Pope Francis’ un-Synodality confirmed
I’m a bit late the party… since early 2021, I’ve been studying part-time a Master of Liberal Arts at the University of Notre Dame Sydney, with a focus on Catholic theology, on top of full-time employment. I’ve never been so motivated about postgraduate studies as I have been of late, due in part to my reversion to Catholicism in late 2020. This journey of mine coincides with Synod 2021–23, though I haven’t paid close attention to this Synodal Process, until recently. Nor have I paid close attention to the coinciding Plenary Council in Australia.
Maybe I should’ve paid closer attention earlier. On Tuesday night this week I attended The Outsider Pope: Where is Francis leading our Church? presented by the Diocese of Parramatta. It was a lecture by The Tablet’s Vatican correspondent Christopher Lamb. The event flyer states:
“Christopher Lamb is the Vatican correspondent for The Tablet. Founded in 1840, the weekly journal is a hugely influential voice amongst the 1.3 billion Catholics worldwide. Joining in 2009 from the Daily Telegraph, he also appears regularly on TV news around the world. Christopher in his book ‘The Outsider’: Pope Francis and His Battle to Reform the Church reflects on the depth of his access to the Vatican, and his ringside seat witnessing Pope Francis’ battle to renew the church – suggesting “the forces seeking to block a Pope’s agenda” have “not been this powerful since the Renaissance;” reflects on Pope Francis, the human being — “a reforming, enigmatic figure,” whose unique journey to becoming Pope has shaped a Gospel shaped, forward-thinking outlook — and leads him to challenge the church on clerical sexual abuse, injustice, and the exploitation of the world’s most vulnerable people – including refugees and those in poverty.”
So why did I walk out of the event at the end, unimpressed? Well, here’s my photo of the event at the start:
From what I could tell, there were 100 or so attendees, and only one or two attendees were my age (mid-30s) or younger. So the room didn’t really represent the future of the Church, even though the lecture was about the future.
Mr Lamb started the lecture by making Francis’ pontificate and the Plenary Council sound saintly, pretty much free from constructive criticism because he and they are the superhero in the story respectively. A simple Google search suggests that this is not so, sharply dividing the Church and gaslighting concerned ordinary Catholics.
There was an opportunity for Mr Lamb to at least make good on his bias by at least providing new critical analysis on the publicly known criticisms of Francis and the Council, but this did not occur. Given the general quality of journalism these days, this is not a surprise, and in any case, it became obvious by Q&A time that he was preaching to the converted.
To be fair, there were some moments of reason, such as his comparison of the Roman Curia (Vatican bureaucracy) with Sir Humphrey Appleby, but other than that, it was a terrible recruitment drive targeting the next generation of Catholics. He painted a Pope who wants Catholics to participate in the Synodal Process, without leading by example Synodally. And look, I’m not a fan of EWTN myself, but Mr Lamb spent an inordinate amount of time bagging out the US Catholic cable TV network out. Not very Synodal at all.
Next on his un-Synodal hitlist was Traditional Latin Mass (TLM), defending Traditionis custodes, an apostolic letter issued motu proprio by Francis mid-2021, that is, during the early stages of Synod 2021–23. The letter restricts the celebration of TLM, thereby demonstrating that Francis’ Synodality is more about Francis than it is about Synodality. Mr Lamb disingenuously implied that it’s not a big deal, since some Mass at the Vatican are in Latin (this is not the same as TLM outside the Vatican bubble).
So during Q&A I asked him to Synodally comment on the relevance and significance of TLM for me and my large circles of Catholic friends and acquaintances (my age and younger), even the ones who don’t attend TLM regularly (that would be me), given the restrictions.
The response that I got was that although TLM is appealing to young Catholics, Francis wants us to “go deeper” with “liturgical formation” (as if Novus Ordo Mass is deeper than TLM), because the Paschal Mystery (meaning behind the life, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ) isn’t just found in the liturgy, it’s also in the world. Other than his response being a non-direct answer, I thought to myself: why not both? It made a mockery of the Plenary Council’s “Listen to what the Spirit is saying” slogan.
During the Q&A part more related to the Council, Mr Lamb implied that Synodality is a smoke-and-mirrors tool to bring about married male and/or female priests, female deacons etc. Unsurprisingly, an audience member suggested a theoretically possible move towards female Cardinals. As for me, though I generally have a ‘best man/woman/non-binary person for the job’ approach to life, the Church to me is not just another organisation in this world.
I am a transgender woman, trying to grapple with a Catholic faith that is interpersonally relational, that is fundamentally interdependent, where God isn’t just Trinitarian, and where God the Son doesn’t just have a Mother. God seeks communion with his children, and we, the Church, are seeking communion in return, in the body of Christ.
The implication here, relevant to me, is that God is the Bridegroom, and the Church is the Bride, where the Pope is St Peter’s successor, the Vicar of Christ who is male like Jesus and the Twelve Apostles (they had male circumcisions, no?). So why would the parish priest, who is married and should only be married to his parish(ioners — adultery is obviously not good), not be a man? Mass is not a workplace, it’s the reliving of the road to Calvary.
The Catholic Church is an economy of masculine and feminine signs, mysteries and gifts, not just another androgynous organisation, like your typical employer that lacks 2,000 years of tradition and wisdom. Creation, in every sense of the word, is a gift at every level of the Church and the world, where the initiation of the gift (again, in every sense of the word) is masculine, and the reception of the gift is feminine (Genesis 1–2).
Complimentarity is not just a marriage and sexuality matter, it’s a creative sign that’s everywhere, where masculine and feminine gifts have equal dignity — masculinity is not better than femininity, nuns and religious sisters are not inferior to priests.
In my reversion back to Catholicism, I’ve been striving to understand deeply the living tradition of the Church as described, regardless of my trans status, but I now find the Synodal Process and the Plenary Council to be particularly distracting and unedifying. If this is what I was truly after in my reversion, in my uni studies, I wouldn’t have gone to Notre Dame, and I would’ve just joined a progressive Christian denomination instead.
I am not ashamed of my androgynous reasons for transitioning genders (gender dysphoria etc), but in a society that has forgotten metaphysics, and is forgetting the meaning of signs, mysteries and gifts, I am deeply ashamed that the Church is heading down the ‘dictatorship of relativism’ path — Benedict XVI’s words, not mine.
Isn’t it ironic that Francis has previously criticised contemporary society for struggling to confront sexual difference? Either way, it’s not too late for the Church to rediscover its intellectual / liberal arts tradition, in order to “listen to what the Spirit is saying”. Not that the Vatican correspondent for The Tablet would care.