My good friend Fr. Murray was on with Raymond Arroyo and Robert Royal and one of their topics was an odd thing the Windy Cardinal said about synoldaling (“walking together”). He compared synoldaling to an ethnic Croatian folk dance.
Little did he realize…. with some emphases.
ARROYO: Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago wrote in L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican’s official newspaper, this week that synodality is the Church learning to dance. He compared it to Croatian folk dances in his childhood parish hall. Father, is that actually a description of governance, or is it a way of taking authority, if you will, from the Church without having to define who is leading?
MURRAY: I thought it was a very unfortunate analogy that the cardinal used, because he is basically saying that the relationship in the Church now is like a dance, and the dance involves people moving and all the rest.
But a Croatian folk dance is staged. In other words, the steps are all predetermined. Nobody acts independently. If you act independently, you mess up the dance. By implication, then, synodality means that we can all dance together, but we all have to know already what the steps are. If we step out of line, there is a problem.
I do not think he intended it that way, but that is exactly what synodality has become. As you saw in the synodal process used at the last consistory of cardinals, they were given a checklist of topics they could discuss and restricted time in which to speak. Then, of course, the table discussions were filtered through what the moderator of each table wanted.
That is basically like a dance: you do steps A, B, C, D, and E, and then we all clap at the end.
Why are they using analogies? Because synodality has no definition. We all know what a hammer is. We do not describe a hammer as something like a wrench, but not quite. We know what things are, and we have definitions when they are objects that we can identify.
Synodality cannot be identified, and they are using that to their benefit. Any innovation they introduce, such as putting laypeople in the Synod of Bishops, is now simply called synodality.
ARROYO: That metaphor may be apt, though, Father. It is choreographed within an inch of its life. Everybody claps at the end, and you have to do the two-step many times in between.
It’s on YouTube HERE
It would be far better if the Church wouldn’t dance, full stop. Especially liturgical dance should be forbidden.
Oh wait, it actually is….
Can we extend that to synodal dance too?
What on Earth is going on at L’Osservatore Romano? Yesterday they published a feminist piece by the Chair of New Testsment (!) at the Pontifical University of St Anselm (!) that denied the existence of a personal devil, among other things.
Perhaps she (and the editors of L’Osservatore Romano) could be questioned about their lack of adherence to the dogmatic teaching of *multiple* ecumenical councils, or is their affirmation of the “spirit of Vatican II” sufficient to keep them “in full communion”?
Synodality is simply a magical device through which modern man is able to vote on the current applicability of the 10 Commandments. And other things, too.
I’m with Phil_NL2. Quoting:
“Why are they using analogies? Because synodality has no definition.”
Cardinal Cupich invokes (choreographed) Croatian folk dancing in what I’ll contend is a sort of rhetorical sleight-of-hand, when what I suspect is really meant by “…the Church learning to dance…” is liturgical dance.
No self-respecting choreographer would admit to choreographing any liturgical dance I’ve had the ill fortune to see so far.
I thought Cardinal Cupich had already reached his “sell-by-date”. Surely his shelf life as archbishop has expired.
Arroyo says of the synodal meetings “Everybody claps at the end, and you have to do the two-step many times in between.”
Let’s literally pray that SOME synodal participant is blessed with enough fortitude to stop clapping like a trained seal and dancing like a circus bear.
Is it too optimistic to hope that one of them acquires the guts to laugh out loud, call BS, and tell the emperor’s court that it is jay-bird naked?
Probably.