Fr. Z's Blog

LifeSite today looked at what the participants of “Walking Together about Walking Togetherity” are discussing and it fits with what I have written before. The true content of the “W-T” is the process itself. The aim is to make “W-T” a permanent institution. With what they are talking about now, it seems that the process aim at being permanent and all embracing, notwithstanding claims to the contrary.

Before anything else, there’s this bit.

My emphases, comments.

The Synod on Synodality was already extended from one year to two, and finally into a three-year process. But this 2023 session of the event has highlighted how the undercurrent of its themes and ideologies are set to be implemented as a new course of life for the Church.

Participants are asked to discuss what “structures can be developed to strengthen a missionary synodal Church,” and the work of the continental stage of the synod is also highlighted:

Continental Assemblies express a strong desire that the synodal way of proceeding, experienced in the current journey, should penetrate into the daily life of the Church at all levels, either by the renewal of existing structures—such as diocesan and Parish Pastoral Councils, Economic Affairs Councils, diocesan or eparchial Synods—or by the establishment of new ones. (Emphasis added. Worksheet B3.3)

Section B3.5 argues that the synod “is clearly demonstrating that the synodal process[Did you catch that catch-22 type loop?] is the most appropriate context for the integrated exercise of primacy, collegiality and synodality as inalienable elements of a Church in which each subject performs its particular function to the best of its ability and in synergy with others.”

So the Synod (“W-T”) clearly demonstrates that its process justifies its continued existence, continuous process.   It’s like a self-licking ice-cream cone.

More from the LifeSite piece, which at each step quotes the “W-T” worksheets, etc.

Note first, that LifeSite points to the claims of those running the “W-T” that while they are discussion how to change the way the church is governed and make concrete those changes, how to involve laity, women in particular, and “walking-togetherity” into all dimensions of the Church, they are nevertheless not intending,  de Card Hollerich:

“to question the authority of ordained ministers and pastors: as successors of the apostles, we pastors have a special mission in the Church.”

But he added that “we are pastors of men and women who have received baptism, who want to participate and be co-responsible in the mission of the Church.”

Contradictory?

I think that if they say it is not about questioning the authority of the ordained, it’s about questioning the authority of the ordained.

And there’s this.  I can’t make sense out of this at all form Hollerich.

“Where clericalism reigns, there is a Church that does not move, a Church without mission,” said Hollerich. Continuing, he argued:

Clericalism can affect the clergy and also the laity, when they claim to be in charge forever. Clericals only want to maintain the “status quo,” because only the “status quo” cements their power. Mission… impossible!

This is where I am puzzled.   I think we have to assume that “clericalism” is what we have had in the Church for all those benighted centuries up to Vatican II… nay, rather, even after!… going back to that magical halcyon period when there wasn’t any clericalism because, well, they were halcyon days of unclerical synodality like when Paul met women at the river during their non-liturgical ritual and they dialogued, etc.   So, basically, the Church has been hampered in “mission” for more than a millennium and hasn’t really gotten anything done in missionary terms because, see, clericalism makes mission impossible.  See what he did there?

Would he have us believe that there was no mission work going on till, well, perhaps now but surely into the future when we will all be “walking together”?

Today is the Feast of St. Isaac Jogues and St. Jean de Brébeuf, Jesuit clericalists from France.

Do not become confused and imagine that they did any mission work. They are from a time before Vatican II and looong after the halcyon days pristine “W-T”.

No no. Whatever Isaac, Jean and companions were doing in North America, it was not missionary, because without “W-T” that would be impossible.

However, the native peoples whom they disturbed with their clericalism were quite “synodal”. They talked things through together “synodally”, “walking-togetherly”. It was their way, unbesmirched. They made the “synodal” decision to deal with those clericalists.

St. Isaac was synodaled by the Mowhawks. He escaped, clericalist that he was, and then was later more completely synodaled by tomahawk.  His role was rethought.  St. Jean, who clerically learned Huron (but probably for the sake of dominance rather than actually “talking and walking together”) was synodaled in a non-liturgical ritual by a river in which he was tortured and the participants of local synod drank his blood and ate his heart. As one does.  Synodally.

Back to Rome and 2023 and “Walking Together about Walking Togetherity”.

To all the young men thinking about priesthood out there, consider this:

Seminary formation is mentioned, along with a call for training to be given so that future priests “develop a manner of exercising authority that is appropriate to a synodal Church.”

This in turn gives rise to the question of possible, unspecified lay ministry:

To what extent does the shortage of Priests in some regions provide an incentive to question the relationship between ordained Ministry, governance and the assumption of responsibilities in the Christian community?

Wanna see a shortage of priests?   Just watch what happens if any of this stuff goes through.

Gentlemen, and young priests out there!  If you think that Sr. Dyna on the staff of the seminary runs your life now… if you think that Susan of the Parish Council is a pain in neck now…. just wait.

I’ll wrap up with this.

Section B3.3 of the Instrumentum laboris calls on members to discuss how the laity might become more involved in regular governance and decision making in the Church: “how can we make listening to the People of God the ordinary and habitual way of conducting decision-making processes in the Church at all levels of its life?”

The worksheet also contains a call to alter canon law, thus “rebalancing the relationship between the principle of authority, which is strongly affirmed in the current legislation, and the principle of participation.”  [In other words redistribute authority in the Church such that the authority of the ordained is neutralized.]

It is interesting to note that in all of the Instrumentum laboris, the word “pope” appears only four times: thrice when referring directly to Pope Francis by name and once as part of a direct quotation from Evangelii Gaudium.

At all other times, the discussion of a new way of exercising authority refers simply to the “Bishop of Rome,” the title under which Pope Francis has preferred to be chiefly known by.  [This opens a can of worms, in my opinion.  First, Christ conferred an office on Peter: Vicar of Christ.  Eventually Peter got to Rome, having been elsewhere first (e.g., Antioch).  Peter was not, at first, “Bishop of Rome”, though he wound up in Rome and died in Rome.  The “papacy” is an institution that developed over time. Where am I going?  Not sure.  But there was a time when there was debate about whether the offices of Vicar of Christ and Bishop of Rome were separable.  Authors were divided, most of them on the side that they are inseparable.  That has not, as far as I know, been explicitly clarified, though it has been clear in practice. Even in practice, however, there have been tricky times, as when in 537, the Byzantine general Flavius Belisarius entered Rome and deposed Pope Silverius who had been elected the previous year. Belisarius brought in his own guy, Vigilius, and made him Bishop of Rome, Pope, while Silverius was still alive. So, who was the real Pope when both were alive.  It was commonly and calmly accepted, down to this day, that Vigilius was a legitimate Pope. He is in the official list.  The only reasonable explanation is that be became Pope on the death of his predecessor without any additional election or … whatever.  He had the chair and his being in that chair was accepted.  Sorry, that’s a digression.   What my alarm bell reminds me of is how in Malachi Martin’s Windswept House there was a plot to neutralize the papacy by changing the titles used to describe the Pope.  The Pope was to be known not as “Vicar of Christ”, but “Vicar of Peter”.] 

But, the document nevertheless presents a contradictory message. It highlights the calls for increased lay roles in ecclesial governance, yet also seeks to downplay this possibility. Section B3.3 states that “co-responsibility in the mission deriving from Baptism must take on concrete structural forms.”

Yet it adds that such “frameworks” should “not be read as a demand for a redistribution of power but as the need for the effective exercise of co-responsibility that flows from Baptism.”

Uh huh.

When they say it is NOT about redistribution of power, it’s about redistribution of power.

Am I wrong?