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.

Changing the Church one bureaucracy at a time

While you were thinking about how to defend motherhood, and babies, and marriage, and other nice things that are almost extinguished, this was happening in the Vatican's Synodal Synod of Synodness Process:

In historic first, Pope Francis approves an ‘ecclesial conference’ with lay people instead of a bishops-only leadership body

“We are living a ‘kairos,’ a propitious time of God in the history of the church,” Cardinal Pedro Barreto Jimeno, S.J., told America in an exclusive interview in Rome on Sept. 6 in which he revealed for the first time that Pope Francis has approved the statute of the Ecclesial Conference of the Amazon (CEAMA), giving it formal recognition in the church... 

CEAMA, he said, can be compared “to the small mustard seed that grows little by little and spreads its branches to welcome the entire universal church.” He expects similar ecclesial conferences to emerge on other continents in the coming years, including Africa and Asia, as bishops from those continents have already shown great interest in the structural developments in the Amazon region...

Cardinal Barreto said that final document emphasized the need for a new ecclesial body to promote synodality and shape a church with “an Amazonian face,” while seeking new paths for evangelization and for an integral ecology. The new Amazon ecclesial conference is that body.

And here is the crux: 

He revealed that the members of the Amazon conference are “also discussing the question of ministries…their service in the church and, more specifically, the ministry of women and the service women are already giving in Amazonia.” He reported “that inside Amazonia, but also outside the region, women religious celebrate baptisms, weddings, liturgies and some even hear confessions for people who confide personal problems to them although they cannot give [sacramental] absolution.”

Lest you think that redefining jobs in a remote part of the world has no universal significance, the article closes with this quote:

He concluded the interview with these words, “We are living in a very special moment of the grace of God. It is a time of hope in the midst of a desperate, aimless humanity.”

I tried to warn you, though, here: Querida Amazonia: Enabling Ecclesial Change. Among other matters, I pointed out that the Pope's synodal process letter is notable for what it does not say:

Not one theologian or academic I'm aware of (please prove me wrong) read Querida Amazonia and reported on what it does not say:

It does not mention the family and the woman's irreplaceable role in it, as every previous reflection on the Church in the world has done. 

It does not mention mothers and their role in forming children. It does not mention fathers as providers and protectors.

But it does speak of women as sort of parallel apostolic agents who ought to be recognized as such. 

In other words, it speaks -- very clearly for those who have ears -- of a new ecclesiology in which traditional apostles -- men who are priests -- must give way to and work with and often under -- women in apostolic roles.

This ecclesiological vision is what is behind Cardinal Ouellet's letter on women [more on this below] being given equal roles in seminaries.

And it is behind this move reported here -- note that Querida Amazonia is referenced by Pope Francis in his letter to the CDF) to codify in Canon Law the long-established role of women as lectors and women and girls as acolytes. (As always with progressives, questionable praxis knowingly precedes formal legislation.)

So no, Querida Amazonia was not the anodyne letter proving that the orthodox needed to apologize for worrying about Pope Francis's destructive tendencies. In fact, it was one more wedge in the modern fissure threatening the bulwark, the Church. 

When women start to think of their "baptismal dignity" as being proven and perfected in the sanctuary, the work of these corrupt shepherds will have been accomplished.

Outright revolution has gone out of style, I suppose, but seekers of power have learned another way. While it's romantic, and gets your profile on a t-shirt, to brandish a rifle and overthrow the institutions, the more effective albeit less glamorous method is to work through the channels of administration.

And women are very good at administration, it turns out. For the great majority seeking a place in the world, glass ceilings are not a real problem; women are content to take their place in the cogs of the machinery. The "feminine genius" has been reinterpreted quite apart from motherhood and has settled for a dreary imitation of male function at its most mediocre level.

Harvey Mansfield has written that feminists "show themselves to be very unerotic" -- "women are induced to put their trust in impersonal bureaucracy rather than in a man who loves them." While radical feminists, he points out, never speak of careers, their more moderate counterparts do and have spent the past handful of decades earning the sisters a place in management.

The Vatican, too, aspires to make of the woman a bureaucratic sharer of power. And that's what this new model is all about. Not content with the stultifying -- yet subversive -- role of bishops' conferences (surely bastions of male power in name only; the USCCB is staffed by over 200 people, and I'd be willing to bet that the majority are women), the feminist prelates in charge of the synodal process want more. They want bigger desks and more paperwork. They want the whole world to be one giant departmental affair.

And that's what the ecclesial conference will be -- not a mustard seed, for how can any conference be conceived by a Christian as something that "spreads its branches to welcome the entire universal church" in Cardinal Baretto's overwrought image not sourced in any Gospel I have read, nor in Acts either -- but a sort of kudzu imported to strangle normal, flourishing family life and complementarity of the sexes, within which Christian witness finds its origin and development.

Querida Amazonia: Enabling Ecclesial Change

I am collecting here my comments on Querida Amazonia and its aftermath and implications. Originally I posted these things on Facebook, but I need to have them in one place for future reference.

The time leading up to Humanae Vitae was traumatic, and like all serious trauma, the effects are long-lasting and reappear at odd times. We now approach papal documents to see whether they meet the lowest bar of not going against Church teaching. Amoris Laetitia only reinforced the syndrome (and some still have not confronted the fact that it does not uphold Church teaching). 

Thus, people anticipated Querida Amazonia (and feared what it might say) the way a beaten child reacts to a sudden noise. The fact that the apostolic exhortation did not explicitly call for the ordination of women came as a huge relief to many, though they did not quite read it for what it does not say; and they didn't read it carefully at all. They simply checked the box labeled "does not call for women's ordination or even married priests in the Roman Rite" and moved on, full of gratitude for a fight avoided.

Finding the document free of radical change gave rise to a lot of scolding of the fearful, which was not only an uncharitable and unjust reaction -- it was wrong. Where the approach to Querida Amazonia was binary -- "celibacy vs. married priests" -- that reader was not paying attention and was perhaps focused on scoring points, instead of defending the splendor of what has been handed down by nature and revelation. 

In a mild article in the Catholic Herald entitled Is this Pope Francis’s ‘Paul VI moment’? C.C. Pecknold optimistically wrote, 

"After months of agitation around the Amazonian Synod, the Holy Father’s post-synodal Apostolic Exhortation Querida Amazonia was received with relief by many. 

Pope Francis simply ignored the radical reforms demanded by rich, bourgeois liberals in Germany."

He ended his piece thus: 

"By saying that Querida Amazonia is the closest thing to a Paul VI moment yet, I only mean that it is a moment in the pontificate of Francis in which you can hear a certain “click”— both in those relieved and those disappointed — the “click” of false expectations adjusting. It’s a moment to trust that the Holy Spirit never disappoints." 

I wrote in response to this well meaning but misguided opinion:

"If this is Pope Francis' Paul VI moment, then those of us who cleave to the teachings of the Church should pray all the harder and be all the more wary." 

The reality is that Humanae Vitae contains within it the seeds of its own denial in Church practice, and coupled with the instantaneous subversion of its core restatement of Catholic teaching by whole bishops' conferences, this weakness prevented it from being the panacea we hoped for*. 

Yes, HV held the line in terms of doctrine. But let's face facts: 50 years on, the vast majority of Catholics practice contraception with their pastors' blessing (if they even seek it) -- that fix was in early on, thanks to Cardinal Suenens.

Humanae Vitae has nothing approaching the *positive* teaching and vision of Casti Connubii on the deep meaning of the sacrament of marriage for all mankind. Its tone is regretful and apologetic (and in this way, Querida Amazonia differs, in having a "joyful" tone). It established a fatal legalism that we have yet to confront.

*panacea afterwards, when the relief that it wasn't a betrayal subsided, and we tried to make the best of it. Now it has reached the status of holy writ; I suggest re-reading it in a less ultramontanist light.

The truth is that we have a right to expect more from a papal document than not outright promoting a false teaching.