oktober 2024

Jeg skrev for et par uker siden om en spesiell type rapporter fra bispekonferansen i Rom i høst. I alt er det publisert 12 slike brev fra «Xavier Rynne II», her er de siste:

12/10 – BREV 6
14/10 – BREV 7
17/10 – BREV 8
19/10 – BREV 9
22/10 – BREV 10
25/10 – BREV 11
28/10 – BREV 12

I oppsummeringen i brev 12 får ikke denne bispesynoden veldig gode karakterer:

Overhyped

The hype surrounding the three-year “synodal process” of 2021–2024 began with the Synod leadership itself. In numerous interviews, Synod general secretary Cardinal Mario Grech and the Synod relator general, Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich, S.J., insisted that, thanks to the “synodal experience,” the “People of God are on the move”—as if the People of God had not been “on the move” since the first Christian Pentecost; as if the Church had been stalled and spinning its wheels in the decades after the Second Vatican Council. That self-congratulatory and self-satisfied usage fit snugly within the cast of mind of such as Fr. Thomas Reese, S.J., who recently wrote, evidently without blushing, a daffy history of the Church since 1962: “The Church has gone through the revolutionary reforms of the Second Vatican Council, followed by the repressive regimes of John Paul and Benedict. Francis has once again opened the Church to free discussion . . .” And if this was how the Synod managers and the progressisti of Catholic journalism were thinking, it was unsurprising that the Washington Post’s Anthony Faiola should describe Synod-2024 as “the most significant Catholic gathering since the 1960s.” – What nonsense.

Any number of World Youth Days have had a far more enduring impact on the life of the Church than Synod-2024 will likely have. World Youth Day-1993 in Denver was a critical turning point in the life of American Catholicism, and its effects are still being felt through evangelical, catechetical, and pastoral outgrowths of that experience like the Fellowship of Catholic University Students (FOCUS) and the Augustine Institute, and through the innumerable priestly and religious vocations, and vocations to holy matrimony, inspired by WYD-1993.

The Extraordinary Synod of 1985, which marked the twentieth anniversary of the conclusion of the Second Vatican Council, found the master key that unlocked the treasure chest of the “council without keys” and integrated the riches of Vatican II in its description of the Church as a communion of disciples in mission. The living parts of the world Church embraced that way of thinking and embodied it in mission and evangelization. …

Et annet negativt element nevnes også:

Overmanaged

Before the Synod on Synodality fades further in the rear-view mirror, it’s important to confront another myth about the “synodal process”: namely, that it was uniquely open, transparent, dialogical, and unprecedented in scope. – More nonsense.

The consultations leading up to the Synods at the parish, diocesan, national, and continental levels never engaged more than, at most, 1 percent of the world’s 1.3 billion Catholics, many of whom were more interested in getting on with their lives as missionary disciples than in sitting through small-group discussions dominated by the agenda-driven. …

På tross av dette påpekes noe positivt:

Providentially Heartening

For this synodal process between 2021 and 2024 has some real accomplishments to its credit. It has allowed firm new friendships to form on a global basis among leaders of the living parts of the world Church, both clergy and lay.

It has decisively clarified the fact that, despite the thirty-five years of brilliant magisterium created by John Paul II and Benedict XVI, there remain significant voices within the Church promoting the theological, moral, and pastoral agenda of Catholic Lite. In the debate over the Catholic future, all the cards are now out on the table—and it is clear which hands are playing which cards. That the dying parts of the world Church are those who remain committed to the Catholic Lite agenda and its absorption of the spirit of the age has been made unmistakably clear. And while some may find it strange, even bizarre, that this process has been led by men and women from rather moribund parts of the world Church, others, arguably more prescient, have found this usefully clarifying, too.

That the Catholic Lite agenda at Synod-2024—the affirmation of the teaching authority of national bishops’ conferences, the endorsement of a female diaconate understood as part of Holy Orders, the LGBTQ+ program, proportionalist moral theology that dumbs down the moral life—did not gain anything resembling consensus, even in a Synod as carefully arranged and managed as this one, can only be, as one bishop said, the work of the Holy Spirit. …

Som tidligere år dekker tidsskriftet First Things (som jeg har lest fast i over 32 år) årets bispesynode på sin særegne måte:

Letters from the Synod began in 2015 at the request of Cardinal George Pell, then the Prefect of the Holy See’s Secretariat for the Economy. During Synod-2014, called by Pope Francis to discuss issues of marriage and the family, Cardinal Pell had been dissatisfied with what he regarded as the spin, bordering on propaganda, coming out of the Holy See Press Office, and thought that alternatives ought to be available during Synod-2015, to aid the Synod fathers in their deliberations and to inform the Anglosphere of what was going on in Rome.

Letters from the Synod-2015 was then followed by Letters from the Synod-2018, Letters from the Vatican during the February 2019 global summit on the sexual abuse crisis, Letters from the Synod-2019, and Letters from the Synod-2023. As in its five previous iterations, Letters from the Synod-2024 will offer reflections on the issues raised (and the procedures enforced) in the Paul VI Audience Hall, following the theological maxim, “In necessariis unitas, in dubiis libertas, in omnibus caritas” (Unity in essentials, freedom in disputed matters, charity in all things). Of course, the question of what, precisely, are the essentials of Catholic faith has been disputed in every Synod since 2014, and fraternal charity can, in those controversies, require fraternal correction.

Welcome back, then, to our veteran readers, and a hearty welcome to those of you engaging Letters from the Synod for the first time. Xavier Rynne II

Så langt i år har det blitt skrevet fem slike brev:

1/10 – BREV 1
3/10 – BREV 2
5/10 – BREV 3
8/10 – BREV 4
10/10 – BREV 5

I brev #3 kunne vi lese:

The Synod’s October 2 afternoon working session was devoted to a lengthy series of reports from the various extra-synodal “study groups,” created by Pope Francis to ponder numerous “hot-button issues” as these are defined by the media and much of the Catholic blogosphere. The tedium felt by many that afternoon was broken by a report from the study group that explored the question of whether women might be ordained to the diaconate; the report was delivered by Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernández, prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith. To what was undoubtedly the shock of some (given the messenger) and the consternation of others (given the message), Cardinal Fernández got straight to the point: 

«We would like to share from the outset that, based on the analysis conducted so far—which also takes into account the work done by the two commissions established by Pope Francis on the female diaconate—the dicastery judges that there is still no room for a positive decision by the magisterium regarding the access of women to the diaconate, understood as a degree of the Sacrament of Holy Orders.»

Og i brev #4 leser vi om de mange jesuittene som deltar i synoden og om metoden som brukes i arbeidet:

… Jesuits are massively “over-represented” here. Does it really matter? Well, it’s likely to have at least two effects.

First, the methodology of the Synod—which relies heavily on the 1970s Canadian Jesuit approach known as “conversations in the Spirit”—will be very familiar to some Jesuits and their allies, but alien to many of those at the Synod. As even its admirers acknowledge, it’s a methodology that contributes to good relationships amongst those involved but not to theological precision. Many Synod members would have preferred a different methodology, and requests that this be the case were plentiful after Synod-2023, not least among members of the Synod General Council. Those requests were denied. …