Bishop Mutsaerts to Leo XIV: "Impossible to Consider the Synod a Success"
- Does the synodal process actually help bring souls closer to Christ and to eternal salvation? […] What has all this actually yielded? Not: how many meetings were organized? Not: how many reports were written? Not: how many people participated? But: has faith become stronger? Has Christ been proclaimed more clearly?
- When one asks such questions, it is impossible to consider the Synod a success.
- What once began as a 2021–2024 synod threatens to become a permanent form of governance.
- The classical synod was a means. In contemporary synodal discourse, synodality threatens to become an end in itself.
- The Church is not a conversation but a received reality. For the Church does not begin with our dialogue. It begins with Christ.
- Christ did not set up a discussion group. He called apostles. He gave them authority. He sent them out to proclaim, baptize, and teach.
- Truth is not produced by consensus. That constitutes the first major area of tension surrounding the synodal project.
- What happens when the desires of modern man clash with the Gospel? Then it is not the Gospel that must change; then man must change. In Christianity, that is called conversion.
- The Church does not exist primarily to affirm people in what they already are. It exists to bring them to Christ.
- The first words of Jesus’ public preaching are not: “Tell Me first how you feel about the current church structures.” But: “Repent and believe in the Good News.”
- Churches are emptying. Parishes are being merged. Monasteries are disappearing. Religious orders are aging. Knowledge of the Catholic faith is declining. Confession has virtually disappeared for many Catholics.
- A number of elements of modern synodal culture actually show similarities to developments that have been observable in Protestant churches for decades. [….] Why would the Catholic Church adopt precisely the administrative and pastoral patterns of denominations that often underwent the same secularization even earlier and more severely?
- Why was the new, all-encompassing category 'synodality' needed? Precisely because the concept is so broad - it is impossible to devise a definition - everyone can understand something different by it. For one, it means listening. For another, decentralization. For a third, democratization. For a fourth, pastoral renewal. For a fifth, reform of the ministry. For a sixth, a different sexual morality. A concept that can mean everything ultimately means nothing.
- The world is not waiting for yet another organization that listens to it. There are enough of those. The world is waiting for someone who tells it what it was created for.
#newsPxfwzpqgho