continued from above... After the Exhaustion The Synod process seems designed to wear everyone down, thus making it easier for the Synod’s mandarins to get their way. So it’s not surprising that there’s a sense of deflation at the end of Synod-2018. There are also more than a few worries about how the Church is going to weather the rough seas into which it is being steered. Still, there was some very good work done here this past month. New networks of conversation and collaboration were built. Nothing completely egregious got into the Final Report, thanks to some hard and effective work. New Catholic leaders emerged on the world stage. And there were, as always, many experiences of fellowship, and the grace that flows from the Holy Spirit through solidarity in a great cause. In that sense I’ve been glad to have been here. And like others, I suspect, I’m grateful that Synod-2018 has given me a clearer understanding that business-as-usual is not an adequate model for the next months and years of Catholic life. – George Weigel TESTIMONY FOR THE CHURCH [During the second full week of Synod-2018, the University of Notre Dame’s Center for Ethics and Culture, directed by Professor Carter Snead, hosted a series of evening receptions at which Synod fathers could meet young adults, hear their concerns personally, and discuss the Synod’s themes in an informal atmosphere. The following reflection was offered at one of those events by John Paul Ferguson, a Notre Dame undergraduate. Jack Ferguson’s summons to a truth-based evangelization of young people who, like the rest of us, are called to sanctity, struck your editor as a fitting way to end these LETTERS. XR II] Good evening, everyone. Over the past two evenings, we’ve heard our friends Keenan and Katherine reflect how they have experienced and come to treasure the transcendental virtues of “beauty” and “goodness” in their life of faith. Tonight, I hope to contribute this final reflection on “truth,” especially the truth of our Lord – what we believe the beautiful and good lead us towards. In the American legal system, we swear in court to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. It’s that middle tenet of the oath – the whole truth – that I think is noteworthy for the Church to consider. When truth is proclaimed partially or incompletely, it can be as misleading as a lie. I believe this kind of truth is what my friends, my peers, my classmates, and my fellow young men and women throughout the world are wanting to hear proclaimed wholeheartedly, courageously, and lovingly from the Church. When I think of young people, my friends, and the Church, I’m struck by many of those who leave the Church, because they reject a false idea of what the Church actually is. They have not heard that “whole truth” of what Jesus Christ proclaimed, and what he asks of us, how he asks us to respond to His love; the whole truth that: the stories of our lives are always illuminated by light of supernatural grace, that are called to enter to struggle of radical holiness. We must be reminded that we are not called to success, to contentment, to mere toleration – we’re called to sainthood. Any of my friends could tell you that Jesus taught love. But too many have no idea what this love consists of, what God’s Plan really is. Even many of those who attended Catholic primary and secondary schools had weak formation from parents, teachers, and parishes. One of my best friends back on campus went through his whole confirmation process and high school religious education only ever hearing that “Jesus loves everyone”– which surely is the beginning and end of the Christian mystery – but leaves everything in the middle – the heroic struggle – completely unexplored. My roommate had a similar story in his Catholic high school. His understanding of the faith had little depth, and therefore little strength. When he came to Notre Dame, he began to finally receive instruction in his faith; he began reading the Bible for the first time, and C.S. Lewis. These two friends of mine began encountering the tradition of the Church; both were greatly inspired by reading Augustine; they began participating in the sacramental life of the Church, attending Mass and confession regularly for the first time. They’re the ones who drag me to adoration. What a great joy it has been to accompany them in their conversion. They’ve now been given the whole picture, the whole truth, instead of a watered-down offer of comfort. It was something they were desiring so badly, but they didn’t know it because they weren’t receiving it. Of course, this transformation doesn’t mean they are now perfect (far from it!), but now they have entered the struggle – the journey back. They are trying. As their friend and fellow young person, we’re in our fight together. There’s new life I witness in these friends when we share about our encounters with the Lord, about our encounters with the fullness of the truth and its inspiration from the beautiful and good. At a moment in which a lot is said about “change and listening in the Church,” I don’t think we young people are going to change Jesus Christ’s Church. Rather, we need Jesus Christ’s Church to be changing us, converting us, transforming us into saints. At the Mass, we recite the Credo, the “I believe,” not the Cupio, the “I want.” And lastly, though of course there should always be an “urgency” with respect to our salvation – as Peter perhaps overzealously jumped out of the boat to swim towards our Lord on the shore just to be near him – I think it is especially important for all of us, especially young persons, to be reminded that our Lord can play the long game. On behalf of our young generation, I ask all of you that the Church’s urgency never becomes a compromised urgency. Just last Sunday, we heard the Gospel telling us Jesus looked at the rich young man with love, but let him walk away sad when he refused to respond to the call. The Gospel tells us that droves of his former disciples walked away grumbling after the Bread of Life sermon. Never did he run after them, offering to negotiate, or lessen the terms. Jesus doesn’t make settlements, he prosecutes for the win every time. In the middle of Notre Dame’s campus, there is a statue of the Sacred Heart of Jesus that reads Venite ad me Omnes — “Come to me, all of you.” What he’s inviting us to is the liberation that arises from the truth of knowing, loving, and serving His person. Synod fathers, please lead us not with any accommodation of the beautiful, good, and true — but with the real example of the joy and freedom of a friendship with him who is the beautiful, good, and true. Please pray for us, that as the youth, we might not defer our life in the Church until we are grown, but that we might respond courageously to the time and place that the Lord has created us for. Thank you. A WORD OF THANKS…. LETTERS FROM THE SYNOD-2018 has been made available throughout the English-speaking world through the cooperation of our collaborators: Ramona Tausz, Julia Yost, and R.R. Reno at First Things in New York; Nick Hallett and Luke Coppen at The Catholic Herald in London; and Peter Rosengren at The Catholic Weekly in Sydney. One could not ask for better or more supportive colleagues. Many of the Anglophone bishops at Synod-2018 contributed to this work by their conversation, discussion, occasional correction, and friendship. I am most grateful to all of them, as I am to many English-speaking scribes and broadcasters who came to Rome for Synod-2018 and participated in a variety of cooperative ventures. Long live the Junior Ganymede Club! All those involved in this effort owe a great debt of gratitude to our benefactors, Rob and Berni Neal, and to our hosts at the Casa John Ambrose in Rome. Thank you. – Xavier Rynne II
Here is an article from Father Z. on the above article which is contained in the previous four posts. Run, don’t walk, to read it. Summary view of the 2018 Synod (“walking together”) Posted on 2 November 2018 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf | http://wdtprs.com/blog/2018/11/run-...mary-view-of-the-2018-synod-walking-together/ At the UK’s (and soon to be also USA’s) best Catholic weekly, the Catholic Herald, you must… I repeat MUST… read George Weigel’s biting postscript on the 2018 Synod (“walking together”). HERE Weigel’s is the first of several postscript “letters” posted together. Weigel is as scathing as he is comprehensive in his synodal retrospective. He effectively and rightly flays the hide from the managers of this edition of “walking together”. For example, Weigel exposes how a discussion of “synodality” was smuggled into the final document. He observes that a push toward “synodality” will ultimately break down into regional variants, a concern that seems dead on target: And before long, the Catholic Church would have been deconstructed into a simulacrum of the Anglican Communion, a lot of which is dying from, among other things, a surfeit of “synodality.” Against charges sure to emerge from the portside of the Barque of Peter, it must be underscored that these are not the concerns of Ultra-Traditionalists at war with Vatican II. Rather, they are the entirely legitimate concerns of some of the Church’s most dynamic bishops, all of whom are proponents of the New Evangelization. What they see in this local-option Catholicism is a prescription for utter incoherence leading to evangelical failure. […]It is interesting that Trotsky’s famous phrase “permanent revolution” came up while they were “walking together”. Weigel has spent a considerable number of his years writing about John Paul II. For a couple years I have been saying on this blog that those around Francis are purposely, methodically, trying to snuff out the magisterial teaching of John Paul. Weigel wrote this: Cleaning the Slate or The Missing Pope At a dinner during the Synod’s final week, the Polish bishops at Synod-2018 – Stanisław Gądecki, archbishop of Poznań, and Grzegorz Ryś, archbishop of Łódż – wondered aloud why there was no reference in the draft final report to the teaching or experience of John Paul II, the most successful papal youth minister in modern history and the author of the Theology of the Body, Catholicism’s most developed (and persuasive) answer to the claims of the sexual revolution. Similar questions were posed to me by Cardinal Kamimierz Nycz and his auxiliaries when I met with them in Warsaw during a brief visit there during the Synod. Thanks to an amendment proposed by the two Poles, the Theology of the Body did get a mention in the Really Final Draft Final Report (as did the Catechism of the Catholic Church). Still, the questions the archbishops raised were not misplaced, and one possible answer to them sheds further light on the Church’s immediate future. The first thing to be noticed about this attempted airbrushing is that it is quite out of character in high-level Church documents. Vatican II made copious references to the magisterium of previous popes, especially Pius XII. In their magisterium, John Paul II and Benedict XVI made similar, extensive references to the work of their predecessors. This was not simply a question of good manners; it had a serious theological purpose, which was to demonstrate that, even as the Church’s thinking and teaching develops, that developed thought is in continuity with what has gone before, even as the Church’s experience and reflection leads it to draw new meanings from the treasure chest of the Deposit of Faith. This now seems to have stopped. Amoris Laetitia, [there it is!] the apostolic exhortation completing the work of the Synods of 2014 and 2015, only quoted John Paul’s apostolic exhortation on marriage and the family, Familiaris Consortio, in a bowdlerized form. John Paul’s encyclical on the renewal of Catholic moral theology, Veritatis Splendor, has virtually disappeared in the present pontificate. Now comes Synod-2018, which struck concerned Synod fathers as a deliberate attempt to marginalize the pope who reinvented Catholic young adult ministry in his extensive pilgrimages and in the phenomenon of World Youth Day (which other Synod fathers actually proposed eliminating). No one is entirely sure what is going on here. But it is not beyond the bounds of propriety to suggest that, in today’s Rome, there is a devaluing of continuity coupled with a misunderstanding of the development of doctrine and a fascination with papal autocracy. More-than-hints of that were already evident at Synod-2014 and Synod-2015, and one prominent proponent of Pope Francis’s style of governance has even suggested that his “discernment” is independent of Scripture and tradition [Remember that? HERE Fr. Thomas Rosica – part-time pipe, full-time partisan – openly said that Francis, who can “discern”, is beyond tradition and Scripture.] – a species of ultramontanism that would make Henry Edward Manning and Alfredo Ottaviani blush. The problem has now come into clearer focus, and it was deeply disturbing to more than a few of the bishops at Synod-2018. […]I could go on with examples of Weigel’s synthetic summary. His acid comments about Card. Baldisseri can only be improved by the consumption of popcorn. Run, don’t walk, to read it. For your convenience… HERE UPDATE: For extra credit reading, check out the Natholic Catholic Register. The great Ed Pentin interviewed Archbp. Anthony Fisher of Sydney, Australia. He was on the information commission for this Synod and he was elected to the Ordinary Council of the Synod of Bishops, which will prepare the next fiasco... Synod. As one of my correspondent’s put it: He is “politely devastating”. As a matter of fact, the first thing he says when asked how the Synod went was: Like the curate’s egg, it was good in parts. Ouch. If you don’t know that phrase, “the curate’s egg”, try this HERE. *** Synod Reflections From Down Under: Interview With Archbishop Anthony Fisher ... Dominican archbishop praises the will of those involved to bring young people closer to Christ and his Church, the general mood of the meeting, and the contributions of the young auditors. November 1, 2018 | Edward Pentin Archbishop Anthony Fisher of Sydney, Australia, was on the information commission for October’s youth synod, and he was elected to the Ordinary Council of the Synod of Bishops, which will prepare the next assembly. In this Oct. 28 interview with Rome correspondent Edward Pentin, the Dominican archbishop praises the will of those involved to bring young people closer to Christ and his Church, the general mood of the meeting, and the contributions of the young auditors. But he also highlights what he sees as weaknesses, including a “disappointing” diffidence about the Church’s moral teaching, an unwillingness to provide translations, and that almost all of the synod fathers felt “shut down” from speaking after they had given their interventions (speeches). Overall, he has concerns with the forum in its current form: “In this synod, we were writing doctrine, as it were, on the run,” he says. “This is not the way to make doctrine.” ... [Please click the above link for the full article.]
10 January 2019 Youth An International Youth Forum to be convened After the Synod of Bishops and the forthcoming World Youth Day in Panama, the Dicastery for Laity Family and Life has announced that an International Youth Forum is to be convened next June on the reception and continuation of the Synodal journey On the eve of the World Youth Day (Panama, 22-27 January 2019), the Dicastery for Laity, Family and Life has announced an initiative related to the impact of the Synod of Bishops on young people, the faith and vocational discernment. In addition to the preparatory phase (articles 5-10) and celebrative phase (articles 11-18), Pope Francis’s latest Apostolic Exhortation “Episcopalis Communio” (15 September 2018), envisages an implementation phase by the Synod Assembly (articles 19-21). This latter phase refers to the reception and realisation of the Assembly’s conclusions which must be promoted both by the particular churches and the Bishops’ Conferences, as well as by those bodies in the Roman Curia competent to deal with the Synod theme. According to its Statutes, the Dicastery for Laity, Family and Life “expresses the particular concern of the Church for the young, promoting their agency in the midst of the challenges of today’s world. It supports the initiatives of the Holy Father in the field of youth ministry and is at the service of the Episcopal Conferences, of international youth associations. Promoting their collaboration and organizing meetings on an international level. An important aspect of its activity is the preparation of the World Youth Days.” (art. 8). Thus, even if much of the Dicastery’s energy has been directed during the past months to the preparation of the World Youth Day, we are particularly eager that in the context of youth ministry, the conclusions of the last Synodal Assembly on “Young People, Faith and Vocational Discernment” be received and realised. In this connection, we will be organising an International Youth Forum from 18 to 22 June 2019 in Rome. The Synod has been a great Kairòs and we cannot waste this enthusiasm or let the strong impulse with which the Holy Spirit is imbuing the Church through young people, pass by. The Forum will be a space for community discernment, maintaining the synodal missionary style promoted by the Synod (see the Final Document, nos. 119-124). Delegates of the Episcopal Conferences and the major ecclesial movements and communities will be invited to the Youth Forum with widespread international diffusion. We hope that some young Auditors from the last Synod (who were known as the “young synodals”) can be present in order to transmit their experience, in addition to counting on the attendance of some youth ministry specialists at international level. The main objective will be that of reception, at international level, of the impulses of the Synod, starting primarily from the Final Document of the Synod of Bishops, and presumably also from a post-synod document that the Holy Father will, in all probability, have published by that date. In conclusion, we have thought of this meeting as being a very concrete way of achieving the Synodal Fathers’ request: “that the activity of the Youth Office of the Dicastery for Laity, Family and Life be reinforced also by the creation of a representative body of young people at international level” (no. 123). http://www.laityfamilylife.va/conte...cato-un-forum-internazionale-dei-giovani.html
All that the Vatican had hoped for was not achieved last October. I'm sure with Pope Francis' upcoming post-synod document, combined with the International Youth Forum in June, "progress" will be made. The Synods and forums are now the international means for implementing a progressive agenda. But, of course, this was all inspired by the "spirit" of Vatican II. Nothing surprises me anymore. In fact it is very predictable. It is sad that cynicism has entered my heart! But what about responding to Cardinal Muller's Manifesto of Faith? Sorry, I don't think it has been included in the agenda.
I think the post-synodal exhortation itself will be an indirect response to Cardinal Müller's manifesto, in which case if there is any change in the doctrine of homosexuality, divorce, contraception, etc., it will be the trigger for a great schism. In fact there is already a process of division in the Church since the exhortation "Amoris Laetitia" that we can consider the beginning of a schism.
Pope Francis to publish a papal document about young people in March On March 25, Pope Francis will travel to the Sanctuary of Loreto. It is traditionally believed that the walls there are from the house the Holy Family lived in. There he will officially sign his next papal document. It will be an apostolic exhortation containing the conclusions of the Synod on to “Young People, the Faith and Vocational Discernment.” It will be his sixth document. Pope Francis has already published two encyclicals; Lumen Fidei and Laudato si', and three apostolic exhortations: Evangelii Gaudium, Amoris Laetitia, and Gaudete et exsultate. However, this future text will not be the last for the youth Synod. In June, many young people who participated in last October's assembly will return to Rome. They will coordinate what implementation or initiatives are taking place in their countries as a result of the Synod. https://www.romereports.com/en/2019...a-papal-document-about-young-people-in-march/
The Vatican have been using the Delphi Technique of Group Manipulation, originally created by the Rand Corporation as a group manipulative technique at these Synods. Here's what it is and how it work:
Yes, I think it's a mistake to have continuing Synods every year, as it gives the progressives the impression that if they don't get what they want this year, they'll try again next time. The Church is being manipulated by vested interests. May God protect the Holy Father. The Pope speaks about vocations in the link below. https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/...ge-and-family-have-an-essential-mission-50975 "Pope Francis: Marriage and family have 'an essential mission' Hannah Brockhaus CNA).- On the Solemnity of the Annunciation, Pope Francis emphasized the importance of family and marriage for society. He also called the Virgin Mary a model for every vocation. “It is necessary to rediscover the plan drawn by God for the family, to reaffirm its greatness and irreplaceability in the service of life and society,” the pope said March 25, during a visit to the Shrine of the Holy House in Loreto, Italy. The Shrine of the Holy House preserves the building where tradition holds the Virgin Mary was born, raised, and greeted by the Angel Gabriel at the Annunciation. Historic documentation shows that the Holy House was brought from Palestine to Italy in the 13th century. The Holy House also holds the statue of Our Lady of Loreto. The Holy House of Mary is the “home of the family,” Pope Francis said during his visit, noting that “in the delicate situation of today’s world, the family founded on marriage between a man and a woman takes on an importance and an essential mission.” He said the Holy House is also the home of the young, “because here the Virgin Mary, the young woman full of grace, continues to speak to the new generations, accompanying each one in the search for his vocation.” “Mary is the model of every vocation and the inspirer of every vocation ministry,” he continued. “Young people who are looking for, or wondering about their future, can find in Mary She who helps them to discern God’s plan for themselves and the strength to adhere to it.” Mary was a daughter, a betrothed, a bride, and a mother, he noted, and “for this reason, every family, in its different components, finds a refuge here…” in the Holy House. The pope added that the domestic experience of Mary shows that pastoral care of the family and of young people should not be kept separate, but “must walk closely together,” because young people are highly impacted by their experience of family in their formative years. During the day-long visit to Loreto, Pope Francis celebrated Mass inside the Holy House, gave a speech and led those present in praying the Angelus. “The Mother of God does not cease to obtain spiritual benefits in those who, with faith and devotion, come here to pause in prayer,” he said about the Holy House. After Mass, the pope signed the post-synodal exhortation written following October 2018’s Synod of Bishops on young people, faith, and vocational discernment. The document, which is addressed to the young people of the Church, is titled Christus vivit (“Christ lives”) and will be published April 2. He later greeted the sick and the Capuchin Friars who run the Shrine of the Holy House, thanking them for their devotion to hearing Confessions in the Loreto basilica and for their work at the Loreto St. John Paul II youth center. He also expressed the desire for John Paul II youth centers to be “relaunched” throughout Italy and around the world and asked the friars to extend the opening hours of the Basilica of the Holy House into the late evening and early night, when groups of young pilgrims are present, so that the place may be available for prayer and vocational discernment. The pope said: “I think of Loreto as a privileged place where young people can come in search of their vocation, at Mary’s school!” At the Annunciation, Mary demonstrated the steps one should take to respond to God’s call of vocation: listening to the Word of God, discernment, and decision, he said. First, Mary listened to the message of the Angel Gabriel. And in response to what the Angel said, she asked, “how can this be?” The pope explained that Mary’s question did not come from a lack of faith, but from a deepening discernment of the Lord’s will and her cooperation in it. And finally, Mary gives her “yes,” he said, “the ‘yes’ of full trust and total availability to the will of God.” “There is a need for simple and wise people, humble and courageous, poor and generous. In short, people who, at Mary’s school, welcome the Gospel without reserve in their lives,” Pope Francis said. “Thus, through the holiness of the people of God, testimonies of holiness in every state of life will continue to spread in Italy, in Europe and in the world, to renew the Church and animate society with the leaven of the Kingdom of God.”
Holy Mass celebrated versus Deum in Italian in the Ordinary Form by the Holy Father in Loreto. The Grace of God is continuing to work upon the Pope. Please let us not give up but rather increase prayers for H.H.
