Brendan Hoban: Resistance to synodal church is now evident
Western People 11.11.2025
Delegates from the Catholic dioceses of Ireland gathered in Kilkenny Convention Centre on October 18th to help prepare for a National Synod to be held in October, 2026 which is intended to usher in a ‘synodal’ church in Ireland. The Kilkenny meeting was a follow-up to a similar meeting in Athlone three years earlier when reports from the dioceses of Ireland were summarised by a national synodal committee.
The Athlone meeting was a great success in that unexpectedly the shape of a future Church became clear as the issues raised in the individual diocesan reports revealed an extraordinary if unexpected similarity. To such a degree indeed that the outline of the map forward was obvious and was summarised in a number of key priority issues that the Catholics of Ireland had clearly indicated needed to be addressed. So far so good. Unsurprisingly the delegates representing all the Irish dioceses left Athlone on a wave of gratitude and optimism.
One of the outstanding issues noted in Athlone was the role of women in the Church. Every diocese had listed the women’s issue in the first three priorities. The National Synodal Committee had fine-tuned the listed issues into seven in preparation for the Kilkenny meeting, which was itself designed to continue mapping out the ground for ‘what God wants for the Irish Church in the future’. And among the seven issues on the agenda for Kilkenny was the role of women.
The central formula of the Kilkenny event was ‘Conversation in the Spirit’, a synodal technique which enhances a sharing of ideas through a process of attentive listening.
It lasted almost two hours at the end of which the ideas that had emerged were listed and two people were asked to summarise the results. In the report back, one of the tellers (a woman) expressed surprise that out of the hundreds of ideas listed, only three mentioned the women’s issue.
To say that statistic was greeted with widespread astonishment would be an understatement. We looked at each other wondering how such a volte-face, a stunning reversal of the Athlone experience, could be explained. It was as if somehow we had lost our bearings and ended up in a cul-de-sac. Or even lost our way completely. Something was different, very different and we struggled to identify it.
My own view is that the make-up of the Kilkenny gathering was, as many suggested, quite different from that of Athlone. While the Athlone delegates were mainly people from and focussed on parish life, Kilkenny seemed to have drawn many delegates more anxious to further the particular agendas of the different associations they represented. This was very obvious and indeed was alluded to afterwards by Archbishop Eamon Martin of Armagh who saw the presence of new delegates as a positive – attracting a more widely based support for synodality. I didn’t.
In the group of seven I was in, one delegate who represented a marginal Catholic society kept insisting that his group should be established in every parish and effectively demanded that it be included in the list of priorities even though no one else in the group supported the idea. Another was a young man who represented an evangelical youth group and who demanded similar attention. A third was the individual who volunteered to take notes and then added his own personal enthusiasm to the list.
My conclusion from the group experience was two-fold (i) that ‘Conversation in the Spirit’ should not be attempted unless those participating have some understanding of the process and (ii) a facilitator to guide each group is absolutely essential to guide it. Instead of a focus on attentive listening, it became a debate in which a more argumentative tactic was employed of insisting on a personal view that sometimes extended almost to a form of bullying.
Another view shared by delegates whose opinion I valued was that too much time was devoted to the theological framework that sustains a synodal pathway and too little to a discussion of the seven issues presented by the committee and how they could be moved forward. There is a limit to what can be said about the centrality of Baptism – crucial though that context is. In respect for the Athlone experience at least half of the Kilkenny meeting should have been devoted to moving forward the issues agreed at Athlone.
Another problem was that the lack of focus on the seven issues at the expense of a surfeit of theology was perceived as an undermining strategy to purposely talk synodality into the ground. The perceived lack of momentum and action in the three-year lacuna between Athlone and Kilkenny constituted (some believed) grounds for accusations even of institutional conspiracy! At the same time, while progress is not always susceptible to haste, hope can begin to wither unless something is seen to be happening. The usual dance of the Church in taking two steps forward and one step back jars – particularly when it is set against a background of push-back to synodality evident among some priests and disinterest evident among some bishops.
There is a need not to feed a perception that particular groups are exerting undue influence in attempting to deliver their own agenda – no matter how laudable their programme or how necessary their age-syndrome. Four provincial mini-synods leading to a single National Synod might re-create a necessary focus on the issues in common rather than on groups or individuals. Another suggestion is that finding the right questions and tightening up control of repetitive contributions from the floor – ‘if it has been said, don’t repeat it’ – may be the key to keeping the focus on the primary task of the synod, ‘what God wants for the Irish Church in the future’.
The necessary focus now should be on recapturing the passion and the momentum of the Athlone event and progressing the kind of formation in synodality for people, priests and bishops that is as obvious as it is necessary.
“There is a limit to what can be said about the centrality of Baptism – crucial though that context is.”
In my own experience the limit placed by most clergy on saying anything about the centrality of Baptism is very strict indeed – to the extent – usually – of saying absolutely nothing whatever.
This, for me, illustrates another huge problem – that no Irish bishop has ever expanded on the theme of the evils and dangers of clericalism, the most powerful source of the diminishment of the role and importance of Baptism – to the extent of making it an infant and unconscious event – with no need for any adult recovery of its original importance for adult life.
Necessarily therefore, under Christendom, the importance of ordination came to be exaggerated at the expense of baptism – even though from the time of Augustine the church has called it a mistake to think of ordination as perfecting the person who receives it. That conversion and ordination are therefore quite different things was rarely advertised by the clerical church – making conversion itself the most under-discussed issue in the synodality process so far – even though it is mentioned no less than 24 times in the Final Report of the XVIth Universal Synod on Synodality.
The Catechism’s model of conversion presents it as something undertaken as a perpetual duty. Richard Rohr’s model is strikingly different, centred as it is upon the experience of suffering – i.e. of events beyond our control that we have no option but to put up with.
On the second understanding there are levels of conversion that lie outside our own unaided power to accomplish – and this is well illustrated by the conversion of Catholic bishops to child safeguarding in the church – by having to suffer a global ‘outing’ and lambasting for being dangerously unconcerned about the very same subject.
The Kilkenny event seems to have been an experience of suffering for those expecting it to “move forward the issues agreed at Athlone”. That the most important of those issues had already been referred to ten top level study groups in March 2024 by Pope Francis surely signalled that Kilkenny was unlikely to move them forward. Pope Francis always emphasised that synodality was not a parliamentary process capable of taking decisions, so what happened at Athlone was predictable – especially given that among some a spirit of reaction had set in as early as the Autumn of 2022.
We have no option now but to suffer the reality that Irish Catholics are now in widely varying mindsets when it come to reform – and that other reality of the visible disappearance of the clerical superstructure. Time to rediscover the importance of Baptism and its original close connection with both adult suffering and adult conversion – and Jesus’s injunction never to ‘Lord it’ over one another – the injunction that Christendom forgot?
I thought the Holy Spirit was guiding these sessions. Obviously not, it seems to be people with agendas that are misguided. It’s great to witness the beginning of the end of this ridiculous synodal pathway in Ireland and getting the Church back to the real mission of saving souls.
The only thing that Matters is the Salvation of Souls. Salus Animarum Suprema Lex. Previously, I have pointed out that the last significant intervention, by any Irish Bishop, on the Four Last Things, (Death, Judgement, Hell, Heaven) was in 1985 by the Saintly Archbishop Kevin McNamara of Dublin.
Whether one is Traditionalist like myself, or a Synodalist Progressive, the Four Last Things impact us all.
I read one of the recently released Vatican Synodal Documents. On the topic of Females reveiving Holy Orders, the status was rather predictable: “Open for discussion, needs more discernment “.
I suspect this will continue to be the status and no decision will EVER be made until after the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
Rome doesn’t want to shut the door on Females receiving Holy Orders because it is afraid of the barrage of Criticism and opposition that would ensue. Rome doesn’t want to restate what is enshrined in Canon Law (1917 CIC 968, 1983 CIC 1024).
I would like to take the Opportunity to wish Tony Flannery well. He and I disagree on many things, but the one thing we have in common is that we are both under ecclesiastical censure. Strange signals indeed from Rome!
#2 “… getting the Church back to the real mission of saving souls.”
Please expand, Alan – explaining how now souls are to be saved – without meeting with all of those souls, and listening, respectfully, to what they may have to say or to ask.
That is, without ‘synodality’ in Pope Francis’ understanding of the term.
What if “saving souls” is a temptation to take our minds off the here and now?
We are called in this human journey to relieve suffering. We are called to “save bodies.” (Feed, clothe, visit, Welcome.}
Yes – very often the most basic human needs are peremptory and must take precedence – but there is also in the Gospel the clear instruction to make disciples and pass on the Good news (Matthew 28:19–20 and Mark 16:15).
That call was addressed in Kilkenny – e.g. by Julieann Moran in her opener – the faith formation priority – and by Archbishop Martin’s closer – in which he insisted that everyone needs what we possess ‘the pearl of great price’ and yet ‘somehow we are finding it difficult to reach them’.
“I dream of a ‘missionary option’, that is, a missionary impulse capable of transforming everything, so that the Church’s customs, ways of doing things, times and schedules, language and structures can be suitably channeled for the evangelization of today’s world rather than for her self-preservation.” (Pope Francis in Evangelii Gaudium 27)
That was the original charter for synodality. Those who oppose the synodal process on the grounds that it has nothing to do with ‘the saving of souls’ need to think again. In the wake of the scandals of Christendom – culminating in the hiding of the abuse problem – this is no easy task – but those who serve others selflessly and with integrity, meeting their most basic needs, make great headway.
Maybe there is no better way?
Yes, evangelization is a major concern in the church today. Synodality is driven by the goal of evangelization. Hopefully, it will help the church be more effective in bringing the Gospel to the world.
“… even though from the time of Augustine the church has called it a mistake to think of ordination as perfecting the person who receives it.”
Seán, given what you have shared above, could you – or Joe – tell us something about the idea of ordination making priests ontologically superior.
This is the kind of nonsense someone like myself just accepted without really thinking about it. That was until Fr. Tom Doyle, on one of those excellent online meetings we had during Covid (arranged by the ACP or WACI — I think), told us that this was the idea of a 15th century French theologian.
Some might say it’s ontologically different rather than ontologically superior. Well, it certainly is not inferior and, I think, the implication has always been superior.
And, Dermot, why are you under censure? I thought the traditionalists never suffered censure.
‘Ontologically’ different? I can only guess that here again there was a need for a term to express whatever it is that confers upon the priest at ordination the sacramental ‘power’ or ‘authority’ to confect the Eucharist and validate other sacramental signs.
Given that the Donatist controversy had pushed Augustine and others into a corner re accepting clergy with some history of capitulation to persecution – and that there would be huge administrative difficulty in deciding that all sacraments were invalidated retrospectively if a priest was discovered to be immoral – it was an administrative ‘no brainer’ to argue that God could bestow grace even through the actions of a sinful cleric – but this raised the question of what ordination actually accomplished. The phrase ‘ontological change’ is suitably impressive and ‘philosophical’ – but obviously it should not be understood to imply that the priest is ipso facto made sinless and morally superior.
How I wish that our bishops could restate all of this clearly – as clericalism surely relies upon confusion over the matter, and the mistaken attachment of virtue – as well as ‘ontological change’ – to clergy by ordination?
Otherwise the teaching that we are all – and always – precisely equal in dignity becomes controverted and even meaningless?
Easy use of the term ‘conversion’ – and the Catechism emphasis upon our ‘duty’ in this regard can also mistakenly convey that simple adherence to rules – e.g. the commandments and church regulation – constitutes conversion – when scripture itself insists that we need to experience ‘suffering’ – i.e. humiliation – to be ‘born again’.
‘There is no humility without humiliation’, insisted Pope Francis, speaking obviously from personal experience. Don’t we therefore need to see the ongoing humiliations of the Irish church as part of our own conversion experience – if the church is to become truly a field hospital for the least fortunate?
https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/cotidie/2020/documents/papa-francesco-cotidie_20200207_no-humility-without-humiliation.html
I took a full part in the listening exercise held in my diocese pre covid. At that stage there was no mention of synodality. I subsequently lost confidence in the synodal process as I read about it. Nevertheless, in company with the Archbishop, I would always wish 230+ Catholics (clergy and lay) well, gathered as they are earnestly seeking the will of God in religious events, guided by the said Will. We who are not part of the movement have to pray for its success according to these parameters.
I fully support, and in my own small way, and participate in lay apostolate work. But I would find it really difficult to participate if the work were associated with deliberate efforts to change Church teaching or in dumbing down the ordained priesthood. If somebody speaks of shared responsibility, I ask to what extent laity agree to be formal recipients of solicitor’s letters claiming damages against the parish. I have had that experience in the context of a school. There is no inverted pyramid in synodality since the Pope is not part of it. Upended or otherwise it is a truncated object, flat on top and base. As Kilkenny demonstrated this structure is prone (to put it mildly) to the disappointments felt by some, especially as more enter the “tent”. The festival of self-affirmation didn’t surface.
In one very short phrase in his talk, the Archbishop stated that synodality is not the “be all and end all” of everything that is happening in the Church. But some participants believe the real Church has yet to be created. A self-creation, a self-generated cult?
But everyone there was summoned by “the Spirit!!” Surely, at least hopefully. Conversation in the Spirit has to be learned, so there were participative growing pains. So, rightfully, trust in “the Spirit.” God doesn’t always garnish prayer with exhilaration. Neither does every thought in prayer come from God.
Catholic Faith survives on lived doctrine, especially that of The Mass as Sacrifice. Would the Holy Spirit exclude The Eucharist from any list of Catholic synodal priorities or from the proceedings of a Catholic gathering such as that of Kilkenny? No. The Sacrifice of the Mass is the very basis of communion. Next time?
#10 “There is no inverted pyramid in synodality since the Pope is not part of it.”
As it was Pope Francis who initiated the Synodal process – participating himself in the 2023-24 Universal Synod on Synodality and entering its final report immediately into Catholic teaching – this statement simply does not ‘scan’ and directly contradicts what Pope Francis has himself said. No Christian is dispensed from the obligation of service or the injunction not to ‘Lord it’ over others (Matt 20:25-26).
11
“participating himself in the 2023-24 Universal Synod on Synodality”
Pope Francis in 2023 withdrew from the synod process to write Fiducia Supplicans with Cardinal Fernandez which had his approval.
The Pope is not bound by synodal decisions and has never stated that he is. Indeed, relatively early in his papacy he stated that one of his methods was to let people talk and then make up his mind on what they suggested. His letter accompanying the Final Document (FD) of the Universal Synod Assembly of 2024 reflects this. In it Pope Francis said the FD “is not strictly normative.” He intimated that evaluating choices regarding authentic walking together in a spirit of co-responsibility becomes possible only as implementation proceeds. In other words, the exact nature of what it means for the Church to become more “synodal” remains unexplained.
The 2023-24 Universal Synod on Synodality was primarily one of “Conversation in the Spirit.” It was not and was incapable of being a decision-making gathering.
In terms of decisions, Pope Francis appealed to no synodal process when setting up the relatively obscure committees working on various doctrinal questions. He decided unilaterally that consideration of these issues was beyond the competence of a synodal gathering. Nor did he bind himself to recommendations of the committees. He alone decided on the 2028 gathering.
Some of those who promote synodality tell us that the future Church will be one of permanent synodality. This means that established standards or norms of doctrine or behaviour will be subjects of deliberate ongoing review. The magisterium of each pope becomes a “temporary little affair,” in effect baseless. The sheep morph into shepherds enjoying life in an inverted pyramidical structure, with the position of the pope purely figurative. The situation becomes ridiculous in the absence of a Pope independent of synod of whatever duration.
In one sense the most progressed form of synodality is that in Germany. Pope Francis never gave an indication of approving its conclusions. He is outside whatever form of pyramid exists thereto.
And for what it’s worth, neither did he consider himself bound by the stated attitudes of bishops throughout the world regarding the Extraordinary Form of the Mass.
#12 (Neil Bray on Synodality not being an inverted pyramid)
All of this is ‘ad intra’ – i.e. addressed to the church’s internal workings and rules. With his obvious responsibility as the church’s chief administrator and sign of unity Pope Francis acted as you say – as the whole church needs him to do, to preserve its own unity.
And yet it is still a profound mistake to say that there is no inverted pyramid in synodality – because synodality is not essentially an ‘ad intra’ process. It is conceived and focused ‘ad extra’ – asking how the church is truly to become – for those outside – what Lumen Gentium proclaimed it to be – a ‘light of nations’.
It is therefore also obviously mistaken to call the German model for synodality ‘more advanced’, as no merely national process can be determinative of a universal one.
“The 2023-24 Universal Synod on Synodality was primarily one of ‘Conversation in the Spirit.’ It was not and was incapable of being a decision-making gathering.”
So were no decisions whatever made by the universal synod of 2023-24- not even that ‘There is nothing higher than this baptismal dignity, equally bestowed upon each person, through which we are invited to clothe ourselves with Christ and be grafted onto Him like branches of the one vine.’ (Article 21)
Or that ‘Orientated towards mission, synodality involves gathering at all levels of the Church for mutual listening, dialogue, and community discernment.'(Article 28)
The overall decision clearly taken by the 16th Synod on Synodality was that Synodality itself would become the normative mode of mission-oriented life for the church, in which every baptised person becomes aware of his/her own baptismal dignity and capacity for mission. In immediately approving the final report Pope Francis was endorsing this conclusion, and his decision re the 2028 event – to review progress towards the goal set by the final report – was a logical self-submission to that final report.
To say that the pope is not a part of the synodal process and therefore that synodality itself is not an inverted pyramid is therefore a profound mistake. It is to separate the church from its mission and to think of it in all of its current complexity as a final destination rather than as the means of getting to a destination known only to the Trinity. Are there not yet enough lost sheep?
Just a few, quick dare I admit, a few tit for tat responses. Apologies.
The statement regarding baptismal dignity alluded to in 13 above was not a decision. Baptismal dignity has been a Catholic belief for millennia. Restating it of course is very valuable.
Pope Francis’ participation in synodality was one of control. In the first synod on marriage certain proposals were voted on for consideration during the second synod on marriage. Three proposals failed to achieve sufficient votes. But Pope Francis ignored the vote shortage and procedure and had the three proposals included in the second synod. He had to in order to achieve his objectives.
In Kilkenny, either Bishop Coll or the priest from Navan expressed a view on the pyramid which is interesting to say the least.
My overall position is partly one of praying that the synodal process will, in accordance with the will of God pursue and produce a Catholic outcome. What God wills is revealed by Jesus – the accomplishment of the first three petitions of the Lord’s Prayer. Such is the primary desire of God at any time in history. This is the “first commandment.” The Sacrifice of the Mass is central to it. The “Second Commandment” – self sacrificing love derives from the first. The grace involved reveals itself in the visible unity of a Catholic community anywhere, reminicent of Acts 2:42.
My position is also at one with the phrase used by the Archbishop in Kilkenny, to wit, synodality is not the “be all and end all” of everything that is happening in the Church. As yet, synodality is one endeavour, of which Cardinal Grech and Pope Francis speak of in terms of “dialogue,” “walk together,” “discern,” and “make consistent choices” in order that the Church may make “progress . . .[Note] in terms of synodality.” Cardinal Grech speaks only of how all the meetings over the next three years will “hopefully” bring about a “synodal conversion” to “help for the renewal of the Church and for a new missionary impetus.” There is no clarity regarding the telos of the exercise, apart from the intention to change elements of Church teaching. This latter renders it impossible for many to participate. But I don’t doubt the earnestness of the synodalistas.
As I have written elsewhere, I have over a number of years observed significant renewal in two French parishes. This is credible obvious visible progress. Lately I became aware of a similar renewal in England. Both exercises have existed for 15 to 20 years. They are priest-led cum laity apostolates oblivious of “the authoritative proposals” outlined in the Final Document of Synod 2024. We are not speaking here of “heaven on earth” scenarios. They require consistent, concrete, repetitive effort based on Church doctrine, prayer, repentance, self-sacrificial love, efficiency, and dare I say it, biblical joy. They could come undone without due surrender to God. Similar endeavours probably exist elsewhere. I have concluded, rightly or wrongly, that the examples of renewal I have referenced here offer valid paradigms for renewal elsewhere. I believe it is possible that synodal processes as now exist could eventually be transformed into these paradigms.
One of the difficulties of Kilkenny reported here and in the Irish Catholic pertains to creating group consensus on procedure, on agendas, on content, on decision making, on balancing voting majorities with consensus, on eventually upending whatever form of pyramid. “A long and winding road!”
“could you – or Joe – tell us something about the idea of ordination making priests ontologically superior.”
The mystique of the priesthood and the special qualities of the clerical caste probably begin with Chrysostom and Ambrose in the late 4th century. Ambrose has a long and boring text on the duties of clerics (De officiis ministrorum) which is modeled on Cicero’s most boring text On Duties (De officiis). This could be the charter of “clericalism”, a term never clearly defined by Pope Francis.s
As a student in Rome I heard a sermon on the amazing power of the priest: even 10,000 angels could not bring God down on the altar. This seemed totally archaic to me and very remote from Vatican II. I wonder was it ever mainstream and not rather a niche fantasy?
Ordination conferred a “sacramental character” as did baptism and confirmation. But who regarded this as “ontological superiority”? Rightwing Catholic websites say that the church teaches the ontological superiority of its priests. The Catechism speaks only of powers conferred for the service of the people of God.
Chatting with theologian Eugene Duffy in Rome the other day, he told me that all the ideas of “synodality” were present in the language of the US Bishops in the 1960s-70s. Indeed they go back to the time of the Council, when Cardinal Suenens launched the buzzword “Coresponsibility.” The church too often reinvents the wheel and starts from scratch, ignoring the work previously done by pastors and theologians, and this seems to have happened with the ill-defined “synodality.”
An exemplary statement of a medieval understanding of the role and power of a priest is in the 15th c. play Everyman:
For priesthood exceedeth all other thing;
There is no emperor, king, duke, ne baron,
That of God hath commission,
As hath the least priest in the world being;
For of the blessed sacraments pure and benign,
He beareth the keys and thereof hath the cure
For man’s redemption, it is ever sure;
To us Holy Scripture they do teach,
And converteth man from sin heaven to reach;
God hath to them more power given,
Than to any angel that is in heaven;
With five words he may consecrate
God’s body in flesh and blood to make,
And handleth his maker between his hands;
The priest bindeth and unbindeth all bands,
Both in earth and in heaven..”
But even so, the treatment in this play of the then burning contemporary theme of priesthood, when it was important for the church to stress the centrality of priesthood in the life of the church, as far as I can see doesn’t stray further to claim “ontological” difference nor superiority. Indeed it records balefully the fact that sometimes priests do not personally live up to even ordinary levels of moral rectitude.
“There is no clarity regarding the telos of the exercise [i.e. synodality], apart from the intention to change elements of Church teaching.”
Is that ‘telos’ not clearly evident in ‘Evangelii Gaudium’ 27: “I dream of a ‘missionary option’, that is, a missionary impulse capable of transforming everything, so that the Church’s customs, ways of doing things, times and schedules, language and structures can be suitably channelled for the evangelization of today’s world rather than for her self-preservation.” (Pope Francis)
The phrase ‘Church teaching’ on its own does not permit deciphering I fear. ‘Dignitatis Humanae’ (1965) recognised that any failure to recognise the principle of religious freedom would be a barrier to the church’s mission, but that the church could and did ‘compel people to come in’ in earlier centuries – even to the point of physical torture – is an inescapable part of the historical record. It follows that not all ‘church teaching’ in any given era can be considered ‘unchangeable’ and that the principle of a hierarchy of truth needs to be absorbed.
To regard e.g. rules relating to ordination as of the same unchangeable status as the Creed is to make of Jesus’ ‘light burden’ something not only heavy but immeasurable. Is even canon law as it stands in 2025 – in every detail – to be considered unchangeable ‘church teaching’? If so can Pope Francis’ ‘dream’ ever become reality?
Number 17 above has in great part changed the subject of this thread and the digressions are more complex than as presented. I request to depart from the thread with the following.
I find it attractive to imagine 230+ people who represent some multiple of that number nationally – earnest Catholics comprising bishops and priests and laity gathered together in Kilkenny, and who have committed themselves to some sacrament-related ministry, say the Sacrament of Penance, committed to going to confession regularly (once a month) and as a ministry seeking means of encouraging perhaps those Catholics who observe the Third Commandment to likewise engage regularly with the Sacrament.
The ICP has highlighted the importance of Baptism in terms of human dignity. But in one national referendum the Irish baptised voted massively to set the human dignity of the unborn to one side. Some social/personal obstacle exists blocking awareness of the sense of human dignity rooted in the baptiseds’ Baptism, an obstacle contrary to the God-instilled thirst for transcendence at the core of human nature. Since that obstacle cannot be sourced in grace it must be sourced in that which is not of grace, and whose name we dare not speak.
There is a pressing need for greater use of the confessional in lived Catholic faith, definitely more critical than decisions regarding the top positions at table (Lk 14:1.7-14). The sacrament-related ministry of a 230+ + episcopal-clergy-laity ministry would attract blessing from God and would have a huge impact on the lived Catholic Faith of those Catholics seeking to be faithful. On foot of that witness, it would impact also on the Third Commandment and Eucharistic Adoration. The work of grace would enhance a positive mission in a world characterised by the conflict between good and evil.
Pope Leo in his homily at the Jubilee of the Synodal Teams and Participatory Bodies warned synodality participants against a range of sins against charity. Since a warning implies the existence of that warned against, ongoing repentance is an essential, initial, active ingredient of synodality process.
But when can this fit into a synodality culture characterised, to an extent unrevealed by the ICP, by obvious efforts to eradicate the hierarchical structure of the Church as instituted by Christ and/or to overturn the entire moral order by permitting individual (subjective) conscience to reign supreme over objective moral law.
Cardinal Grech speaks of a further necessary three years to come to grips with understanding synodality. Christ BEGAN His ministry (Mark 1, 15) urging repentance. Sacramental renewal may have to wait as in Pope Leo’s words, the synodal participants seek truth “together, allowing [them]selves to be guided by a restless heart in love with Love.” The latter Love is of course Jesus Christ who defined Love as keeping the Commandments and their expression in Church teaching.
The not-so-clear synodality process could slow down many aspects of Church renewal. Particularly so with the diminution of hierarchical structure and devaluation of the heretofore moral teaching of the Church. Why? Because The Catholic Church would drift into a religious organisation with few if any undisputed core beliefs, into a fragile magisterial structure for resolving questions of authority and truth, into an inability to resist either the determined onslaught of secularism, or the energetic challenge of Islam. Catholics seeking to be faithful need not fear this. The Holy Spirit in a manner as yet undetermined will not allow the Church to be mortgaged in that way, led into a race towards irrelevance There may be damage on an Arian scale but that is all. Offending genies will be returned to their bottles eventually.
A chance encounter with a Muslim woman.
I was waved into the cubical for my blood work. There sat a Muslim woman with her Hijab firmly in place. I said I was a wimp when it came to having my blood work done. She (diversion technique) said “I love this Christmas season.” WHY? I asked.
The music, colour and joy was her reply. I said “I love Muslims.” She asked WHY?
I said because we are people “Of The Book.” She said, “WE are!” She squeezed my hand, I squeezed hers. She smiled, I smiled and left the cubicle.
She is my sister pilgrim on our return home to our loving God.
Sean, Joe and MJT, thank you all for your contributions to my understanding of clerical ontological superiority or not.
Imagine, Joe, you are more powerful than 10,000 angels!!!
Joe, do know anything about the 15th or 16th century French theologian Fr. Tom Doyle told us was responsible for the whole concept of ontological difference/superiority?
I don’t know who Thomas Doyle referred to, but I’ll look it up. (Gabriel Biel?)
St Augustine is often quoted in an anti-clericalist sense, to the effect that ‘I am a bishop for you, but I am one of the simple faithful with you.’
Newman has a sermon: “Men, not Angels, the Ministers of the Gospel” — I wonder was he resisting the hyper-sacralization of the Priest in the 19th century and did he find it to clash with his previous Anglican experience of ministry? https://www.newmanreader.org/works/discourses/discourse3.html
Rahner is quoted interestingly in this piece: https://dmcmanaman.com/2024/02/21/the-myth-of-the-ontological-superiority-of-the-priest