Laying To Rest The Long, Unlamented Synod

​Shortly I will be off to Greece and Türkiye for several weeks. Late in August I will begin a three month stay in Ireland and North Ireland. In Greece, Easter is celebrated on May 5; in the 1960’s Pope Paul VI ruled that Greek Catholics could celebrate Easter concurrently with the Greek Orthodox Church. However, we will not be attending a sunrise Mass; the only English Sunday Mass near our Athens apartment is at 6:30 PM. But it does shape up as the year of two Easters for Margaret and me.
 
Our Turkish sojourn will be my first encounter with Islamic culture and worship. We are planning an Istanbul visit, of course, to Hagia Sophia, for centuries the greatest Church in Christendom, as well as to Ephesus, home of the “Letter to the Ephesians.” Later this year I am anxious to get a sense of Catholic parochial life at a more leisurely pace in Ireland. I have visited Ireland just once before, in 2015, where I spent a week on Valencia Island, the country’s furthest extension westerly into the Atlantic. In fact, three doors down from our little apartment was the eastern terminal of the transatlantic cable!
 
From what I read internationally, Ireland’s Conference of Bishops had embraced the Synod experience with more energy than our USCCB and in its “listening phase summary,” had the courage to publicly acknowledge pain among the faithful, which contrasts to the non-event that the Synod on Synodality proved to be in the United States. If Leon Uris’s epic novel Trinity is historically accurate, and few have questioned it, the relationship between Irish Catholic laity and their bishops over the past four hundred years was strained by the bishops’ subtle strategy of keeping the Catholics in tow to maintain good standing with English authorities. Further, the child abuse crisis of recent years was particularly painful in Ireland. Put another way, Ireland was/is a nation in desperate need of a unifying venture such as the Synod, if for no other reason than a reconciliation with the recent past.
 
The United States, by contrast, generally ignored the process. I doubt that the U.S. Bishops’ gargantuan summary of the Synodal listening process to date reflects representative grass roots consultation across our country. [Judge for yourselves.] The USCCB report puts the number of American Catholics who engaged in the process at 770,000, a number only slightly larger than attendance at the 1969 Woodstock Music Festival, and about 1% of the 66,000,000 Catholics in the U.S. Some dioceses—notably my neighbor to the north, St. Augustine—invested considerable time and imagination, mailing invitations to active and inactive active Catholics for scheduled fellowship and interactions. Meanwhile, in my own parish, for several years there was a sad little box that appeared on page seven of our weekly bulletin, exhorting us to “Pray for the Synod.” Evidently, having heard nothing from the pulpit by way of explanation, folks must have assumed it was something evil. So, the people bowed and prayed, and sure enough, the Synod passed over our diocese like the Death Angel at the First Passover, and life goes on, such as it is.
 
What went wrong? I have a plane to catch for Athens shortly, so I will have to be brief, but here are some critical points that might help us down the road, though I confess to some pessimism here, if history is any teacher.
 
Nobody knew what a synod is. According to the Oxford dictionary, a synod is “an assembly of the clergy and sometimes also the laity in a diocese or other division of a particular Church.” In the Roman Catholic world, major doctrinal issues are discussed in worldwide synods of bishops called ecumenical councils. Local issues and matters of a non-doctrinal basis are discussed in synods, period. A good example: in 1884 the bishops of the United States met in Baltimore to establish the practice of building a Catholic school in every U.S. parish. [Thus, the “Baltimore Catechism,” too.]
 
It was the intention of Pope Francis that the universal Church adopt a standard and regular practice of bishops and laity engaging in the strengths and challenges in the life of the Church; mutual consultations, if you will. Ideally, such open-door communications would ensure that the full range of pastoral insights and concerns of the baptized be considered when the bishops and the pope met in general synods, as they currently do every five years or so, or in an ecumenical council such as Vatican II. No machinery currently exists for the “voice of the faithful” to consult on the health and mission of the Church.
 
Nobody knew how to set up the process. This was a multidimensional problem involving an absence of both religious and sociological expertise. Aside from the ritual of the Eucharist, Catholics have no structure for “group communication.” There are secular companies galore who arrange meetings and conventions for a price, but they are expensive, and about 20% of the dioceses in the U.S. have declared bankruptcy, with others tottering on the edge. Paying for the expertise and operations would be difficult if not impossible. About twenty years ago my diocese paid a bundle for the management of a local synod—a cost which included renting the Orange County Convention Center. No way in hell we could do that today.
 
Catholic Media problems. I looked at the circulations of national Catholic publications: Our Sunday Visitor, National Catholic Register, National Catholic Reporter, etc. and was shocked at the low circulations of both progressive and conservative publications. Coupled with that is the reality that editorially speaking, the Catholic press is divided over the policies of Pope Francis and thus the very idea of a synod on synodality. Diocesan Catholic papers/websites are edited by the local bishop and depend upon reporting from the larger national sources mentioned above. Sunday church bulletins provide local parish news. I would venture that very few American Catholics are linked to national and international news, such as issues involving the Vatican, and hence have not gotten the breadth of the pope’s understanding of synodality.
 
The secular news media. During this past week, Pope Francis gave an extended interview to Norah O’Donnell of CBS News for a 60 Minutes feature to be broadcast in May. National Catholic Register’s daily news service reported a ticklish remark by the pope to O’Donnell that may please many and irritate others: “I would say that there is always a place, always,” Pope Francis said, addressing those who do not see a place for themselves in the Catholic Church. “If in this parish the priest doesn’t seem welcoming, I understand, but go and look elsewhere, there is always a place. Do not run away from the Church. The Church is very big. … You shouldn’t run away from her.” Pope Francis is suggesting what once was derisively known as “parish shopping.”
 
This is not exactly news. “Parish shopping” is a crude term for a worthy exercise: finding a parish family in which to invest one’s soul, participation, resources, and energies—not to mention the faith of one’s children. It is hard to worship weekly in a parish with serious distractions or defects. Is a Catholic bound to worship in an assigned parish where MAGA is a weekly sermon theme? [And trust me, such places exist.] I was taught in the seminary—over fifty years ago—that a Catholic has an innate rite to worship at any valid Catholic Church or monastery for the good of his or her soul. We were trained that as canonical pastors, the “parish boundaries” of Canon Law extend out, not in. We pastors were responsible for pastoral care to anyone within our boundaries who requested it—such as the last rites—but we could not censure or discriminate against a parishioner on our books who went to Mass at the parish next door.
 
My point here is that much of what the pope says or does comes to us from the secular media, for better and worst. “Parish shopping” will be controversial when it hits 60 Minutes in May, and the media will be criticized predictably for poor reporting, but only because we as a church have never publicly admitted the painful truth that many parishes/preachers/pastors have not mastered the skill of inclusive pastoring. Can we expect Nora O’Donnell to know that? Consequently, we cannot blame the secular media for mishandling the Synod, either.
 
The Eucharistic Revival: The American Bishops were deeply troubled [embarrassed might be a better word] that according to secular polling, only about 30% of Catholics believe that Jesus is truly present in the Eucharistic food. They embarked upon a multi-year national program to educate the faithful and to promote Eucharistic adoration which overlapped the international synod. Obviously, a well-intentioned if expensive devotional effort. But the Eucharistic effort hit the same wall as the synod: few people know about it, and no one knows quite what they should be doing. The issue of personal Eucharistic experience might have been profitably addressed in the forum of a synod, but that opportunity was lost.
 
The United States Conference of Bishops: It is generally accepted that the USCCB is, at the very least, uncomfortable with Pope Francis. Some bishops have been openly derisive of the pope, with no public rebuke from their confreres. Presently it is not a body easily admired, nor, for that matter, enthusiastically followed and obeyed. As to why the bishops dislike Pope Francis, there are too many reasons to cite here, but two are worth noting. Many bishops believe the pope has gone too far in his ideas for reforming the Church by endangering Church order particularly in the teaching of morality. Consider the recent kerfuffle around the idea of blessing same-sex couples The pope’s moral reservations about American attitudes toward capitalism, war, refugees, etc. are hot button political issues in the U.S. that make preaching and governance a true challenge to bishops, as individuals and as a conference.
 
Second, the USCCB finds itself in the uncomfortable position that all the old buttons it used to punch are not now responding to commands. Even Donald Trump failed the conference when he publicly supported a states’ rights approach to abortion instead of a constitutional amendment. The decline in Sunday Mass attendance, now less than 20% weekly, is a radical crisis for which no answer looms on the immediate horizon. It is hard to see exactly what influence the Conference will have over the next decades in the direction of American Catholics. Given the American episcopal absence of much enthusiasm for synodality—down peddling an explicit call from the Pope--it is hard to see how bishops can criticize the laity as “cafeteria Catholics” when the baptized make important personal judgments on the living of the Gospel.
 
Credibility. The Synod on Synodality was big news because it promised that “at last the laity would be heard.” In fairness, how well prepared is the laity to offer charismatic wisdom to the Church as a whole? [I am reminded of this when I attend my HOA meetings.] Are we, individually, people who have done our homework, who “ponder in our hearts” like Mary the precious words of Scripture? Do we know our history? Have we made room in our musings for the many and varied cultural experiences and needs of the universal Church, not just those of the United States?
 
So, what have we learned? The Catholics I know and respect tend toward a strong and faithful living of an independent Catholic identity, somewhat detached from organizational clamoring. They are faithful to the Holy Eucharist, recognizing the truth of Vatican II’s teaching that the Liturgy is the source and summit of the Christian life, even where its external celebration is more distraction than celebration. They pray alone in a variety of formats, always as individuals and when possible, with fellow believers. They feed themselves with the wisdom of the saints as they hold inner counsel on the will of God for their circumstances. They recognize that the ecclesiastical and secular problems of the world are beyond their own ability to solve. In doing so, they peacefully form themselves to the mind of Christ so that if the day comes when the Church—collectively or individually--seriously seeks their counsel, the Lord will place a good word upon their lips.