Press Review: What Happened at the Synod on Synodality? (5)

At the end of this first stage, we can draw some conclusions which, for being provisional, are no less revelatory about the state of mind which drives the Synod organizers.

A Brutal Return to Reality

After this euphoric idealism, which is reminiscent of the blissful optimism of the Council and the post-Council era, we must return to reality. Two authors invite us to do so, opposing the logorrhea of the tragic situation of the Church today. They lucidly denounce both empty words and deserted churches.

In First Things on November 1, George Weigel reported: “One eminent Synod father was jotting down vocabulary notes during his small-group ‘Conversations in the Spirit’ and was struck by which words were used and which weren’t. He satirized both in the form of a two-part mock memo from the Synod general secretariat to the Synod membership.

“First, The Words That Must Be Used in Every Intervention and Statement:

“Synodality. Harmony. Symphony. Women. LGBTQIA+. Working together. Those excluded. Those on the margins. Spirit as protagonist. Women. LGBTQIA+. Insensitive parish priests. Backward seminarians. Sensitive, nice pope. Women. LGBTQIA+. Bleeding Earth. All are welcome. Listening. Discerning. Women. LGBTQIA+. Divorced and remarried. Poisoned seas.

“Then there was the Non-Acceptable Vocabulary:

“Salvation. Sin. Conversion of heart. Holiness. Unborn babies. Vocations. Marriage and family. Eucharistic renewal. Penance and fasting. Persecuted Christians. Religious freedom. Sunday Mass. Sacrament of Penance. Virtue. Parishes. Intellectual life. Sanctifying grace. Fatherhood. Heaven. Pope St. John Paul II. Pope Benedict XVI. One holy, catholic, apostolic Church.

“My friend exaggerated, as we all tend to do when exasperated. But he didn’t exaggerate by much. And the Synod-2023 lexicon, in which a decidedly secular vocabulary displaced the Church’s distinctive language, was predictable, for it mirrored the vocabulary in the Synod’s Instrumentum Laboris (Working Document).

“There, the words ‘synodal’ and ‘synodality’ were used 342 times and ‘process’ was used eighty-seven times, while ‘Jesus’ appeared fourteen times. How can you have a serious ‘Conversation in the Spirit’ absent the Jesus who, meeting the apostles after the Resurrection, ‘breathed on them, and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit”’ (Jn. 20:22)?”

More seriously, in an article titled Empty Square and Exhausted Rites: The Death of a Pontificate (originally in Italian), published on his blog on October 26, Aldo Maria Valli writes: “The photo speaks for itself. The general audience on Wednesday [October 25]. Empty square. Only a few dozen people. All right, it was raining. But there was a time when, while it rained, the square transformed into a field of umbrellas.

“The picture is pitiful and the Vatican Media, starting with the Vatican Television Center, no longer know how to hide the fact: no one comes out to listen to Francis. They try compensate with narrow—even very narrow—framing, a little like Polish television did with John Paul II during his visit to his homeland.

“But if, in the case of Polish television, the problem was hiding the crowds that rushed around Pope Wojtyła, at the Vatican the problem is the inverse: it is a matter of hiding the embarrassing empty spaces.

“This pontificate dies thus, of starvation. Begun with so many hopes, it dwindles away in general disinterest. This is what happens when the Church runs after the world. Because the world is always a distance ahead, and the Church becomes simply pathetic when it pretends to run after it.

Meanwhile, it’s raining in the Vatican basilica. Leaks are everywhere, even in the archives. Admittedly, the management of such an important heritage is not easy, but for a long time maintenance has been—literally—going down the drain.

“Witnesses can confirm that even the housekeeping leaves something to be desired. In the absence of papal celebrations, St. Peter’s resembles more and more a museum in a progressive state of neglect. The situation is no better at Castel Gandolfo, where the palace of the Popes—which is no longer used as a summer residence—has indeed become a museum and is beginning to suffer from all the typical problems of this type of place (including a recent fire).

“Meanwhile, the Synod participants, gathered around their tables, discuss, discuss, discuss. A kind of large dance of words on the deck of a sinking Titanic. There is nothing wrong to discuss, of course. The problem is that the participants seem to revolve around another planet than reality.

“The Church is dying, the faithful are fleeing, vocations are disappearing, but the synodalists live in a world of their own. Like all apparatchiks, party functionaries, they belong to a closed caste, whose only goal is its own perpetuation.

“Meanwhile, another book comes out with another interview with the Pope. Meanwhile, we say that the Synod prayed for migrants and refugees. Meanwhile, care is taken to tell us that ‘the poor have dined with the Pope at St. Martha’s.’”—Parce, Domine, parce populo tuo. Spare us, Lord, spare your people.