The "I Hate Synodality Club"

Reader beware: what follows is a Fleckinsteinian catharsis, a release of explosive, pent up passions.

I am not just a member, I am a founder and honorary president of this club. NO ONE,  I repeat NO ONE, hates synodality more than I do!

It is not that I have reservations and concerns! I despise it! It is the most ridiculous, silly thing I have ever seen. The Church has had darker times, but none more silly. This is the silliest of the silly seasons. When I was young and said or did something really stupid, my father would ask: "What did you take your stupid pills this morning?" I have to ask:  "Is someone passing around stupid pills in the Vatican?"

When I hear the word itself, I feel like the maniac in the Abbot and Costello skit who was just fine until he heard the words "Niagara Falls" which put him into a homicidal rage. If you speak with me, dear Reader please do not mention this word, do not bring up the papal extension to 2024, and better not to discuss this essay.

The entire process has no purpose, no telos, no substance, no real program or logic. It flows from some vague, dreamy, quasi-dialectical-Darwinian illusion that everybody venting their frustrations, complaints, accusations, resentments and misunderstandings will result in a new, enlightened Church. It feels like a return of the sensitivity and encounter groups of the 70s. 

Pope Francis, while not a certifiable liberal, clearly suffers the core progressive pathology:  discontent with the Church. This compulsion is to despise the present, real, actual Church and even more that of the past in the hope of a new, emerging Church. This is the real problem with liberals. They simply do not love the actual Church. They love some illusion in their head. It will be a welcoming, non-judging Church; without binding, moral absolutes; women and non-gendered and multi-gendered priests, contraception and abortion for everyone, holy communion for everyone including the little animal critters to whom we are bound and who are in no way inferior to us humans. The liberal's love for the Church is like the woman who marries a man and is in love with the man she intends to make him and eventually realizes she despises the real guy. 

A genuine conservative loves the actual, messy, flawed, sinful, and institutional Church...as it is. He wants to conserve, protect, proclaim, celebrate, and share the received Church, the Deposit of Faith, the Tradition, the Faith of our Fathers.

This silly process is like a judge directing the jury:  "We don't want to get into this guilt stuff! Let's talk about our feelings! Let's hear how the alleged rapist felt before he did this. Maybe he had bad experiences with women. Maybe he feels unloved. We need to hear about his mother."

It is like a college professor of, say, statistics, or canon law, or abnormal psychology going into the classroom and saying:  "I am not concerned about the so-called curriculum, or reading list, or assignments or tests. I want to hear how you feel about things like the  mean and median, or the validity of a sacrament, or the very idea of a diagnostic manual." 

I told our local bishop-vicar (in a more muted, polite fashion) what I thought of this thing. He gave me a nice talk about "listening" and its importance in a viciously polarized society. What he said was fine. I am all about listening. If the Pope proclaims a crusade of listening, in every day life, I will sign on and lead the charge. All of us need to listen to each other: rich and poor, grandchildren and grandparents, debtors and loaners, reactionaries and revolutionaries and so forth.  This is simply human life. 

About 50 years ago I left my pregnant wife to attend a conference in Canada given by Father Charles Curran (not the moral theologian, the Rogerian psychologist with a strong Catholic direction) to learn about listening. My bishop is right:  Listening is underrated. But this is part of life: like breathing, like seeing, like talking. It is not the way to govern the Church.

I don't want to burn with rage and disgust! So what will I do from now to October 2024 when this silliness will hopefully end? 

I will listen! Listen to those who are in my life. Listen to the voice of Christ in the liturgy of the Church. Listen to the promptings of the Holy Spirit so gentle within me. And receive, in quiet and gratitude and serenity, the Church as she is...today!  Yes, that includes even the Synodaligists, in all their stupidity and silliness!