The Catholic Thing

But first a note: Be sure to tune in tomorrow night - Thursday, October 31st at 8 PM Eastern - to EWTN for a new episode of the Papal Posse - and the last for Synod Central - on 'The World Over.' TCT Editor-in-Chief Robert Royal and contributor Fr. Gerald E. Murray will join host Raymond Arroyo to discuss the conclusion of the second Synod on Synodality and other developments in the Universal Church. Check your local listings for the channel in your area. Shows are usually available shortly after first airing on the EWTN YouTube channel.

Now for todays column...

I suppose I would have been comforted by Pope Francis's comment that "the Church is not a democracy" and that the Synod is not a "parliament" if it weren't for the fact that so many people intent on reversing the Church's teaching on women's ordination and homosexuality have been so hard at work lobbying members of the synod for their causes.

Thus, although I welcome "dialogue" from all quarters, I am slightly puzzled by the headline: "Outreach hosts LGBTQ Catholic dialogue for Synod delegates in Rome."

So this group has a big conference on LGBTQ issues right while the Synod is meeting? That's convenient timing.

And then they invite all the synod delegates to attend? Was there a big conference on "The History and Value of the Extraordinary Form of the Liturgy" across town to which the synod delegates were also invited? Maybe next time, since "synodality" is now supposed to be our new way of "being Church," and if the lobbyists don't get what they want this time, we know they'll keep synod-ing (synodalizing?) in some way or other until they do.

Then we could have the odd pleasure of watching how competing lobbying groups work the crowd. Which lobby group offers food catered by which restaurant? If the LGBTQ conference is offering Swedish meatballs and a veggie platter, but the Extraordinary Form people are offering cannoli, espresso, and a performance of Bach's St. Matthew's Passion, well, I'm no fan of that Mass, but they have me at "cannoli."

The "Toward Vatican III" conference at the Jesuit House could be up against the "Remembering the Encyclicals of John Paul II" at the Angelicum. And then the next day, the "Women Priests in the Church" conference could be up against the "Orthodox Defenses of the Creed" sponsored by Opus Dei.

So instead of sitting in that boring assembly hall staring at those iPads at each seat (What are they doing? Surfing the web? I hope they're reading The Catholic Thing!), our faithful synod delegates could spend their free time scurrying between competing conferences, each trying to change the delegates' minds about what they thought the Holy Spirit was calling the Church to before they got to Rome.

"You seem a little unsure, but I'm sure you know deep down that simply everyone is in favor of gay marriage, women priests, and legitimating adulterous affairs. How about another cocktail?"

You might mistakenly conclude from what I've said that I want to be one of those synod delegates. Nothing could be further from the truth. I participated in one of those "listening sessions" for theologians, and it was excruciating. There was no "dialogue." Each participant had two minutes to voice complaints, then we reported those comments to the larger group.

As the group secretary, I tried to scrupulously record every suggestion and complaint, but I still got accused of being "patriarchal" by one of the elderly female participants. So no, I'm not one of those tough Catholics who are up for being thrown to the lions, facing gladiators, or participating in another synod session.

Besides, I have a job, like everyone else I know. It makes me wonder how these people get a month off from work to go to Rome to sit around surfing the web between running off to conferences on LGBTQ issues. I have the privilege of teaching Catholic theology to wonderful students. Why would I give that up to go sit in some month-long business meeting? I'm fit-to-be-tied after five m...

I am not sad to be living abroad during this election season. The Atlantic may not be a complete buffer from all the silliness and vitriol swamping American democracy, but it's at least a filter.

My diagnosis of our civic decadence is hardly original: the connection between the increasing dysfunction of American public life and a decline in religious belief and practice is hard to overlook. Religion, after all, provides a horizon of meaning and values capable of transcending partisan conflicts. Since mailing in my ballot a few weeks ago, however, I've been reflecting on one particular dimension of American dysfunction. I'm a sacramental theologian, so I've been thinking about civic rituals.

Some sixteen thousand years ago, St. Augustine argued that visible rites are necessary to hold religious communities together. Take away such rites, he warned, and societies won't cohere. (Contra Faustum 19.11) Today we would call his observation "sociology of religion" rather than theology since he thought that it applied to both true and false religions. Over the past several decades an academic field dedicated to how and why rites work - ritual studies - has emerged, shaking off the anti-ritual biases of much 19th-century religious scholarship.

Augustine was writing specifically about religious communities, but his observations apply to civic life as well. Robert Bellah's 1967 article "Civil Religion in America" argued that American political society relies upon a common heritage of religious symbolism that overlaps with the diverse religious commitments of its citizens. This heritage includes beliefs, rhetoric, narratives, and a stock of civic ceremonies that strike spiritual chords - from singing the National Anthem at baseball games to invocations at the inauguration of presidents.

None of these, of course, are the equivalent of sacraments. Augustine's explanation gives one reason religious rituals are necessary, but it's hardly the most important. Civil religion can't promise salvation and, when it comes to ultimate meaning, is at best a supplement to the far richer spiritual life provided by genuine religious confessions. Part of the promise of the American republic, after all, is to protect the free expression of those confessions. But civil religion at least fosters common values necessary for a diverse people to live together as a nation.

So even if they're theologically thin, civil rites are necessary. Whether royal coronations or election night concession speeches, these rites help to legitimize the power that governments exercise over their people. For all our democratic rhetoric about the "will of the people," what exactly this phrase means is hardly self-evident. Receiving fifty percent of the votes plus one doesn't guarantee just governance.

Abraham Lincoln won the most consequential election in American history with just 39.8 percent of the popular vote. In Europe, parliamentary systems often empower losing parties. The Founding Fathers' instinct to shield our nation from the brute will of the people through a system of checks and balances - a republic, not pure democracy - seems especially sound today.

Whatever happens on November 5, the result will represent, at most, the grudging will of about half of us. We need a bit of ceremony to convince ourselves to go along with that.

Ceremony helps because ritual works through symbols; it places political actions into a symbolic framework that suggests a larger meaning. We may not be happy about the results of a particular election, but invoking the flag, sunrise over Fort McHenry, and the Constitution all help us to remember the larger project to which we are committed and of which any particular electoral result is but one moment.

One of our recent problems - neither the greatest nor the least - is that our past several elections have been ritual disasters. America's civic rites are rather spare - Habsburgs or Windsors we are not - but that makes the few we have even more e...

The English poet John Keats spent the last years of his short life in Rome, wrote most of the handful of great poems that have made him famous in the Eternal City, died - and is buried - there. His tombstone in the Protestant Cemetery (in Italian, wonderfully called the Cimitero Acattolico, i.e. "A-Catholic" = Non-Catholic Cemetery) bears the inscription "Here lies one whose name was writ in water."

An admirer of the poetry - which at its best is quite worth remembering (it's October and "To Autumn" is a good read) - might like to think that the line is not just a whiny, last Romantic poet's blast at unnamed "enemies," who are also mentioned on the tombstone. Other meanings than the poet intended might also be quite possible. In any event, the significance of that line goes far beyond Keats because all of our names are written in water - unless they're written in the Book of Life.

Perhaps it's sheer weariness as the Synod on Synodality spluttered to its laborious end, but I think there's a great deal of wisdom in contemplating the transitoriness of human existence, wisdom that makes us live better in this world too. And helps us to better consider the mission of the Church, synodal or otherwise.

Memento mori. Remember that you will die. The second-century Christian Tertullian wrote that when a pagan general entered Rome in a glorious "triumph" after a victory, someone in the chariot with him would whisper, "Look to yourself. Remember you are a man. Remember that you will die." (Respice post te. Hominem te esse memento. Memento mori.)

There's a dispute among scholars - what else is new? - about whether this is, historically, true. But there's no question that both the great ancient pagan philosophers, the Hebrew prophets, and the early Christians all agreed that it's good for us to have a healthy sense of the shortness of life, the inevitability of death, and the vastness of eternity.

In Rome, it's often easier to sense that than elsewhere. In a strange paradox, the very decay and partial survival and jumbled co-existence of so much ancient, medieval, Renaissance, modern - simultaneously, in every nook and cranny - conveys the truth that all earthly things are imperfect, pass away, and yet something - not easy to grasp, but almost visible - escapes the grip of time.

When you're in Rome, you always want to pray at the tomb of St. Peter. But I've often also made it a kind of parting ceremony, on my last evening of each visit in Rome, to go to the place on the Capitoline Hill where Edward Gibbon, listening to the monks chanting vespers in the Forum below, conceived the idea of writing The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. For all its beautiful language and grandeur, scholars are not in disagreement that a good part of that great work is wrong in its Enlightenment assumptions and arrogance, not least its animus against the Church. But it was in that same spot that, centuries later, the great convert Christopher Dawson, as a nineteen-year-old young man, conceived the idea of writing his own magnificent history of Catholic culture.

Both men intuited at some deep level that the waters of history, highly significant waters, had flowed through that spot and the forum beneath. (The Mamertine Prison on that side of the hill, which you can still visit, held St. Paul and maybe St. Peter at some point.) In fact, literal waters - the Aqua Marcia - one of the three major aqueducts the ancient Romans built, still flow from a tap there.

It took me years finally to track this down, but it seems that Pius IX renewed the ancient stream in 1870. With the result that you can drink - as I often have on those parting evenings - cool, clear waters from the Tiburtine Mountains, just as an ancient Roman pagan - or St. Peter or Paul - might have around the time of Jesus.

There was a time - within my lifetime I think - when the Catholic Church suggested to many people something like those living waters. You didn't have to know much about ecclesial hi...

By Fr. Paul D. Scalia

We hear very little about the people our Lord heals. That's not surprising. The miracles are to reveal and teach us about the Lord, not those He healed. So, when we hear about blind Bartimaeus in today's Gospel (Mark 10:46-52), we could easily pass over him as just another blessed recipient of Jesus' mercy. But he plays a bigger role in this scene than most recipients of Jesus' healing. In fact, in this little scene Bartimaeus teaches us, in a way, more than Jesus does.

He teaches us, first, about faith. Now, the blind constantly live by faith. They trust that what they cannot see and verify with their own eyes is real, true, and present. Blind Bartimaeus goes even further. By faith he saw more clearly than the people with sight around him. He cries out, Jesus, son of David, have pity on me. Many if not most in the crowd looked upon Jesus with their eyes and saw only a man, a celebrity, or a miracle worker.

Bartimaeus, without seeing, saw the Son of David - that is, the Messiah.

To see without seeing is precisely what we do when we believe. By faith we "see" what we cannot perceive with our eyes. We see the truth about God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. We see our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament. We see His providential guidance of our lives. Without faith, we are blind to these blessings. Many who see physically are actually blind because they lack faith. Bartimaeus was the physically blind man who saw because of faith.

To believe - to see without seeing - is the first thing Bartimaeus teaches.

At the same time, Bartimaeus teaches us about prayer, which is the fruit of faith. His cry is a basic prayer: Jesus, son of David, have pity on me. This aspiration contains the essentials. First, the personal appeal: Jesus. Then a confession of faith: Son of David - the Messiah. And finally, a petition: have pity on me. Prayer can and should be as basic as that.

Bartimaeus also shows the perseverance necessary for prayer. [M]any rebuked him, telling him to be silent. But he kept calling out all the more. The greatest obstacle in prayer is our own failure to persevere. The distractions of the world act like the crowd surrounding Bartimaeus. They in effect rebuke us, tell us to be silent, to get on with more practical things, more important things. They tempt us to turn aside and give up our efforts.

Bartimaeus shrugged these off and persevered in his appeal to our Lord. So should we.

Interestingly, his perseverance is not immediately rewarded. The Lord draws him out further in this exercise of faith and makes him persevere more. What do you want me to do for you? Now this is a strange question. Bartimaeus is a beggar; he probably wants money. Bartimaeus is blind; he probably wants to see. Most importantly, Jesus is divine; He already knows what Bartimaeus wants.

So, why does He ask? To provoke deeper prayer. St. Bede says, "He puts the question, to stir up the blind man's heart to pray." Jesus knows what Bartimaeus needs. He asks the question not to gain new information but to open Bartimaeus' heart to receive what He desires to give. Jesus doesn't need to know, but Bartimaeus needs to think about it, about what he really desires.

What do you want me to do for you? Our prayer of faith is deepened when we consider that question, when we imagine our Lord asking us that bluntly. We want some superficial things that benefit us for this world. There are higher, nobler things that we want…but still for this world. Jesus' question directs us to what we most profoundly desire but don't yet realize that we do.

Which brings us to a final teaching from Bartimaeus: Heaven. Bartimaeus's answer summarizes the longing of the human heart: Master, I want to see. God created us to see. And not just to see the things of this world with our bodily eyes but to see Him face to face. He wants us to use our sight for and in eternity.

Sure, Bartimaeus desired to see so that he could have a regular life. But there's a hint that i...

The flagship of the fleet, the Holy See Ship Synodality, is in dire straits (leaks about the final document that will be issued today suggest it will be, for those with radical hopes, a disappointment). HSS Synodality took a serious hit last December with the fiasco of Fiducia supplicans regarding the blessing of same-sex couples, and began listing seriously to starboard.

The current synodal assembly on synodality in Rome has now delivered another shot on the port side; another fiasco has unfolded regarding women deacons. And the man responsible for both hits is Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernández, one of the most senior admirals in service on the barque of Peter.

HSS Synodality set sail when Pope Francis announced in March 2020 the commissioning of a great new ship. The synodal process on synodality for a synodal Church will thus mark its fifth anniversary early next year. It has sailed through some rough waters, but even after five years, it is not clear where exactly synodality is headed. HSS Synodality has thus been on a voyage without a destination.

Perhaps the purpose is the voyage, not the destination - the motto of travel agents and military recruiters for generations. It's not about where the ship is headed but how it gets there. That's why Cardinal Fernández has proved so deadly to synodality. In his navy, the admirals do not consult the petty officers - or even the commanders.

Opening this assembly of the synodal process, Pope Francis preached earlier this month that, "every word is to be received with gratitude and simplicity and can become an echo of what God has given for the good of our brothers and sisters."

"The more we realize that we are surrounded by friends who love, respect and appreciate us, friends who want to listen to what we have to say, the more we will feel free to express ourselves spontaneously and openly," the Holy Father said.

Openness, consultation, transparency, respect, listening - these are the hallmarks of synodality. All voices are to be heard. All are friends to be cherished.

Thus it was a mortal blow when, last December, having said nothing to anyone, Cardinal Fernández launched the Fiducia supplicans torpedo, authorizing blessings for same-sex couples. The reaction from the "starboard" side of the Church was fierce and was led by the African bishops. Fernández was forced to back down, in essence rescinding his own orders.

Some on the "port" side had welcomed the new orders - Captain James Martin, SJ, had implemented them immediately - though no one could defend them as being synodal in any sense. The synodal assembly of October 2023 had carefully decided not to mention the issue. Meanwhile, Cardinal Fernández was at work on authorizing same-sex blessings and kept it all clandestine. Synodality was exposed as a pretense.

HSS Synodality bravely sailed on though, limping and listing, a mutiny brewing. Pope Francis, knowing that the synodality could not suffer another such blow, decided in the months after Fiducia supplicans to set up "study groups" on ten themes, thereby removing all substantive issues from the synodal process. There would be no more damaging debates about where HSS Synodality was headed. There would only be reflections on enjoying the trip.

The study groups would not report until June 2025 - extending the synodal process past its fifth anniversary - but would provide an interim report in October 2024.

In July, the membership of the 15 study groups on the ten themes was announced. Group 5, however, charged with "the question of the necessary participation of women in the life and leadership of the Church" did not divulge its membership. It was only reported that it had "been entrusted to the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith." Admiral Fernández would be at the helm.

Fernández dutifully gave his interim report earlier this month to the assembly. He confirmed that women deacons - meaning in Holy Orders - were not possible, something the Holy Father himself had stated ...

Conclave, Edward Berger's new film, is based on the novel of that title by Robert Harris, which the movie mostly follows. The book has a curious beginning: the death of Pope Francis. Well, there's an author's note that ends with this disclaimer: "despite certain superficial resemblances. . .the late Holy Father depicted in Conclave [is not] meant to be a portrait of the current pope."

Yes, but the book opens with the death of the Supreme Pontiff in his apartment at the Domus Sanctae Marthae, the Vatican guest house, in which no other pope has lived. None is likely to in the future, although Mr. Harris, a well-known British liberal, may hope future popes embrace Papa Bergoglio's liberality in this regard.

But not even Francis possesses the peculiar. . .liberality of Conclave's Cardinal Vincente Benitez.

From far and wide, they come, these red-hatted Cardinals: young and old. By tradition, they are prohibited from politicking, so, of course, at all the pre-conclave meetings, the scheming and the intriguing begin. (Spoiler alert for what follows.)

But there's a surprise: a Cardinal shows up without the trappings of a Prince of the Church - none of the crimson finery symbolizing his willingness to be martyred for Christ. Nobody knows him well; most have never heard of him.

He explains that the late pope had elevated him to the cardinalate in pectore. In the heart: secretly. This is Cardinal Benitez (played by Carlos Diehz). Cardinal Benitez is a Mexican who has served in Congo and in Afghanistan.

Mr. Diehz will be the least well-known among the cast of Conclave's cardinal-actors, which includes Ralph Fiennes, Stanley Tucci, and John Lithgow among others.

Cardinal Lawrence (Mr. Fiennes in a fine performance) is the conclave's dean. In the book, the dean's name is Jacopo Baldassare Lomeli. The filmmakers may have decided a change of name and nationality would distance the character from the actual Dean of the College of Cardinals, Giovanni Battista Re. Casting Mr. Fiennes rather than an Italian actor dispels any similarity between the movie's dean and the soon-to-be-91-year-old Cardinal Re, who, in any case, more resembles the movie's arch-conservative Cardinal Tedesco (Sergio Castellitto).

Cardinal Lawrence decides the small, frail Cardinal Benitez must be assumed to be telling the truth about his secret appointment, and Benitez is hurried to Gammarelli or wherever to get measured and fitted with the accouterments of his office. Benitez would rather not do all this because he's a humble servant of God.

Humble but not honest.

He fails to share a secret with Lawrence and the College of Cardinals.

And now a spoiler alert

As the political schemers fall by the wayside, the charming mystery man sweeps to victory in the conclave's voting to become Pope Innocent, the fourth of that name. This young liberal from the peripheries might seem the perfect person to replace Pope Francis were it not for a small problem: Benitez isn't qualified to be a pope.

This is because he's a she.

Our mystery "man" is a sexually confused "intersex" person, born with ambiguous genitalia but genetically XX (female), not XY (male), and was on the way to visit a Swiss gender-reassignment clinic when the dying pope tapped him for the cardinalate.

So, our new Pope Innocent IV is not. . .innocent. How could a Catholic woman engage in such a deception? How could such a person ever be called Your Holiness? Why would she not have mentioned anything about it to anyone?

At the very last instant, when Innocent is ready to be vested for her Urbi et Orbi speech from the balcony overlooking St. Peter's Square, a perplexed Cardinal Lawrence has just been informed by an aide of the discovery of Benitez's proposed clinic visit, and asks Innocent IV what treatment was being sought. In the book, Innocent sighs, "I believe the clinical terms are surgery to correct a fusion of the labia majora and minora, and a clitoropexy." In the film, it's simplified to "hysterectomy."

The dea...

by Michael Pakaluk

But first a note: Be sure to tune in tonight - Thursday, October 24th at 8 PM Eastern - to EWTN for a new episode of the Papal Posse - and for all of October, Synod Central - on 'The World Over.' TCT Editor-in-Chief Robert Royal and contributor Fr. Gerald E. Murray will join host Raymond Arroyo to discuss the ongoing second Synod on Synodality and other developments in the Universal Church. Check your local listings for the channel in your area. Shows are usually available shortly after first airing on the EWTN YouTube channel.

Now for today's column...

When I was asking myself, why has the Synod on Synodality been a failure (as I think we can agree that it is), or why is "synodality," that is, "walking together," irrelevant to me and to everyone else I know, the following words came to mind:

We can walk as much as we want, we can build many things, but if we do not confess Jesus Christ, nothing will avail. We will become a pitiful NGO, but not the Church, the Bride of Christ. . . .When one does not profess Jesus Christ - I recall the phrase of Léon Bloy - 'Whoever does not pray to God, prays to the devil.' When one does not profess Jesus Christ, one professes the worldliness of the devil.

Perhaps you remember these words also. They are from the very first homily of Pope Francis.

And there was my answer: the Synod is church people "walking as much as they want" but without seeming to be confessing Jesus Christ. That is why it strikes me and others as, at best, the proceedings of a pitiful NGO.

Does my conclusion seem too harsh? I will compose an argument, based on the Instrumentum Laboris (IL) of session II, and more fundamentally on a fundamental "source document" of the Synod, a 2018 study by the International Theological Commission (ITC) entitled, "Synodality in the Life and Mission of the Church."

Although the latter was clearly crafted to provide a justification for a Synod on Synodality, it makes some disquieting admissions along the way, as for instance when it admits that "synodality is not explicitly found as a term or as a concept in the teaching of Vatican II." (n. 6) Rather, as the ITC points out, communio (Gr. koinōnia) was the operative notion there, as also in the magisterium of Saint Pope John Paul II.

The ITC also warns that in any conciliarist initiative "there is always a danger of schism lying in wait, which cannot be shrugged off." (n. 34) It also observes that Protestant churches and especially the Lutherans have long claimed that their form of government is attractively synodal. (n. 36)

I summarize, bluntly: synodality, without any outright basis in the Council, seems inherently schismatic, and is similar to Protestantism.

Nonetheless, the ITC also stretches and strains to provide its justification, as when it claims that John Henry Newman was an early promoter of synodality, because of his love for patristic thought and his vindication of the sensus fidelium! (n. 38)

Yet most revealing is how the ITC tries to anchor synodality in the magisterium of Pope John Paul II, and particularly in his charter for the Church in the new millennium, Novo millennio ineunte.

Some background is necessary here. The very first assertion of Vatican II, in Lumen Gentium, was that "the Church is in Christ like a sacrament or as a sign and instrument both of a very closely knit union with God and of the unity of the whole human race." This assertion was the basis for the Council's concern with communio in the Church, and its hope that if, as the Council Fathers said, they were simply to "unfold more fully to the faithful of the Church and to the whole world its own inner nature and universal mission," the Church would be able to draw all peoples to Christ.

Things didn't pan out that way, because of the dissent and disunity that followed in the wake of the Council. Hence, John Paul II in Novo millenio could reasonably write: "To make the Church the home and the school of communion: that is the great chall...

Logicians have identified - and demolished - what they term a "circular argument." Basically, to propose an example, a circular argument goes something like this:

The synodal Church is the Church foreseen by the Second Vatican Council.

Why?

Because the Second Vatican Council foresaw the synodal Church.

In a circular argument, the conclusion is in the premise - and that's that.

For anyone proposing this particular argument, it doesn't matter that Lumen gentium ("The Dogmatic Constitution on the Church") never uses the term synodal as it is used here and doesn't remotely suggest what the circular argument assumes. Yet the Gregorian University in Rome announced Monday that it will hold a three-day conference at the conclusion of the current synod titled, "From the Council to the Synod. Rereading a Church's journey 60 years after Lumen Gentium (1964-2024)."

Lest anyone think this is intended merely as a historical overview, the "rereading" that will take place will tell "the story of the Church's journey, which the congress intends to reread, taking the circularity between the Synod and the Council as the criterion for interpretation: rereading the Synod in the light of the Council and the Council in the light of the Synod. The 60 years of the Church's journey are a challenge to understand the complexity of the reception process and the question of whether what the Church is experiencing with the Synod process is really the mature fruit of the Council and its ecclesiological proposal." [Emphasis added.]

It's safe to say that, despite a lack of evidence, the unembarrassed "circularity" mentioned here will answer the question of whether the "synodal process" is the mature fruit of the council in the affirmative.

Most of the delegates to the synod, however, have been expressing deep weariness at the repetitive nature of what's already transpired. As one put it: "We're drowning in BS," emphatically spelling out the final two letters. Several journalists have already gone home. (Your humble scribe must as well on Saturday in order to fulfill other duties, before the final votes on the synodal document - but analysis to follow.)

Several other commentators who once regarded the synod as exciting evidence of a Church "on the move" are now writing in a somber mood of a potentially dangerous "disappointment" after years of work, if substantial changes do not materialize. One goes so far as to fear that a whole generation of women will now be lost to the Church.

Bishop Georg Bätzing, president of the German Bishops' Conference, is reported to have said as much on the synod floor: "For the cultural sphere I come from, an answer to this question [women deacons] will determine whether women will continue to seek and find their home in the Church."

This sounds not so much like an argument as an ultimatum. Which won't be likely to work.

Everything we have heard from the pope, from some synodal spokesmen, and from the few leaks - a minor miracle in Rome that participants have not abundantly spilled the beans to their favorite outlets - makes us believe that approval of deaconesses will not happen at the synod.

(By the way, this session of the synod has taken the extraordinary step - allegedly to assure confidentiality and candor among the commenters - of not sending the text of the draft document to participants in an electronic file. They've also been forbidden to copy or photograph it.)

An unprejudiced observer might think that after one, then two month-long sessions, that after the establishing of ten "study groups" to deal with "hot button issues, after several previous studies about the possibility of deaconesses that said "no," the question would be settled. But the synod continues to tantalize.

In just the last week, a meeting was scheduled between representatives of the group that is studying this question to which about 100 people are said to have shown up. Cardinal Fernández was also rumored to be there, but wasn't because, he says, t...

Veteran Vatican journalist Joan Lewis and TCT Editor-in-Chief Robert Royal discuss some of the novelties and oddities about the Synod on Synodality in its final days – including the news that before the current session began some of the bishops got together and asked for a clear definition of synodality, which still remains unclear.

By Dominic V. Cassella

Today, October 22, 2024, marks the twentieth anniversary of the death of Louis Bouyer, the French Catholic priest who is seen as too Progressive by some traditionalist Catholics and too traditional by many liberal Catholics. With Hans Urs von Balthasar and Joseph Ratzinger, however, Bouyer was among the founders of the great scholarly journal Communio and a prolific author.

He attended the Second Vatican Council as a peritus - an expert theologian invited to advise the bishops. After the Council, Bouyer published a book that he knew would make him enemies and cause him much grief: The Decomposition of Catholicism.

"Catholicism" in this context is not the Catholic Church. "Catholicism," as Bouyer understands it, is a movement within the Church, almost an ideology, that had gained disproportionate control over the Church's governance.

By "Catholicism," he means "the artificial system fabricated by the Counter-Reformation, and hardened by the cudgeling of modernism." If this is "Catholicism," it can die. Indeed, from Bouyer's perspective, "there are even good chances that it is already dead, even though we do not perceive it."

The general characteristics of this dying "Catholicism" - a term that emerged in the sixteenth century to denote the system for adhering to the teachings of the Catholic Church - are varied and, at times, self-contradictory. The reason for the self-contradictions is that there are ultimately two types of "Catholicism" with equally dangerous effects - "Progressivism" and "Integralism."

As Bouyer understands it, Integralism is marked by a rigid conservatism and desire to retain every detail of Catholic practice "as it always was." It tends to turn its back on the contemporary world and even refuses to engage with it.

Prior to Vatican II, this Integralism was characterized by those Church leaders who practiced a sort of authoritarianism that reduced the faith to a kind of clannishness. Integralism after the Council, however, was "one of the masses of deeply wounded good people who, without leaders worthy and capable of leading them, might congeal into a simple hot-tempered refusal to budge."

Progressivism, of course, lies at the opposite extreme. It adopts an excessive focus on "opening out to the world" and accommodating modern secular culture. Progressives give an uncritical embrace to modernity and secularization, and their openness makes it easy to be converted to the world, instead of being a force for converting the world.

Indeed, the reason for Progressivism's susceptibility to trends is the conviction that it has nothing to teach the world, and so must listen to it. The need to listen leads to an exaggerated emphasis on adapting the faith to contemporary sensibilities, which often leads to the dilution of Catholic distinctiveness. In its attempts to appear sensible to the senseless, the Progressive reinterprets or downplays Catholic doctrines to the point of absurdity.

For Bouyer, Integralism and Progressivism share one characteristic: an obsession with the authority of the Church. For both, authority - petrified into the papal throne - became an end in itself rather than a service to truth and unity.

The system of "Catholicism" came to life over several centuries, as members of the Church embraced an ecclesiology of "power" rather than pastoral guidance. Authority was increasingly seen as absolute and was something divorced from tradition - except, perhaps, the particular tradition of said authority - and the faithful.

Authority was understood as primarily repressive or oppressive of individual conscience, rather than as a guide and stimulator of authentic Christian life.

This "Catholicism" - both Progressive and Integral - created a false dichotomy between authority and freedom, whereas a true Catholic understanding sees them as complementary: "They had a false notion of it, looking upon it only as a denial of freedom which itself was identified with its negative forms (free...