Hi Steve! Thanks for this reflection on the Pope’s message for World Communications Day and how it can help us think about the Synod. You asked about critiques of the “going out” and “listening” stages of the synodal process, and I think that a particularly detailed and critical review of the methodology comes from Mark Regnerus: https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2023/01/86704/. His concern seems to be that the way in which the effort at both the data collection stage and the synthesis stage is open to shaping that introduces the biases of those leading the process - in other words, that Cardinal Hollerich and his fellow successors to the St. Gallen mafia will hear what they want to hear (a critique their ideological predecessors voiced of synods under John Paul II and Benedict XVI). I also think it’s interesting that your concern is that only a change in tone, and not in doctrine, could emerge from the Synod. Given its topic, Synodality, seems to be more about the practices of the church and not the various doctrinal issues that some of our more radical prelates wish to change, it seems to me that such an outcome would be a feature, not a bug, and that synods lend themselves better to examination of pastoral strategies and Church discipline than to doctrinal matters anyway.
Hey Zak! Thanks for reading, and for sending the Regnerus essay. It is an interesting and largely persuasive look at the data collection piece. I was never able to attend a listening session, but I think the self-selection critique on that front is probably pretty good too.
I'm less persuaded when he gets to the "protecting the deposit of faith" section, though. For example, that he has not experienced confession as "torture chamber" is great for him (I've also never had that experience), but I've heard something similar from enough people that I don't think I'd be as dismissive of that and other concerns as just "a wish list of frustrated reformists."
I think there's a deeper theological question, which his title and other comments allude to, which is what can the collection of the data (done well or poorly) tell us about the church. It fits in with what John Paul II says about "behavioral sciences" in Veritatis Splendor, and that fits with his claim that these results maybe reveal more of mission territory than the direction of the Holy Spirit. But neither am I convinced that those two things are mutually exclusive.
I probably could have worded the "concern" bit better - I'm not hoping for any particular substantive changes out of the synod (or out of any synod). But my impression of a lot of supporters and detractors is that they fear/hope for something big to happen, and I'm mostly just really interested to see what the aftermath of the synod will be in light of (probably) no big changes.
To link it to a different context - higher ed institutions have all sorts of morasses around the consultative vs. deliberative dimension, and it is immensely frustrating to be consulted but then see that consultation lead to nothing. But the job is different from the church.
Thanks for your thoughtful response, Steve! You make a good point about mismatched expectations. A good parallel could be the process around Humanae Vitae, and the way the process (and the disconnect between the Pontifical Commission’s report and the pope’s teaching in the encyclical) affected its reception. I think we saw something similar with the issue of Viri Probati and married priests in relation to the Synod on the Amazon. To me, this reflects the chaotic communications style of the current pontificate (Roma locuta est, causa confundens est - I may not have declined that properly), which has consistently turned the focus onto ad intra concerns (and particularly those of a group that the Pope, in the context of Germany, has referred to as the elite) at the expense of the outreach to and advocacy for the people on the margins who, I think, Pope Francis truly wants the Church most to serve.
Hi Steve! Thanks for this reflection on the Pope’s message for World Communications Day and how it can help us think about the Synod. You asked about critiques of the “going out” and “listening” stages of the synodal process, and I think that a particularly detailed and critical review of the methodology comes from Mark Regnerus: https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2023/01/86704/. His concern seems to be that the way in which the effort at both the data collection stage and the synthesis stage is open to shaping that introduces the biases of those leading the process - in other words, that Cardinal Hollerich and his fellow successors to the St. Gallen mafia will hear what they want to hear (a critique their ideological predecessors voiced of synods under John Paul II and Benedict XVI). I also think it’s interesting that your concern is that only a change in tone, and not in doctrine, could emerge from the Synod. Given its topic, Synodality, seems to be more about the practices of the church and not the various doctrinal issues that some of our more radical prelates wish to change, it seems to me that such an outcome would be a feature, not a bug, and that synods lend themselves better to examination of pastoral strategies and Church discipline than to doctrinal matters anyway.
Hey Zak! Thanks for reading, and for sending the Regnerus essay. It is an interesting and largely persuasive look at the data collection piece. I was never able to attend a listening session, but I think the self-selection critique on that front is probably pretty good too.
I'm less persuaded when he gets to the "protecting the deposit of faith" section, though. For example, that he has not experienced confession as "torture chamber" is great for him (I've also never had that experience), but I've heard something similar from enough people that I don't think I'd be as dismissive of that and other concerns as just "a wish list of frustrated reformists."
I think there's a deeper theological question, which his title and other comments allude to, which is what can the collection of the data (done well or poorly) tell us about the church. It fits in with what John Paul II says about "behavioral sciences" in Veritatis Splendor, and that fits with his claim that these results maybe reveal more of mission territory than the direction of the Holy Spirit. But neither am I convinced that those two things are mutually exclusive.
I probably could have worded the "concern" bit better - I'm not hoping for any particular substantive changes out of the synod (or out of any synod). But my impression of a lot of supporters and detractors is that they fear/hope for something big to happen, and I'm mostly just really interested to see what the aftermath of the synod will be in light of (probably) no big changes.
To link it to a different context - higher ed institutions have all sorts of morasses around the consultative vs. deliberative dimension, and it is immensely frustrating to be consulted but then see that consultation lead to nothing. But the job is different from the church.
Thanks for your thoughtful response, Steve! You make a good point about mismatched expectations. A good parallel could be the process around Humanae Vitae, and the way the process (and the disconnect between the Pontifical Commission’s report and the pope’s teaching in the encyclical) affected its reception. I think we saw something similar with the issue of Viri Probati and married priests in relation to the Synod on the Amazon. To me, this reflects the chaotic communications style of the current pontificate (Roma locuta est, causa confundens est - I may not have declined that properly), which has consistently turned the focus onto ad intra concerns (and particularly those of a group that the Pope, in the context of Germany, has referred to as the elite) at the expense of the outreach to and advocacy for the people on the margins who, I think, Pope Francis truly wants the Church most to serve.