Last week Bishop Robert Barron releaseda statement about the “Synod on Synodality”, which he attended, in which he is politely excoriating of both the manner and depth of reflection that took place.
He has added his voice to a growing chorus of critics, including Archbishop Fisher of Sydney, Archbishop Wilson of Southwark and Archbishop Gądecki, president of the Polish Bishop’s Conference, as well as CDF Prefect Cardinal Müller who said some in the assembly are “abusing the Holy Spirit” in order to introduce “new doctrines”.
Bishop Barron’s reflection of course carries particular weight given that he is one of the most-followed Catholics in the world on social media (he has some 3.1 million Facebook fans, over half a million YouTube subscribers and over 200,000 Twitter followers).
Barron’s popularity derives from the obvious reality that he is both highly educated and a gifted orator. He has been uniquely successful in his ability to engage with popular culture and provide a uniquely Catholic insight.
He strongly believes in the value and integrity of our Catholic intellectual inheritance and the power of the transcendent: our natural attraction to the good, the true and the beautiful. The combination of these elements has drawn extraordinary engagement from around the world.
His synodal reflection is concise and yet reveals his erudition and the accessible nature of his writing. It begins with an affirmation of the call to reach out to those who do not feel included in the Catholic Church and the need to “gather them into the Body of Christ”, directly citing Pope Francis’ frequently referenced words to those gathered at World Youth Day in Portugal (todos, todos, todos).
Bishop Barron takes this welcome of the Pope’s and puts it in its proper context. He also puts it in the context of Lumen Gentium, the dogmatic constitution on the Church from Vatican II, which taught that the laity’s role is to take Christ out into their lives in the world as leaven. In this way he takes the claims that Vatican II has not yet been implemented and shows that whatever this paradigm shift Pope Francis is calling for actually means, it certainly is not a proper implementation of Vatican II.
Bishop Barron does not shirk from pointing out the potential danger of robbing the Cross of its power by focusing on “love” over “truth”. If a new pastoral approach means ignoring the call to repentance, we are actually undermining the Gospel message that, even in our brokenness, God loves us and can heal us. To prioritise welcome over truth actually amounts to the deconstruction of the Christocentric anthropology of Vatican II, replacing it with an extraordinarily superficial sociological and secular anthropology, which seems to understand sin as an intractable wound whose perdurance is unresolvable and impervious to grace, to the extent that we have no alternative but to accept everyone where they are.
Bishop Barron also takes the missionary dimension of the synod to task, pointing out that Instrumentum Laboris seemed to designate the Church’s work in favour of social justice and the betterment of the economic and political situation of the poor as “mission”. He juxtaposes this approach, which is clearly drawn from the Aparecida document so widely touted as the source which “underlies the Francis program,”, with Pope St Paul VI’s Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Nuntiandi, which calls the whole Church missionary (n. 59), and Pope St John Paul II’s teaching on the New Evangelisation. In this way, Barron carefully traces out the hermeneutic of continuity, punctuating his exposition with evidence of rupture to reinforce the contrast with the beautiful and consistent teaching of the Church.
Barron does not baulk from pointing out that “references to sin, grace, redemption, cross, resurrection, eternal life, and salvation” were conspicuous by their absence in the texts. He says that this represents a real danger because the primary mission of the Church is to declare the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and to invite people to place themselves under his Lordship.
By way of conclusion, Bishop Barron is particularly scathing of Cardinal Hollerich, the relator general of the synod (albeit he does this without actually naming him) and his reflection gives the distinct impression that he feels Hollerich, who stated in 2022 that Catholic teaching on homosexuality was “false”, does not understand Church teaching and has not engaged with it. He also bluntly calls his stated approach “absurd”.
Barron goes so far in terms of criticism of the synod as to state: “It is troubling to see that some of the members of the German bishops’ conference are already using the language of the synod report to justify major reformulations of the Church’s sexual teaching. This, it seems to me, must be resisted.”
It seems clear that Bishop Barron is unequivocal about the unspoken agenda present in this synodal process and does not intend to let it proceed without his opposition being clearly manifest.
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