The four groups entirely excluded by the Synod

Today in Crisis, the redoubtable Regis Martin remarks of the Synod on Synodality,

Think of all those matching tables and chairs so carefully arranged to ensure a level playing field for every marginalized member of the Church. In which there must be no hint whatsoever of hierarchy, of episcopal distinction among the many talking heads. Whether curial cardinal or college coed, it makes no difference; no one opinion is better than any other. Just imagine: 400 plus participants, each his or her own priest, prophet, and pope. 

I add: Think of those circles of chairs, with the participants facing inwards, towards that glowing altar of our time, the digital screen. They are gathered in a hall the aesthetics of which radiate a strange mixture of the technical, the utilitarian, and the ugly (that sculpture!). The images we, sitting at home, receive are lacking in any hint of the sacred, and yet, those who were there were dealing with sacred things after all.

The cold blue light emanating on these Synodal attendees and the absence of any Catholic imagery remind me of Ratzinger's observations about golden calf worship in The Spirit of the Liturgy: "a circle closed in on itself... no longer concerned with God but with giving oneself a nice little alternative world, manufactured from one’s own resources."

Of course, the Synodal meetings were not worship. But with this grouping of equal circles centered on screens, they were not meetings either, from what I can tell. They seemed to be more like futuristic, yet also banal, interactions with the disembodied. 

The Synod on Synodality was touted as being inclusive in its voting. For the first time, laymen and women were participants, we were endlessly told; and two of our most clericalist prelates (in a huge field), Cardinals Cupich and McElroy, presumptuously proclaimed their confidence that future synods would maintain this precedent.

I wonder if it occurs to any of these smug observers that there were four groups who were most definitely not represented: first, devoted wives and mothers seeking only "the noble office of a Christian woman and wife" (in the words of Pius XI) in the home; second, strong fathers who sacrificially take on the role of sole providers of their families; third, piously cloistered nuns; and fourth, committed pastors of parishes. 

Perhaps because these demographics consist of persons who are not interested in leaving their place (nor could they be spared), they were entirely omitted. Yet I would argue that it is precisely on the shoulders of these obscure figures that the Christian restoration depends. And each one of those groups could use a little encouragement at this point.

Sohrab Ahmari writes today that the synod was a big "apostolic nothingburger," an oddly dismissive turn of phrase in a piece meant to admonish critics for insufficient faith in and reverence for the pontiff's intentions. 

"No 'fundamental changes to Catholicism' took place. Nor was the faith radically deconstructed. That should alert hardcore traditionalists that perhaps they’ve got Pope Francis all wrong; that by constantly questioning his fidelity to the deposit of faith and striking an opposition-from-the-get-go posture whenever he tries to teach, they not only act without due docility toward the Vicar of Christ on Earth, but betray the older models of papal authority they seek to restore."

To be fair to "hardcore traditionalists," contrasted with liberals' perfervid, pentecostal promise of the outpouring of some new Spirit in the Synod's wake, "no change" seems a bit flat and possibly not quite trustworthy. Note that Cardinal McElroy saw it otherwise, on the question of deaconesses (surely they won't be called that, though -- seems sexist):  

"There's only one [question up for vote] that's called urgent. And that is bringing women into greater roles of leadership at all levels of the church. Not a single one has the word urgent or any equivalent word except for that one."

Ahmari admits that there is something a bit awkward about what was said ("not a small portion of the sort of human-resources and therapeutic vernacular that has sadly invaded the Church’s language: 'Our personal narratives will enrich this synthesis with the tone of lived experience....' ") and quickly pivots to that old standby, the assurance that performative worldliness is in fact supernatural, if only we had the right lens with which to view it, Mottram-like: "But I wonder whether appropriating the outward forms of the HR-therapeutic complex is precisely the Church’s way of repelling its substance."

That sort of thing is wearing thin. In any case, if that's the most we can say, that the worst did not happen, that a lack, a void, an absence, is a kind of triumph, well, that's a high price to pay for clinging to the fiction that Pope Francis is not actually in favor of "making a mess." Some of us cling more to the sanity that refuses to take and not take, simultaneously, a person at his word(s).

Personally, I couldn't assuage my fears in this negative view even if I wanted to -- not with my familiarity with another episode, the Amazonian synod, that resulted in similar crowings against naysayers. Even Cardinal Müller tried it; by now we see he eventually had to drop the delusion. "Pope Francis didn't say women should be deacons! Take that, Francis-bashers!" No, but neither did he mention in his post-synodal document Querida Amazonia, even once, motherhood, or the sacrament of marriage, or the importance of family in society, though the whole shebang was directed towards the role of women and the hopes of helping a culture flourish. All that was affirmed at that time was a dreary, administrative model of the Church in which neither the hierarchy nor the family turns out to be that important. In short, one where Christianity doesn't matter.

The chairs are put away now. They will be taken out again next year, I suppose. Regis Martin says, "The world having lost the poetry of the transcendent, everyone is left muttering prose [Ahmari agrees on that point, as we saw]. The world is fast losing its story, which is His-Story, told by the Artist himself, Christ the Savior God." 

Never mind, though. We can recover that story, in Truth, right where we are. A lot depends on our doing just that.