Cardinal Tobin says synodality implements Pope Francis’ ‘program’ for the Church

[Stone]

Cardinal Tobin says synodality implements Pope Francis’ ‘program’ for the Church
With ‘Amoris Laetitia, Fratelli Tutti, Laudato Si’,’ Pope Francis has ‘distilled wisdom’ from previous synods, 

opined Cardinal Joseph Tobin at a Holy See press briefing today.



Joseph Cardinal Tobin at the Vatican, Oct 2024
YouTube screenshot

Oct 11, 2024
VATICAN CITY (LifeSiteNews) — Newark’s Cardinal Joseph Tobin has linked some of Pope Francis’ more controversial texts, such as Amoris Laetitia, to the Synod, saying that synodality is a key part of Francis’ “program” which makes the Church “live and act” differently.

With “Amoris Laetitia, Fratelli Tutti, Laudato Si’,” Pope Francis has “distilled wisdom” from previous synods, opined Cardinal Tobin at a Holy See press briefing today.

Tobin drew on his experience as a member of the ordinary council of the General Secretariat of the Synod of Bishops, which organizes each synod including the current Synod on Synodality.

Appointed as a member to the council in 2018, the Newark cardinal said the first preparatory meeting for the 2021 Synod took place in early 2019.

During the council meeting, they discussed which of the three themes from the 2018 Synod on Young People should be the focus of the 2021 event, choosing from “Immigrants and refugees, life and ministry of priests, synodality.”

According to Tobin today, the members of the council strongly advised the Pope that immigration or priestly life should be the focus, but Francis decided to make the Synod on “synodality,” causing some strong confusion in the council.

Tobin praised Francis’ decision, though remarking that he did not understand it at the time. “My sin was to question wisdom of the Holy Father,” he said. “I’ve been absolving it by trying to understand what he meant and why he values it.”

The 72-year-old cardinal suggested that Francis’ focus on synodality was tying together key themes and documents from his pontificate.

“As he distilled wisdom that was presented in subsequent synods – Amoris Laetitia, Fratelli Tutti, Laudato Si’, it became clear to me that the Holy Father was not simply proposing a program, but that he was helping me and others to understand that in order to do to this, to respond to the Lord this way, you need to think differently about how the church lives and acts.”

Now, closed Tobin, Francis’ attention to synodality “is a great moment of grace for the Church and the world.”

Tobin’s linking of three key documents written by Francis and the Synod is notable as it posits the Synod on Synodality as a way to fully implement the proposals contained in the previous texts.

Amoris Laetitia is infamously controversial for proposing Holy Communion for the divorced and “re-married.” Fratelli Tutti promoting human fraternity has been widely criticized for promoting fraternity divorced from religion and, as a result, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò condemned the text for promoting a “blasphemous” form of brotherhood without God as well as “religious indifferentism.”

Meanwhile Laudato Si’, and its focus on “climate change” issues, has become the reference text for later Vatican and Papal initiatives focused on the green agenda. In it, Francis spoke about “true ecological approach” which listens to “both the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor.”

In contrast, the Synod on Synodality has been promoted as not focused on any one topic in particular – though numerous issues such as “female deacons” and LGBT “inclusion” continue to be raised by individual members. Rather, the Synod on Synodality presents a new manner of ecclesial life and governance, one in which endless questioning, round-table discussions, and joint decision making becomes the norm while the traditional hierarchy and unchanging teachings of the Church are sidelined.

Through the “synodality” process, questions are raised about how aspects of Church teaching, which are already firmly and infallibly decided, can be reimagined or altered.

Indeed many of the issues central to the three texts Tobin mentioned are contained in the Synod, which includes how to “welcome” divorced and re-married individuals as part of the Church’s ostensible new self-understanding.

In April 2021, Tobin highlighted the topic of “synodality” as “a long-established buzzword of this papacy.”

“Francis keeps calling for a more decentralized church, one marked by collaborative and consultative decision-making, a functionality we generally associate more with the horizontal structures of churches of the East as opposed to the top-down Roman hierarchy in the West,” he said.

“Synodality is, in fact, the long-game of Pope Francis,” said Tobin at the time.

READ: Cardinal Tobin: ‘Synodality’ is Pope Francis’ ‘long-game’ plan to change Catholic Church

Tobin also quoted from Amoris Laetitia to shed light on the meaning of synodality. Francis wrote, “[n]ot all discussions of doctrinal, moral, or pastoral issues need to be settled by interventions of the magisterium.” Tobin commented that “what Francis was saying was that the Vatican is not the only part of the body of Christ.”

In contrast to Tobin’s praise for synodality, already back in 2018 Cardinal Raymond Burke remarked that “synodality” has “become like a slogan, meant to suggest some kind of new church which is democratic and in which the authority of the Roman Pontiff is relativized and diminished — if not destroyed.”

He warned that some, “not understanding the notion of a synod correctly[,] could think, for instance, that the Catholic Church has now become some kind of democratic body with some kind of new constitution.”