SOME PERSONAL THOUGHTS AS THE SYNODAL FATHERS VOTE ON THE FINAL REPORT TODAY

So, here are just a few thoughts about the Synod on Youth whose final report will be voted upon today by Bishops and the few male Religious Order Superiors in attendance.

I have been following the various reports regarding the Synod even while away on vacation recently.

Here are my observations.


In certain places around the world, the Church is suffering terrible persecution.  Being Catholic is dangerous.  In other places, famine and drought are killing thousands each day.  For many young people, there is no means of personal support because there are no jobs available that would provide wages to live a decent lifestyle.

But the Synod appears to have been concerned with none of this.

Rather, the Synodal Fathers have been content to determine how the Church can be more accommodating to the surrounding culture than converting it.

There is a spiritual famine across the globe, especially in the West, where faith itself has become desiccated by indulgence and the idolatry of narcissism and arrogance.

But the Father of Synod of 2018 seem little able or interested in proclaiming Jesus as the answer to the question that is every human life and experience.

Why?

Because they understand that the bold proclamation of Christ cannot be done by vacillating or corrupt leadership. The scandal of clerical sexual abuse, and the further scandal of episcopal malfeasance in confronting that abuse, has hung over Synod-2018.

If the reporting is correct, the Synod’s final report will likely only give slightly less than a reluctant recognition of these scandals.  But more than recognition is required.

The restoration of trust and confidence in the hierarchy and the Petrine Office itself is required.  That cannot be achieved until there is a revival of the virtues of integrity, chastity, honor, truth and honesty among the Church’s Ordained ministers.

Young Catholics, indeed all Catholics, need Bishops who are devoted to being teachers and Pastors first and administrators second. 

Yet, some Bishops, Auditors, and Synod Managers seem determined to insert all sorts of non-ecclesial code words into the Synod’s discussion of the present crisis of leadership facing the Church.  

But that misguided attempt in fact makes matters worse for evangelism in the already-challenging circumstances of the West, where adopting cultural code-words constitutes a tacit act of surrender to the political correctness of this age.   

In the end, it appears that Synod 2018 will be a bust, doing little to stem the tide of massive defections from the Body of Christ by young people.

And why?

Because the Synodal Fathers and Pope Francis lacked the courage to look at themselves first and their failure to proclaim the truth of Jesus Christ Himself and His call to love honestly, to love boldly in the call to personal repentance and conversion.

I think my assessment is correct.  How I wish I was very, very wrong.