this Potemkin Synod

The meaning of the Synod for many of its proponents is the elimination, or radical alteration, of “structures of exclusion,” chief among them the Church’s traditional natural law moral theology as exemplified in Veritatis Splendor. [KABOOM]

The Synod on Synodality is just around the corner in October and already one can feel the excitement building among rank-and-file Catholics for what promises to be the first time the Church has ever really listened to them. At least, that is what synodal cheerleaders like Austen Ivereigh and Massimo Faggioli are breathlessly announcing, claiming that the Holy Spirit has finally broken through the cracks in the ecclesial sidewalk and is ushering in a new era of “being Church”.

Never mind that only 1-2% of Catholics worldwide participated in the listening sessions. Never mind that the potted-questions they were handed were not the result of the scientific, well-established protocols for poll taking or opinion gathering. Instead, they were the product of ecclesiastics out of their depth and who thus framed leading questions such as: “What is your experience of exclusion and inclusion in the Church?”

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Many of these Catholics feel thrown under the bus by this papacy as they struggle to raise their children in the pornified cultural septic tank, seeking to live by the Church’s moral and liturgical traditions—only to be scolded for their alleged “nostalgia” and rigidity. And, quite frankly, this angers me deeply since it is so manifestly inaccurate and unfair, and therefore lacking in charity.

But this should not be surprising since a Potemkin Synod requires a Potemkin villain as its putative foil. And so the call has gone out for a more inclusive Church in order to overcome the dragon of judgmental, finger-wagging, moralizing Catholicism which, apparently, has morality bouncers in the vestibule making people feel bad about themselves. However, this is certainly not the pastoral reality in the vast majority of parishes. The truth is actually the opposite, with empty Confession lines while the Communion lines are full.

Where is this “rigid” Catholicism of which the Pope speaks so often? Answer: it exists only in small and insignificant pockets, and therefore the bogeyman of moralistic Catholicism is just that: a fiction. But it is a useful Potemkin fiction meant to deflect from the deeper reality of the aims of the Synod by its most ardent supporters.

Meanwhile, so-called “Pride” Masses proliferate without the same kinds of punitive sanctions levied against traditionalists. And some European bishops are now beginning the liturgical blessing of same-sex “unions” without a peep from Rome. The Pope has made James Martin, SJ, a voting member of the synod and made Cardinal Hollerich—a prelate who has openly called the Church’s teaching on homosexuality to be wrong—the Relator General of the Synod.

Allowing such folks to have their say and even elevating them to positions of authority is already telling enough. But when one also sanctions more conservative voices at the same time the clear impression is given that this is a strange form of “inclusion” indeed. And when one couples this strangeness with the message of prelates like Cardinal McElroy—a papal favorite—a clear picture begins to emerge as to what is really meant by the “inclusion of everyone” mantra.

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