By Robert Royal, The Catholic Thing, Oct. 30, 2023
Robert Royal is editor-in-chief of The Catholic Thing and president of the Faith & Reason Institute in Washington, D.C. His most recent books are Columbus and the Crisis of the West and A Deeper Vision: The Catholic Intellectual Tradition in the Twentieth Century.
Several voices – mostly close to Pope Francis and the organizers of the Synod on Synodality – declared the assembly, before the fact, the most significant event in the life of the Catholic Church since Vatican II. The official organizers, however, sought to rein in expectations, perhaps because the Synod has deliberately been structured to put the “nice” stuff first – conversation, listening, mutual respect – reserving the harder sayings for next October’s meeting. Then again, several of the officially selected speakers suggested, as one of them put it, “When we reach the consensus that the Church is constitutively synodal, we will have to rethink the whole Church, all the institutions, the whole life of the Church in a synodal sense.”
If that were to happen, it still wouldn’t necessarily be the greatest Catholic event since Vatican II. For that honor, I’d nominate the election of John Paul II and the way that changed both the Church and the course of world history. But the Synod might well be the most ambitiously radical event – and, at the same time, the most utterly wearying. …
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