Dead Synodality
The Catholic Thing, 24 February 2024
The rickety ship Synodality has been taking on water. Pope Francis will heroically try to bring it into port this year before it sinks, but it won’t be easy.
Denials can be offered aplenty, but once that clandestine horse has bolted from the synodal barn, it is hard to get it back. Especially since the African bishops shot it dead at point-blank range. The synodal managers are desperately trying to breathe life into the expired steed, but trying to revive a dead horse is even more pointless than flogging it.
Nevertheless, the never-ending synodal process on synodality for synodal Church continues. The Vatican announced the dates for October. It will be preceded by another spiritual retreat. Perhaps last year’s retreat master, Father Timothy Radcliffe, OP, will return to advance his lifetime project of undermining the Church’s settled teaching on homosexuality. It would seem at this stage that it would be more honest to just have Fr. Martin preach the retreat instead. He could use whatever notes he might have prepared for a Gentili panegyric.
Back in Rome, the synod apparatus announced that it would convene a meeting of 300 parish priests from around the world for several days of synodal discussions on synodality. The synodocrats were embarrassed last year when it turned out that they forgot to invite any parish priests to the October assembly. They won’t be invited this year either, but there will be a sort of not-yet-ready-for-prime-time version for them this spring.
Cardinal McElroy is correct to be unsure whether the flagship synodality project will outlive Pope Francis. Likely not, as synodality has brought the Orthodox to mutual excommunications and fractured the Anglican Communion. In the Catholic world, synodality in Germany flirts with schism and for the Syro-Malabar Church has brought violence into the sanctuary. It’s not an auspicious time for synodality, even if the Roman Curia were not scheming behind the backs of the synodal members.
The retirement of this month of Cardinal José Luis Lacunza brought to mind one of the reasons that synodality in such rough shape. Cardinal Lacunza was one of the cardinals “from the peripheries,” created the first cardinal from Panama by Pope Francis in 2015. He was not the archbishop of Panama City, but rather the bishop of David, a smaller diocese, all the better to make the point that Cardinals could come from anywhere.
Cardinal Lacunza’s 80th birthday falls on 24 February 2024 (today!), so his retirement was expected. It was accelerated after an odd disappearance a few weeks ago, which sent the authorities in search of him. When he surfaced, unharmed, after a few days Lacunza apologized for what he called “a stupid prank.”
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