The Catholic Thing

By Msgr. Hans Feichtinger

It may seem more difficult to answer the above question than it actually is. The Fathers of the Church who, as opposed to us, had deep synodal experience, have provided quite a clear answer: Synods are good for keeping the Church unified in the one faith in the one Saviour. They are good for defining and clarifying this faith. This goal they achieve by well-formulated, concise definitions, by careful anathemas, and by opening wide the gates of reconciliation to those who have betrayed this faith, even if gravely so. The Fathers of the Church were in favor of synodality and mercy before it was cool. And it was a very Biblical, doctrinal, and juridical synodality - and mercy.

The secretary general of the current Synod on Synodality recently declared that the Holy See wants to find out how it can be more useful to the local churches. Again, the question sounds more complicated than it is. In order to be useful for local dioceses, even for parishes, the Holy See simply has to do what it alone can do.

The Vatican does not need to run agencies that are, at best, only distantly related to the essential aspects of the papacy, the primacy of teaching and jurisdiction, which are also what the offices of the Vatican, serving the pope's mission and task, need to focus on. The papal curia does not have to be a pastoral super-agent. It serves the Church by doing its doctrinal and jurisdictional work well, transparently, and efficiently.

Yes, that means a number of Roman dicasteries should be closed or transformed into something else. Maybe a pontifical university can take over their functions; maybe they become a small office of a real dicastery, one with actual jurisdiction and thus worthy of the name. This will also help the Holy See confront its unbearable budget situation. The real reform of the curia has yet to occur.

For the Holy See, right now, being more useful to the local churches would also mean running a better synod. We do not benefit from a synod debating issues that are not up to us, and not up to any synod, council, or pope. Unity in doctrine is quite obviously one of the things not up to us. Without this unity of doctrine, words like Catholic, Church, and faith lose their meaning.

Faith is not the only thing, but the first thing that holds the Church together with God and with itself, in time and through the centuries. Constant hypothesizing about changing the Church's doctrine on marriage, celibacy, or the nature of ordained ministry as no longer including governance, are other issues, but all related to the underlying question of unity in doctrine.

I recommend making Eastern Catholic - or better yet Anglican and Orthodox - friends, to learn from them what not to do, and to see more clearly how synodality is not the miracle cure for prevalent ecclesial diseases, and may in fact often be one of the causes of them.

The very idea that evangelization needs more synodality is, in fact, questionable. Evangelization needs witness, prophecy, holiness. For synods to have a place in the work of evangelization, they need to stay away from political ways of thinking.

When people engage in a lot of Church sociology, it's a sure sign of being stuck in a confused nostalgia about Christendom, and in approaches that have been failing for some decades: pace Cardinal Radcliffe, but the reasons why bishops, clergy and laity in Africa (and not only there) reject Fiducia supplicans are deeply biblical and doctrinal, not "pressure" they feel from Orthodox, Protestant or Muslim groups in their countries, bolstered by Russian, American, or Arab money.

Such a statement is theologically shallow, and Marxist in its reductionism of all things to power and money. On closer inspection, it's even a kind of a conspiracy theory and/or a projection. The pressure from people with power, influence and money, endlessly pushing an LGBT agenda, is much stronger in North America and Europe. This ideological colonization is by now exha...

By David G Bonagura, Jr.

After years of bankruptcy litigation, my diocese has just agreed to a record $330 million payout to victims of sexual abuse by clergy. The Archdiocese of Los Angeles made even that hefty sum look small with an $880 million settlement. In these and many other cases, all of the diocese's parishes will be forced to contribute to the debt. Which means parishioners will be paying for the sins of their priests.

Not a few Catholics are as angry as our Lord was when He chased the money changers from the temple. Why should the innocent pay from their wages to cover the sins of the guilty?

This conundrum reformulates an old question that cries out with the blood of Abel and continues until today: Why does a good God allow the innocent to suffer?

Sin destroys the innocent far more rapidly than the sinner. The drunk driver kills an ordinary pedestrian. The philanderer tears out his wife's heart. The sexual abuser shatters his victim physically and emotionally. The effects of sins ripple outward; they impact family, friends, and parishioners - and even people many degrees removed from the sinner.

We do not have ready answers to why this is so. It's tempting to reject God who seems capricious and unjust as we survey the innocent destroyed by the guilty.

But there is a compelling reason not to turn away from God. He may not be forthcoming with straightforward replies, but He is not a hypocrite. He personally entered our messy human life and suffered unjustly: our sins put Him on a Cross. "For our sake [God] made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God." (2 Corinthians 5:21)

Though we do not entirely understand what this means, by suffering without needing to - by suffering for us - God touches us deeply. With that assurance, we can grow to trust Him, to believe that, somehow, His plan may work out because He, too, has suffered the sins of the guilty.

Theology teaches that God tolerates evil because He can bring a greater good from it. What good comes from sin striking the innocent? One good could be the innocent crying out to God for salvation. Yes, Christ saves sinners. He also saves the brokenhearted, the exploited, the ill, and the innocent who have to pay for the sins of others in multiple ways. In their desperation, the innocent turn to the only One who can see them through. They long for the Blessing while enduring the curse.

These injustices create an unexpected Via Dolorosa that leads to the resurrection. "Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." (Matthew 5:10)

If we are to be Christians worthy of the name, we have to suffer as He did. "For it has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ you should not only believe in him but also suffer for his sake, engaged in the same conflict which you saw and now hear to be mine." (Philippians 1:29-30) This includes suffering others' sins and their effects - even opening our wallets to pay for the odious sin of sexual abuse.

Yet a twinge of dissatisfaction remains when it comes to atoning for sins we did not commit. "I didn't do anything! This isn't fair!" Paying for others' sins runs counter to our innate sense of justice. Rage and pride swell, blinding us to Christ's call to suffer in union with Him. Instead of meditating on God's love and law, resentment consumes us.

Through our emotional and intellectual turmoil, the call to follow the Lord to Cavalry persists. There we hear Him teach through His agony: "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." (Luke 23:34)

Forgiveness is the only path out of the natural resentment we feel at watching the innocent suffer and at paying for the sins of others. To forgive is not to forget the pain. It is to let go of resentment. It is to will the good of those who wronged us. It is to pray for their repentance and salvation.

Forgiveness would be beyond our human capacity without God's grace, which endows us w...

By Rev. Jerry J. Pokorsky

An honest assessment of the Church's history over the past century reveals a good bit of moral sordidness but also surprisingly hopeful prospects. Future historians may consider this era the Age of Contraception and Homosexuality. And maybe also of Hope.

Since ancient times, the Church has condemned the use of contraception. In 1930, Pope Pius XI reaffirmed Church teaching:

Any use whatsoever of matrimony exercised in such a way that the act is deliberately frustrated in its natural power to generate life is an offense against the law of God and nature, and those who indulge in such are branded with the guilt of a grave sin.

In modern times, the practice of contraception has transitioned from shame to mainstream acceptance. The Anglican Lambeth Conference initially condemned "birth control" but tentatively allowed it for agitated consciences in 1931.

In the 1950s, Dr. John Rock - a Catholic - concocted the contraceptive Pill. "The Pill" prevented pregnancy and would become easily accessible. By the early 1960s, the Pill became mainstream. Belatedly, Pope Paul VI issued Humanae vitae in 1968. His teaching reaffirmed the constant teaching of the Church on human sexuality and contraception.

A firestorm of dissent ensued. Moral theologian Charles Curran of Catholic University orchestrated the rebellion. Cardinal O'Boyle of Washington, DC, disciplined 52 priests who publicly challenged the pope's teaching. Dissent from Church teaching metastasized.

Concurrently, the cultural firestorm of the sexual revolution of the 1960s gained momentum, fueled by the Pill. The restaurant chain TGIF (Thank God It's Friday) capitalized on the Pill and suggested one-night stands were now safe after a pleasant dining experience in one of their restaurants. In the early 1970s, country music icon Loretta Lynn - an unlikely social revolutionary - composed a tune, "The Pill."

The Pill presumably liberated women to engage in sexual relations without fear of pregnancy. But as many men knew, the Pill liberated them from responsibility. When contraception failed - as it inevitably did - women and their unborn babies would bear the consequences. Indeed, the Pill fueled the abortion industry as abortion achieved legal recognition in every state with the 1973 Supreme Court ruling, Roe v. Wade.

A parallel "gay" movement gained traction with the infamous 1969 Stonewall riots in Greenwich Village. The Vietnam War was raging. And some Church historians suggest seminaries became havens for homosexual men seeking a draft deferment.

The Catholic Theological Society (CTSA) published Human Sexuality by Anthony Kosnik in 1977. In 1979, the Vatican's Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith condemned the book.

It disapproved of some forms of sexual conduct, but only because of the supposed absence, generally expressed in the form of a doubt, of "human integration" (as in swinging, mate-swapping, bestiality), and not because these actions are opposed to the nature of human sexuality.

The CTSA advocacy of "Human Sexuality" suggests that in 1979 there was already widespread acceptance of contraception and homosexuality among members of the Catholic hierarchy. The 1970s was a time of consolidation of the sexual revolution and extreme forms of sexual license. It's not surprising that the decade also saw a spike in clerical sexual abuse of young people.

Upon his election in 1978, Pope John Paul II began a restoration of the Catholic hierarchy and seminaries. He appointed bishops known to support Catholic teaching. Nevertheless, some "gay-friendly" prelates - e.g., Cardinal Bernardin of Chicago, Cardinal McCarrick of Washington, and several European prelates - also rose to prominence.

The counter-revolutionary pontificate of John Paul II saw a flurry of persuasive and orthodox documents. Familiaris Consortio affirmed Church teaching on human sexuality and the family. The Vatican released the Catechism of the Catholic Church in 1992. In 1993,...

By Robert Royal

The Synod on Synodality is a self-defined exercise in listening, openness, transparency - and a whole litany of the usual progressive shibboleths. In practice, it has been marked by listening almost exclusively with the left ear, openings only to revisionist sects like pro-LGBT and women's ordination groups, and an absolute opaqueness - the result of the synod managers requiring delegates not to speak to anyone outside about what's going on inside so that participants can be candid without having to worry about their remarks coming back to haunt them later. (So sweeping is this rationale that the ban on disclosure is supposed to remain in force in perpetuity.)

Except for a very few, almost totally unenlightening, press conferences and a few special events, any curious person has almost no way to know anything about a "process" that is supposed to be a model of the open new synodal style of "being Church."

It's no surprise that one consequence of this model is that there are even fewer people than in the past interested in what's going on - even in Rome. Still, there are leaks for those of us looking for them. And one that should be of particular interest, especially if it continues on to find a place in the final document, is what seems to be increasing momentum (and pushback) towards empowering bishops' conferences with "doctrinal authority," a discussion point tucked away in the back of the Working Document:

From all that has been gathered so far, during this synodal process, the following proposals emerge: (a) recognition of Episcopal Conferences as ecclesial subjects endowed with doctrinal authority, assuming socio-cultural diversity within the framework of a multifaceted Church, and favouring the appreciation of liturgical, disciplinary, theological, and spiritual expressions appropriate to different socio-cultural contexts; (b) evaluating the real experience of the functioning of the Episcopal Conferences and the Eastern hierarchical structures, and of the relations between Episcopates and the Holy See, to identify the concrete reforms to be implemented. . .

That now seems to have become a potential rallying point - along with "continental" structures - since the progressive hot-button issues seem to be, as might have been expected, unresolved or actually getting strong traditional pushback. A cynic might conclude, then, that empowering bishops' conferences is a way for progressives to keep the conversation going beyond the end of the synod this month. With the possibility of getting desired results piecemeal, if not wholesale. At some later point.

Giving bishops' conferences doctrinal power is for some quite serious theological minds a major stumbling block. In the Church, from the beginning, there have been bishops and there has been Peter. The very modern notion of particular nations that could be employed to form intermediate ecclesial bodies never existed.

And as the mighty Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger said forty years ago in The Ratzinger Report: "No episcopal conference, as such, has a teaching mission; its documents have no weight of their own save that of the consent given to them by the individual bishops." He insisted on this point, "Because it is a matter of safeguarding the very nature of the Catholic Church, which is based on an episcopal structure and not on a kind of federation of national churches. The national level is not an ecclesial dimension."

His remarks came in the aftermath of Vatican II, during which one of the points that the Council Fathers were seeking to deal with an overemphasis on the papacy left unaddressed when Vatican I was broken up by Garibaldi's invasion of Rome in the nineteenth century. In Ratzinger's view, the push for elevating bishop's conferences was a deviation from what was good in the Vatican II vision of the bishop as having full authority over his diocese:

The decisive new emphasis on the role of the bishops is in reality restrained or actually risks being ...

By David Warren

Should everything be political?

My own view is that nothing should be, or as little as possible, given our fallen human nature. And there should be laws against political schemes, as we have long had laws against theft, murder, and the other divine Commandments.

But this is merely my opinion, which, of course, counts for nothing in a democratic system, where even right and wrong are subject to impulsive voting.

The fact that I am a Catholic Christian does not come into this, let alone the much larger fact that there is Jesus Christ.

Indeed, just mentioning these facts in the neighborhood of democratic activists - some of whom concede that I have "free speech" - is pointless. For a majority may suddenly vote that I do not.

Or a "theoretical" majority. In fact, we are ruled by (intensely) political parties, and the opinion of "50 percent plus one" is instead represented. Except, this is much more than one needs to win an election, and when one reduces it to actual voters (subtracting those who didn't vote or were unqualified), and several parties are contending, a small fraction will usually give us a landslide.

You may trust the polls, or trust the voting laws (written or amended by whoever won the last election). In either case, your faith is in men; unless, like me, you have no faith in them.

Will you vote for Trump, or will you vote for Harris? This might make a real difference in this world, but you can only vote for what you (cursorily) believe. And what you believe is seldom up to you.

That is where the media come in; and the nursery of distortions in which you were raised.

In this political season, as in all the others, I have been impressed by the demonstrable untruths that many people believe, especially when they have been raised in a political household. Some lies are more monstrous than others, but the "little white lies" do more damage, in aggregate.

Public opinion encourages lying. That is because the committed citizen wishes to convince the uncommitted. And how better to do this than by circulating lies? He fires these at his uncommitted neighbor, in a hail of statistics, which even when partially true can never be contextual.

For the truth of things cannot be known by numbers. Things are vastly too large, and the truth even about one person isn't fully known, even to himself. To "cut to the chase," we must choose the big whopper that appears most appetizing.

The truth, according to me and a tiny minority of "religious fanatics," can actually be known to God, and is accessible within the narrow limits of human fallibility, to us, through prayer.

Public prayer is not public opinion. It is invariably expressed in a liturgy (good or bad); as opposed to private prayer, which only God can hear, supposing we have given Him reason to listen. Liturgy can't be free speech except, perhaps, as it is breaking down.

Scripture and liturgy work to the same end, which is the opposite of politics. We do not tell them what to do, or vote on how each sequence will unfold, as we do when choosing a favorite recording. Curiously, instead, we submit.

The Mass is not an election in any form, it is a reception. Nothing comes of it that a true politician would notice, for he would be looking for what it doesn't do. If God wanted you to vote Republican, for instance, He would not be telling you through the Mass, even in the homily.

Or so I say, from a fairly elementary understanding of the Christian creeds. The notion that Our Lord, whether then or since, has participated in a political campaign, is too ridiculous. It contains only the opposite of the truth.

He (the Lord) ignores our opinions, except what they do to us. He is not moved by our reasons, for they are a jumble of ludicrous assertions. The person who thinks God is on his side, and gives political instruction, should think again, and ask God what He wants, in prayer.

Or even without prayer, Christian or non-Christian should see that he is being a clown. In a r...

By Stephen P. White

But first a note: Be sure to tune in tonight - Thursday, October 17th 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 now underway 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 the column...

One of the primary goals of the ongoing Synod on Synodality is to discern the ways in which the Church's proclamation of the Gospel - the Good News - might be made more efficacious. The Instrumentum laboris (Working Document) for the current meeting of the Synod acknowledges this in its concluding exhortation: "[A]s pilgrims of hope let us continue to advance along the synodal path towards those who still await the proclamation of the Good News of salvation!"

The Synod intends to advance the work of proclaiming the Gospel which has been the Church's mission since the very beginning.

In the Gospel of Mark, for example, the first public words spoken by Jesus are these: "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel." (Mark 1:15) At the end of the same Gospel, just before Christ's Ascension, the parting words of Jesus to His disciples begins like this: "Go into the whole world and proclaim the gospel to every creature." (16:15)

Now, to Christian ears, this should be nothing new. When we talk about the Good News, the meaning is obvious. At least one hopes so, but these days it's hard to be so sure.

If I were to ask you what the Good News is, what would you say?

You might answer with something as simple as "Jesus saves." Or you might cite the Gospel of John (3:16): "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life." You might quote Pope Francis: "Jesus Christ loves you; he gave his life to save you; and now he is living at your side every day to enlighten, strengthen and free you." (Evangelii gaudium)

Pope St. Paul VI, in Evangelii nuntiandi, described the Good News this way: "As the kernel and center of His Good News, Christ proclaims salvation, this great gift of God which is liberation from everything that oppresses man but which is above all liberation from sin and the Evil One, in the joy of knowing God and being known by Him, of seeing Him, and of being given over to Him."

Pope John Paul II went so far as to say that, "Jesus himself is the 'Good News,' as he declares at the very beginning of his mission in the synagogue at Nazareth." We can, perhaps, extend things even further still. The Church doesn't just proclaim the Gospel, insofar as she is (as Lumen Gentium has it) "in Christ like a sacrament or as a sign and instrument," the Church herself becomes the depository of the Good News.

Here's how Paul VI put it:

The promises of the New Alliance in Jesus Christ, the teaching of the Lord and the apostles, the Word of life, the sources of grace and of God's loving kindness, the path of salvation - all these things have been entrusted to her. It is the content of the Gospel, and therefore of evangelization, that she preserves as a precious living heritage, not in order to keep it hidden but to communicate it.

Notice how, for Pope Paul, the "content of the Gospel" includes the "teaching of the apostles" and the "sources of grace," presumably to include the Sacraments. The Gospel cannot be separated from, and certainly doesn't exclude, the moral and sacramental doctrines of the Church.

Notice, too, that each of the aforementioned articulations of the Good News mentions, as an essential element, God's offer of salvation. Beginning with Jesus' own command to "repent and believe in the gospel," every authentic proclamation ...

By Brad Miner

But first a note: Be sure to tune in tomorrow night - Thursday, October 17th at 8 PM Eastern - to EWTN for a new episode of the Papal Posse - and for all of October, it's 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 now underway 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 today's column....

Peter Paul Rubens was a Catholic painter. He was not the most Catholic of Catholic painters, but he was likely the most catholic, as will become clear below.

One thinks of religious artists (i.e., male and female clerics) such as Fra Angelico, Fra Bartolomeo, and Sister Plautilla Nelli - artists whose lives were dedicated not just to painting but also to poverty, chastity, and obedience.

By contrast, Rubens was a wealthy, twice-married man (his first wife died), obedient to the Faith. The case may be made that he was the greatest Baroque-era painter, although the case can also be made that it was Caravaggio. And there's also no question that Rubens admired Caravaggio's work and was much influenced by it.

One difference between them was their productivity: Caravaggio produced fewer than 100 paintings that we know of; Rubens' output (according to expert Michael Jaffé) was 1,403 works. Partly, that has to do with longevity: Rubens died at 62; Caravaggio at 38.

The Baroque period is generally dated from 1600 to 1725. According to Britannica:

Some of the qualities most frequently associated with the Baroque are grandeur, sensuous richness, drama, vitality, movement, tension, emotional exuberance, and a tendency to blur distinctions between the various arts.

If you know the work of Caravaggio and Rubens, you know the best of the Baroque. Of course, there are Rembrandt, Vermeer, Poussin, van Dyck, Velázquez, de La Tour, and others.

In music, Bach, Vivaldi, and Handel top the best-of-Baroque list of composers. And in architecture, the list would be. . .Bernini. Same for sculpture.

Rubens' life reveals the complicated political and religious realities of the 16th and 17th centuries in Europe. Many think of him as a Dutch painter, but when he was born in Siegen, the city was part of the Holy Roman Empire in what today is Germany. Rubens died in Antwerp, which was then the Spanish Netherlands and today is Belgium's second-largest city.

Rubens' parents, Jan and Maria, were among the social and economic elite in Antwerp. Jan was a lawyer who held important positions in the city from an early age. And he was also something of a financial wizard, which led to his rise and fall.

William the Silent (a.k.a. William of Orange), one of the wealthiest, most powerful men in the Netherlands, hired Jan to manage the finances of his new wife, Anna of Saxony. So, Jan took his wife and moved to Siegen to be available to Anna.

In a monumental lapse into sin and poor judgment, Jan and Anna had an affair, she became pregnant, and Jan found himself under arrest and fearing execution. This was in 1571. Peter Paul was born in 1577. Jan died in 1587, and three years later, Maria moved back to Antwerp with Peter Paul and his siblings. They were poor by then; Jan's transgressions having cost them dearly.

In 1592, Peter Paul (hereafter Rubens) began an apprenticeship with Tobias Verhaecht, a landscape artist. He soon left that position to work with Adam van Noort, whose work focused more on grand historical scenes. Van Noort had studied in Rome and was familiar with the work of the great Renaissance artists.

But it was with his third, and very sophisticated, teacher, Otto van Veen - another "Romanist" painter - that Rubens began to get more advanced artistic training and a taste for diplomacy; at first likely as a means of approaching the wealthy and powerful from whom he mig...

Theologian and commentator Dr. Larry Chapp discusses various developments at the Synod on Synodality with Robert Royal — and offers some reasons for hope amid confusions about Catholic morals and the potential for significant changes on authority within the Church.

By Randall Smith

Many politicians and other public figures these days like to say, "Follow the science!" Okay, let's do that. There's absolutely no doubt, scientifically, that human life begins at conception. At that moment, the full set of chromosomes is present that make a human life. It's not a lizard, a chimp, or a goat. It's a human being.

But people are not quite getting the message, not facing the grim truth. Abortion is the termination of a human life. When you face the truth, all the blather about "reproductive health" and "reproductive choice" becomes noxious.

You want the "right" to terminate a life? Terminating a life is "healthcare"? Since when is injecting poison into a human body "healthcare"? You oppose lethal injection for convicted murderers? Good. How about innocent babies? You're a vegetarian and abhor the killing of animals? You think there should be severe punishments for anyone who kills an eagle, a deer, or a baby whale. But it's okay to kill an unborn child? How does that work?

I see other exhortations from various Catholic intellectuals about not being "single-issue" voters. I don't know anyone who wants to be a "single-issue voter." Most people would prefer to vote about things like the economy, budget deficit, immigration policy, energy policy, and education. But human lives are at stake.

Years ago, I mentioned to a friend how Governor Mitch Daniels had reformed the Indiana Bureau of Motor Vehicles. Unlike anything I had ever experienced anywhere else, after Daniels, you could get in and out of that office in under ten minutes. "I wonder what it would be like," I said wistfully, "if elections were about effective government?" He laughed and said: "Yeah, half the things we vote about are things we shouldn't even have to talk about." Can men be women? Sex education for five-year-olds? Killing babies in the womb?

Or how about the fact that the current year-to-date budget deficit is nearly 2 trillion dollars? How about the percentage of school kids who can't read, write, or do basic mathematics? How about the increasingly fragile electric grid? How about the problem of the homeless? How about immigration policy? How about the coming bankruptcy of the Social Security system?

I also want to talk about all those things. But that's not what the news media, in league with the politicians who are eager to avoid those topics, want us to talk about. It's all about who uttered a word or phrase that might be construed as racist? Which candidate is more hateful, and which has more joy? Who has election momentum, and who doesn't? What did some celebrity say about something or other?

No one wants to be a single-issue voter. But some people seem to think laws against terminating human lives are "oppressive." Some philosophers say things like "It's not a person"; others shout, "It's a fetus!" But those are linguistic games, not science.

If you kill a teenage girl, it doesn't become acceptable if you shout: "It was only an adolescent!" The word you use doesn't change the reality of the person. History tells us that lots of people in the past thought blacks and indigenous Mexicans were "human," but not fully "persons." That distinction has always been a mistake, and it's one of the worst mistakes we ever make.

There's no point other than conception when that developing being "magically" becomes human. Hence, there's no getting around the fact that abortion terminates a human life. So we should just be honest and admit that what's being discussed is the right to terminate unwanted human lives.

And for heaven's sake, let's not muddle the issue with Orwellian doublespeak like "reproductive justice" (unless "justice" means "don't kill innocent babies") or "abortion is health care" (the kind of "care" where one person always dies).

The Wall Street Journal ran an article recently about a poor, put-upon Indiana medical student's dilemma, titled: "Stay Home or Move Where Abortion Is Protected?" Where abortion is protected? H...

By Robert Royal

An intelligent friend, let us call him Randall Smith, just invited me to come back to America for a conference at Notre Dame on "the Catholic imagination": "There won't be any imagination at the synod worth writing about, I imagine." I don't entirely disagree. But - despite the grindingly bureaucratic optics - I don't entirely agree either.

When the One, Holy, Roman, Catholic, and Apostolic Church, the central spiritual and moral institution of the West and of the entire Christian world, engages in an exercise of this scope, however banal in many ways, it has real effects. And not only in the Church. Though in this instance, I think, mostly not the effects that the synod organizers - and maybe Pope Francis himself - had in mind.

One of the synod's conspicuous weaknesses is precisely a lack of Catholic imagination. I've grown increasingly interested in that subject - and was happy to speak at the inaugural conference of the MFA program founded by another TCT contributor, James Matthew Wilson, at Professor Smith's University of St. Thomas, because the world is in a culturally suicidal rut.

And without some new and strong cultural efforts - which I think only the Church has any chance to provide - we're going to continue along towards an anti-cultural apocalypse.

Besides, in Rome, it's hard to ignore the sheer power of the Catholic imagination amidst the massive presence of churches, statues, paintings, mosaics that you meet everywhere. And that always has ways of stimulating imagination.

By contrast, the synod delegates this week are slated to discuss the "module" on "Pathways." If the very word "module" - a term that got inserted into humanistic studies in the 1970s to make them seem more modern and scientific - doesn't depress you, half a century on, about the state of the Church, I don't know what to say.

And just in case you think there's little harm in that, there are four sections to this "module" that the delegates will be carefully shepherded through these next few days:

An integral and shared formation

Ecclesial discernment for mission

Decision-making processes

Transparency, accountability, and evaluation.

These abstractions sound like nothing so much as the kind of government guidelines that teachers, administrators, federal and state officials, and everyone else in our politically bloated world are forced to spend time on every day in Europe and America.

It's hard to believe that the synod organizers and the pope himself, whatever their hopes, received this - the opening of the "Pathways" module - from a drafting committee and didn't send it back:

A synodal Church is a relational Church in which interpersonal dynamics form the fabric of the life of a mission-oriented community, whose life unfolds within increasingly complex contexts. The approach proposed here does not separate but grasps the links between experiences, allowing us to learn from reality, which is reread in the light of the Word of God, from Tradition, from prophetic witnesses, and also reflects on mistakes made.

We can probably all agree that learning from reality and our religion is not a bad idea. As for the rest, the lesson that the synod may be teaching the Church is - unintentionally - a good one. Namely, that if this is the kind of language that you think will lead to "discernment in the Spirit" and the flattening out of the "pyramidal" Church (Cardinal Hollerich) into a more synodal one, a lot of the people you are supposed to be listening to will have quite strong reactions.

And there's a very real hope that the abstractions will simply fall away and a focus on the reality of what remains will be the true achievement, if any, of synodality.

Because it's clear that even some synodal enthusiasts have been forced to find paradoxical goods coming from the process, since neither the progressive changes on women, LGBTs, and the rest of the wish list will not be forthcoming now, or perhaps ever. As one delegate put it (according to ...