Opinion: Synod Issues Anti-Monarchical Blueprint

[Stone]

SYNOD ISSUES AN ANTI-MONARCHICAL BLUEPRINT

TIA | November 8, 2024

The four-year process of the bombastically announced Synod on Synodality ended on October 27, 2024. Convened in 2021, it had a two-year preparation phase and then met at the Vatican in two sessions – one in October 2023 and another in October 2024 – bringing together 368 voting members of which 272 were Bishops. According to the media, these two sessions were meant “to change the face of the Church.”

Given that the Bishops issued a practically empty document in 2023 – perhaps sabotaging Bergoglio’s expectations – the latter took his revenge and emptied the second session by creating 10 commissions alongside the Synod to address the hot topics. These commissions, created in March 2024, will outlive the Synod and continue their work until at least June 2025. Depending on a papal stroke of the pen they may last much longer.

But for the 2024 session of the Synod, Francis determined that it should deal only with the very generic theme: “How to Be a Synodal Church in Mission.”

The Bishops obediently issued their final document: For a Synodal Church: Communion, Participation, Mission. I plan to say a word about it here.

But before I begin the analysis, let me set out some presuppositions.

• The word synodality as well as collegiality, communion and co-responsibility are code words in Conciliar Church parlance for the democratization of the Church. Fr. Karl Rahner spelled it out straightforwardly: “We could hope for a true democratization of the Church. … Democratization … should be understood as a key for integrating the Church into the temporal and pluralist society, the existential and permanent substractum for the formation of the Church.” (1)
  

At right, Karl Rahner: ‘Democratization is key to integrate the Church into society’

• It is ironic that while the Bishops preach democracy in the Church and demand that inferiors should have all types of liberty and participation in decisions, they nonetheless obey the strict commands of the dictator Pope. They are not free to speak for themselves. The democratic liberty they preach is the opposite of the reality in which they live.
  
• As democracy is dying all over the world in the civil sphere and people are looking for a way to replace it, the Conciliar Church arrives on the scene breathless and boasting that it is democratic, trying to appear in style… It is a bit late; democracy is yesterday’s trend that has almost completely lost its appeal.
  
• Finally, let us not forget that the Catholic Church is essentially monarchical by divine institution. It is a Monarchy composed of the Sovereign Pontiff, the Hierarchy and the faithful. Pope St. Pius X in his letter Ex quo of December 26, 1910, condemned those who deny that the Catholic Church has been a Monarchy from her inception (DR 2147a, cf. 1822, 1825, 1827, 1831). When someone tries to destroy this order, he falls into either schism or heresy.
  

Bergoglio’s Synodal Church

The final document of the 2024 Synod is quite encompassing. It is one of the best syntheses I have read on the topic of democratizing the Church.

It establishes not only how the institutions of the Church should adapt to “synodality,” but also pledges to engender new styles of behaving, progressing spiritually, exerting authority, forming priests, being bishops and even being pope.

Some examples follow: (2)

• It is an extensive reform: “We ask all the local Churches to continue their daily journey with a synodal method of consultation and discernment, specifying concrete methods and formative ways to achieve a tangible synodal conversion in the various ecclesial realities (parishes, institutes of consecrated life, societies of apostolic life, groups of the faithful, dioceses, bishops’ conferences, regrouping of Churches etc.).” (§ 9)
  
  
• Synodality is a constitutive dimension of the Church: “With this document the Assembly recognizes and testifies that synodality, a constitutive dimension of the Church, is already part of the experience of many of our communities. At the same time, it suggests roads to walk, practices to enforce and horizons to explore.” (§ 11)
  
  
• It has multiple liturgies: “Deepening the understanding of the link between liturgy and synodality will help all Christian communities, in the plurality of their cultures and traditions, to adopt styles of celebration that manifest the face of the synodal Church.” (§ 27)
  
  
• It has an obligatory method: “Synodality is the walk together of Christians with Christ toward the Kingdom of God, united with all mankind; oriented toward the mission it includes gathering in assemblies at the different levels of the Church’s life, mutual listening, dialogue, community discernment, the formation of consensus as an expression of Christ’s presence in the Spirit, and the adoption of a decision in a differentiated co-responsibility.” (§ 28)
  
  
• “The synodal perspective, while touching the rich spiritual patrimony of Tradition, contributes to renewing its forms: a prayer open to participation, a discernment lived together, a missionary energy that is born from sharing and radiates as service.” (§ 44)
  
  
• It has a changeable theology: “Church synodality requires theologians to make theology in a synodal way, promoting among themselves the ability to listen, dialogue, discern and integrate the multiplicity and variety of requests and contributions.” (§ 67)
  
  
• It is a Church of the people for the people: “The synodal Assembly wants the People of God to have a greater voice in the choice of bishops.” (§70)
  

A session of the Synod 2024

• “In particular, some concrete demands emerge from the synodal process that need to be responded to in an adequate way in different contexts: a) greater participation of lay men and women in all phases of decision-making processes; b) broader access of lay men and women to positions of responsibility in dioceses and church institutions …; d) an increase in the number of qualified lay men and women who perform the role of judge in canonical processes …” (§ 77)
  
  
• It moves toward including all religions: “On this road a synodal Church commits itself to walk, in the various places where it lives, with believers of other religions and with persons of other convictions, sharing freely the joy of the Gospel and gratefully welcoming their respective gifts: to build together as brothers and sisters in a spirit of mutual exchange and help, justice, fraternity, peace and inter-religious dialogue.” (§ 123)
  

Here the reader has some highlights of the “synodal” Church - or democratic Church - that Progressivism is planning to establish in the Church.

The document gives still other suggestions to change the Papacy based on the document The Bishop of Rome, which we have already studied. At the end it suggests that an Ecumenical Synod of all “Christian” religions be held in 2025 on the occasion of the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea (cf. §§ 138, 139)

We see that the Synod 2024 did not “change the face of the Church” in the field of institutions, as some had emotionally predicted. However, in the realm of ideas and plans it released a road map that intends to finish the work of destroying every residuum of the monarchical character of the Catholic Church that still stands after 60 years of continuous attack by the Conciliar Revolution.


1. K. Rahner, ”Theological reflections on the problem of secularizatiom,” in Theology of Renewal, Montreal: Palm Publishers, 1968, vol. 1, p. 175.
2. Since the Synod's Final Document is only available in Italian, I am offering the reader my translation of it.