Stop Asking Questions; Start Answering! by Phil Lawler

By Phil Lawler, Catholic Culture, Apr 09, 2026

Phil Lawler has been a Catholic journalist for more than 30 years. He has edited several Catholic magazines and written eight books. Founder of Catholic World News, he is also the lead news analyst at CatholicCulture.org. See full bio.

Writing in the June/July issue of First Things about his experience as a participant in the Synod on Synodality, Bishop Robert Barron reported:

I also came, I must admit, to appreciate the language of synodality. Though every dialogue was lively and informative, very few of them moved toward decision, judgment, or resolution… So respectful were we of the ‘process’ of conversation that we had almost a phobia of coming to decision.

”This,” Bishop Barron goes on to say, “is a fatal problem for Christians entrusted with the evangelical command to announce Christ to the world.” Although his recollections of the Synod are expressed in generally positive terms, that assessment of the language of “synodality” is decidedly negative; it is a “fatal problem,” he says. Patterns of speech reflect habits of thought, and the habits of thought encouraged by the Synod of Synodality make it practically impossible for Catholic prelates to do the work of evangelization—the work that (as the bishop notes) Pope Francis had so frequently insisted is the primary work of the Church. …

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