The Covert Logic of "Synodality"

1 .  At first glance, "synodality" seems to be a process (of talking/listening) without purpose, form, logic or meaning. Pope Francis and his cadre wax eloquently, ecstatically, even mystically,  about the marvelous workings of the Holy Spirit that will flow, magically, from the effort. It reminds me of the loopy euphoria of the 1960s: encounter and sensitivity groups, Rogerian non-directive listening, therapies of self-revelation, values clarification in place of morality, endless talk of "liberation" from repression by "the System" and the dawning of the Age of Aquarius. We suffered the triumph of the therapeutic and the narcissistic. My own recall of such undirected sharings of experience is that the most garrulous, loud, angry, disoriented and discontent immediately dominate. The result is chaos, confusion and acrimony. Unless, that is, there is strong leadership, with some agenda and goal, however implicit.

2. Certainly the engineers of the Synod on Synodality have purpose: the process is not entirely open-ended, random and gratuitous. There is a structure to it; there are facilitators who will guide the discussion; the small "magic circle" of papal advisors will synthesize the heterogenous, multiple small group conversations into a product according to plan. What are the chances of the facilitators allowing a candid, open discussion on: the value of the Latin Mass, chastity and marital fidelity, capital punishment, immigration and the value of secure national boundaries, and the moral status of sterile, non-unitive sex?

3. What energizes this crusade is not a coherent ecclesial vision, but an underlying discontent and resentment. Francis and his fellow conspirators are angry at a Church received as legalistic, dogmatic, clericalist, misogynist, homophobic, judgmental, capitalist, static, and distant. Francis poses as a populist; even as he apes the values of cosmopolitan, progressive, Western elites (open borders, sexual permissiveness, global warming, death penalty, capitulation to Chinese communism) and despises (with Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, and company) the actual, raw, deplorable populist movements in Europe and the USA. The goal is not a list of specific objectives (gay liberation, women priests, global warming, etc.), but to "make a mess": to stir up grievances of the offended, to disrupt the operations of the ordinary Church, to ferment revolution. In this the Francis revolution resembles the Trump revolt: an eruption of rage without clear purpose. It is the anger of the immature adolescent against authority experienced as restrictive, without worthy purpose.

4. As Cardinal Zen sees with prophetic clarity, the logic and destiny of "synodality" is to replace the received Church...Christ rooted in liturgy, sacrament, morals, dogma, hierarchy, culture...with a new "synodal" which is to say progressive, revolutionary Church. The synodal process is meant to disintegrate a rigid Catholicism and replace it with a fluid, malleable cult of dynamic, congenial openness, . In the spirit of the Cultural Revolution, the goal is relaxation of moral demands, progress over tradition, surges of compassion, kindness, acceptance voided of justice, holiness, wrath, and masculine heroism.

The goal, the logic,  is to replicate an Anglican Church that is currently in schism, chaos and collapse.