A Church Dragged Kicking and Screaming Into the 21st Century, by Dr. Jeff Mirus

By Dr. Jeff Mirus, Catholic Culture, May 28, 2021

Jeffrey Mirus holds a Ph.D. in intellectual history from Princeton University. A co-founder of Christendom College, he also pioneered Catholic Internet services. He is the founder of Trinity Communications and CatholicCulture.org. See full bio.

In Phil Lawler’s brilliant two-part commentary (Beware when Church leaders manipulate the language—Part I and Part II), he contrasts the emphasis of Pope Francis on developing a synodal process throughout the Church with the emphasis of Blase Cardinal Cupich on derailing a synodal process when it comes to withholding the Eucharist from those who publicly advocate abortion. This is worth even more discussion.

For consider: In most parts the world, which bishops will typically advocate most strongly for a synodal process of Church governance? As envisioned so far within the Church as a whole, this would be a form of governance which begins with local discussions and local identification of problems and then passes the results of these deliberations up through “higher” stages of discussion until policies can be formulated in Rome which will be (a) better informed, and (b) embraced the more readily throughout the Church. In my lifetime (first thinking about Church problems seriously in the mid-1960s), this approach has always been favored by those who oppose specific teachings of the Church. And where is this process, conceived in precisely this way, being most fully implemented today? In Germany, along its “synodal path”. …

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