WHAT IN THE WORLD?

If you haven’t yet seen the video of what I can only describe as a “rave” which took place on the dais of the Synodal Hall at the beginning of the present almost-month long Synod on Youth, I strongly suggest that you go to Youtube, download and watch it for yourself.

Then, before doing anything else, look up the definition of “pandering”.  I suggest that under that definition, the video you just watched should be attached as a primary example of what it truly means to “gratify or indulge for the purpose of acceptance and affirmation".

The scene of young people gyrating to the cacophony of banging drums, while Cardinals clap to the rhythm of the beat and Pope Francis sitting in what appears to be total confusion says just about everything anyone would want to know about what this Synod on Youth is.

As I have noted in previous articles, the Instrumentum laboris (Working Document) makes little or no reference to Scripture and the Church’s tradition, but instead favors a sociological summation of the needs and experiences of today’s “young people.” 

It is clear:  this Synod is aimed at indulging the 60s-era illusion that young people have prophetic insight, and insists on their desire to be “listened to” by an institutional Church that the hierarchy is telling them, implicitly and explicitly, is “out of touch”. 

Specifically, who are the “young people” the Synodal Bishops are urging the entire Church to listen to?

Apparently, the “young people” of insight and wisdom are those whom the Synod organizers affirm as those who want the Church to speak of human sexuality “without meaning or consequence”.  These same “young people” want the right to exercise discernment but based upon their subjective standards rather that what Pope Francis has referred to as “the rigid codes” of Scripture and Tradition, the Church’s very one Deposit of Faith.

Pope Francis’ exhortation to youth “to make a mess!” appears to be both the inspiration and methodology of this gathering.

The Church's hierarchy has become so obsessed with avoiding offense that it is prepared to offer little more than a concatenation of politically correct and acceptable clichés. 

The language of the Working Document is far more incomprehensible than the latest English translation of the Mass Prayers.

I fear what the Final Report on this Synodal gathering will reflect, especially since Pope Francis was so very quick to give whatever it contains the seal of “the Church’s ordinary Magisterium”.

Whatever the Synodal Fathers or the clique of specially-appointed Committee Members publish as the teachings of this “mess” of confusion and pandering, I pray the remnant of Catholic faithful who are hanging onto their Faith by their fingernails will continue to abide by and proclaim the truths of the Gospel and wisdom of the Church rather than the specious nonsense which the Synodal Fathers are trying to “dance into being”.