Episode Transcript
[00:00:11] Speaker A: The final session of the years long synod on Cidality just ended. What did it ultimately accomplish? That's we're going to talk about today on Crisis Point. Hello Merrick. Sam is your host enter in chief of Crisis magazine. Before we get started, just want encourage people to hit that like button. Subscribe to the channel, don't bother hitting the notify button because you have a life outside the Internet. Also you can subscribe to our email newsletter. Go to crisis magazine.com put your email address and we will send your articles, our news articles every day, usually about two articles a day. That's the best way to keep up with us. Okay, so today we have Timothy Flanders coming back. He's in chief of 1 Peter 5, our sister publication. Also I would encourage you to subscribe to the One Peter Five YouTube channel to subscribe to the email newsletter for One Peter Five. Find out about what's going on there. He's doing great work over there. But I thought I'd bring Tim on because we're going to talk about the cine incidentality. But before we do that, I just want to note that literally two minutes ago before we went air we found out that we're both Star Trek fans.
We bonded over it and so now, now we're, you know, this is, this is, this is great. But yes, that's how we found out he has a Picard Riker 2024 mug. Ask if I got the joke. And of course I did because I'm also a Star Trek.
[00:01:32] Speaker B: This also expresses our, our common political cynicism basically of Deep State. And I think you're more of a Trumper than I am. I'm gonna vote for Trump reluctantly. I don't like Trump, I think he's a disaster. But you know, what can you do in Michigan? But it's, but that's, it's so funny. Anyways, yeah. Moving on to Cinelity. Each other. Yeah.
[00:01:57] Speaker A: So we're going to accompany each other. So the synod on Cinematality has been going on since 2021 I believe is when they first kind of started the whole process. And we've had two major sessions and the second one well on last year and one this year and the last one just ended last week. So I wanted to kind of go over it. But first before we do, why don't you kind of give us a recap of just what the sin on cinematic proposed to do and kind of what were the hopes and dreams of the progressives and the fears of conservative and traditional Catholics about the cinematic when it got started. And over the past few years, sure, there's one.
[00:02:38] Speaker B: I think that the easiest way to do this is to say that this is just a continuation, we can just talk more about this later, but a continuation of the general tactics of liberalism or communism, that is mob violence, which is basically just stirring up the mob to try to put pressure on authorities to change doctrine or whatever. And this is what they've been doing since Vatican 1. They did it at Vatican 1, they did even more at Vatican 2 because they had more media and now they've got even more media and they've just, they're just, they try to agitate for change. And this is what the, the so called progressives, they've been pushing for this. And then unfortunately, sort of many good guys, like I would call John Paul to Ratzeker, you know, good guys, they're on the good side, they care about the tradition at least they had just been either naive about these agitators or they've been soft on them. And so this is just another continuation of that. Under this pontificate, all these agitators came out of the woodwork, as it were. And so there's been so much controversy about the synods since way back in Amoris Laetitia, 2014, 2015. And the same process has been going on, the same tactic we've seen it was, this is like 1776. It's like we, we know how this tactics work, but unfortunately people still talk like it's not happening.
But so the tactic has been there and now the whole concept, the whole subject matter is basically synodality. But what, what they mean by that is this whole tactic of doing things, it's like we're just going to democratize the church. We're going to create it so that if we just create a bunch of voters, we get a majority vote. We can change Coke into Pepsi, black into white and women into priests. That's the, you know, one of the main goals here.
So in other words, it's just voluntarism, it's against truth itself, it's against tradition. So that's been the progressives aims and obviously traditionalists, conservatives, they've increasingly been concerned under the spontificate for this whole process which has been going on more and more and more and more since the first synods. So that's long and short of it.
[00:05:02] Speaker A: That's, that's very. Actually that's great.
What I feel like, it's almost like the point is the agitation as much as it is the changing of doctrine I mean, we always focus as, you know, conservative, orthodox, traditional Catholics, whatever you want to call us, we focus a lot on doctrine, as we should, and like the potential change doctrine, like women deacons, women priests, LGBT acceptance, whatever. But like, it almost seems like the purpose is the agitation. I mean, and I guess the ultimate goal is the changing of doctrine, all that. But the agitation itself accomplishes goals of the progressive does, does it not?
[00:05:43] Speaker B: I mean, like I read, I wrote in my book City of God versus City of Man, that the fundamental presupposition of liberalism, I. E. And when I say liberalism, I'm talking about 1776, 1789American and French revolutions, that liberalism is that human dignity is power. If you do not have power, you have no human dignity. Therefore, we hold these truths to be self evident. If we don't vote, we don't have human dignity.
And therefore women don't. If they don't have power, they don't have human dignity, feminine dignity. So they want power. So it becomes a power struggle between the sexes, a power struggle between the classes in Marxism, a power struggle between the voters and the president. And it's just a power. It's just all about power. We're just fighting with each other, which is totally unchristian. The Christian model is the family, the father and the mother and the children.
And it's a harmony of hierarchy. And so yes, I would agree that the agitation is the point because they're trying to express their human dignity under this false presupposition of liberalism. Whereas the Christian model is the father, the hierarchy, he who is the, as our Lord said, he who is the greatest is the servant of all. So there's no threat to hierarchy. The father's not a tyrant over his family because he's the patriarch. No, he has to lay down his life and shed his blood for his bride and his children. He has to die for them, as Christ did. That's the. That's the model which is based on love and service. But we must admit that there are tyrants out there who have given patriarchy or episcopacy a bad name. You know, those bad popes and whatnot. And that's the whole reason this liberal agitation gets any credibility. The only reason, like communism got any credibility is because poor. The poor will be in oppressed. Speaking of which, I want to just emphasize here, as an important aside here, the comments by Bishop Schneider where he talks about synodality, and he said he was involved in some kind of synod meeting in Kazakhstan. Let's read a few sentences here. From him. He said he was involved in such a meeting in Asia and he was roped into. He didn't want to be a part of this. He said the meeting cost $250,000 from church funds. Imagine, basically, it was $250,000 thrown to the wind. And he says they created a huge document nobody's going to read. He said, we got to chop this document in half, and still nobody's going to read it.
We had minimal time for prayer. Is this the church of the poor? If we could reduce drastically the frequency of these meetings, we could give millions of dollars every year to the poor around the world. To me, this is a sin that churchmen are committing today. And we have the Principi, the new Rupnick controversy, the Principi case, which is purported to be worse than Rupnick. We have all sorts of financial and sexual and moral scandals going on with the Vatican bank and all sorts of problems with money. And they want to spend, who knows how much, how many hundreds of thousands of dollars they spent to bring all these people to Rome, away from their diocese, away from their flocks, away from all the concerns that they should be caring about to produce some massive, long document that nobody's going to read. And, you know, this is a serious, very, very serious concern. You know, we have. We have refugees, serious problems in the Middle East. We have wars, we have poor. There's so many more resources that this could have been devoted to. So that's, I think, number one considerations that the money that goes into these things. So that's one important aside I wanted to make.
[00:09:22] Speaker A: I was going to say I was reading the biography of Ratzinger, Joseph Ratzinger, and it was amazing. He was. When he was a priest in Germany in the 70s, and I think this might have been, when he became bishop, there was a synod. They were. Because they had, you know, this. The whole. This whole synod mechanism. I want to explain for a second the history of synods, but the whole mechanism of synods as the modern mechanism of synods came up in the 60s, and they were doing one in Germany, and it was the same type of thing here, where it was mostly just the agitators wanting to get women priests, things like that. And Joseph Ratzinger, I think it was. I think it was a priest. Now I can't remember if he's a priest or a bishop. Time. He basically, like, he was trying to get roped into. He's like, no, I don't want nothing to do with this. And he basically said, what you just said was, which was this is completely distant from the actual needs of the people in the pews of the world of the concerns. And we're just wasting our time and resources and it's just people getting up there and like spouting off, producing documents and nobody reads. And so I was just like, wow. I mean, he condemned it. He saw it immediately for what it was back in the 70s. And of course, it continues to be the, the, the way forward. Now I will say, I just want to make. This is a quick aside just for people who are maybe getting a little technical. Yes, there have always been synods in the church. Synods of bishops are a good thing in the sense of, like, they were done in the early church, stuff like that. If a group of bishops, a geographical, like, for example, if the American bishops wanted to gather at a monastery in Oklahoma and pray, fast together and then maybe discuss some pressing issue for American Catholics. For example, the fact that nobody's going to Mass anymore, something like that.
There's nothing wrong with that. That's actually a good, that would be a good thing if they did.
[00:11:14] Speaker B: Council of Baltimore, Baltimore Catechism. Right.
[00:11:17] Speaker A: Yeah, right. Yeah, exactly. Council Baltimore. I mean, so these things are not in and of itself. And that's actually, though, again, that's what the liberals use when you, when you criticize synodality or synods are like, oh my gosh, you're going against. The early church had synods, and we've always had synods, like, yes, but they've been transformed into something different. This, this kind of 4 synod of bishops in Rome universally, because synods typically were localized. They were local bishops in a region that were dealing, you know, subsidiarity. They were dealing with the local issues because the issues of American Catholics are not the same as the issues of maybe Nigerian Catholics. And so the Nigerian Catholics getting together and talking about what, how do we, how do we bring people to Christ? Great. Same with American bishops. But again, it, like, I, I just, I don't know about you, but like the conference of the USCCB always meeting in these hotel me conference rooms just, it drives me crazy because it's, I mean, just the optics are bad. But I also think it's like a bunch of bishops in hotel rooms with their TVs and everything. I mean, I mean, I'm sure some of the bishops are being holy and praying and stuff like that, whatever. But the point is, is like, it does not lend towards it. Whereas if they met at some monastery somewhere, I'm sure there's A plenty of them that have plenty of space these days where they could actually be praying the hours all day and like spending most of their day in prayer and then they come together to talk about issues. That's something completely different than what's. What's been going on in Rome.
[00:12:44] Speaker B: Yes, we need to make a few very important things and say that there is one divine institution of the church and that's the office of the bishop. That is the divine institution. Everything else that's been instituted is instituted by humans with the authority of the church. Yes, but that's the divine institution. The bishop of Rome is obviously has the headship over all the other bishops and he can organize them and do what he as he likes. But the bishops conferences are not a divine institution as far as I'm concerned. A bishop can just refuse to be a part of any sort of bishop conferences if he doesn't want to.
But an important thing that you're trying to make this distinction between the false Greek resourcement of the neo modernists, because this is what heretics always do. This is what Martin Luther did, John Calvin. They're like, oh, we're going back to the early church. Take a look at this. We got. They find some true thing that's somewhat abstractly related to their errors in the early church and they use that to justify whatever they want to in the present. That's, that's the tactic of the heretics for centuries. We know that tactic. What they're doing now is they're just, they're. They're doing this false Greek resourcement to try to impose a false synodality, which we need to oppose that to the true Greek resourcement, which is a very good thing. We do want more Greek wisdom and more of the traditions of the east, but much of it has been obscured or lost for various reasons.
And I want to highlight a very important synod that was a huge success after Vatican ii, which is very little talked about, which is very sad, which is the synod of Krakow under Cardinal Wojtewa, Carol Wojtyla, future John Paul II. He left Vatican 2. And this is actually a successful implementation of Vatican II. I don't know where else in the world, maybe it was successful, but it was definitely successful in Krakow. What he did was he had his own diocesan synod where he said, let's all come together, let's read through all the documents of Vatican ii. Let's pray, let's fast, let's. Let's go to the mass together. And then he produced his own book. It's called Sources of Sources of Renewal. This was Voiter's book that he wrote for his diocese to implement everything into his context. And this is part of the critical anti communist movement that Wojtewa was at the head of in Poland and Eastern Europe. And so he was applying Vatican II in an anti communist way. Basically in a very good way. We're talking about freedom and human dignity in the context of Soviet domination. It's a lot different message when we talk about freedom and human dignity in 1973, Roe versus Wade sort of situation in the Western. You know, it's a totally different ball game here. So that's, I think, the, a good model for the modern world where a bishop can, he can, a bishop can govern his flock. He doesn't have to ask permission from Rome. He can, he can call his own synod. He can get the people together. He said, let's go, let's, let's take on the world, let's evangelize, you know, something like that. But bishops don't know how to do that because they're constantly looking to Rome because they think the Rome is their CEO and they're just Vickers of the Roman pontiff and they're not vicars of the Roman pontiff. And that's what Lumen John CM27 says. You're not Vickers of the Roman pontiffs. But many bishops still think they're Vickers of the Roman pontiff, unfortunately. And they can't take the initiative like Caravo did, or they just think they're.
[00:16:06] Speaker A: Part of the USCCB here in America. Right. I mean that you see that where they feel like they have to be part of that. They can't go against their, their fellow bishops in any real way. And they have to go along with whatever USCCB says. I mean, there's been struggling, right? Yeah, right, exactly. Yeah. And yeah, unfortunately. But like here in Ohio, for example, the Ohio bishops could get together. I mean, the funny thing is people don't recognize this, but there is actually a hierarchy within the hierarchy of, for example, there's Metropolitan seas, which aren't really talked about or used much in the, in the Roman Catholic Church. But for example, in Ohio, the Archbishop of Cincinnati is actually kind of over, in a certain sense, the other bishops in Ohio now not, I mean, the bishop, each bishop is over his diocese completely in a real way. But the point is, like, for example, the archbishop of Cincinnati could say, hey, let's Ohio bishops, let's get together. Not for just a little meeting. I'm sure they have meetings of Ohio conference of bishops on zoom or whatever. But for prayer, fasting and like, let's talk about what are the needs of Ohio Catholics, you know, I mean, and like, just having this. It'd be a much more. It's a funny thing is it would actually be a fulfillment of what you often hear they talk about with the sin on synodality of like the people actually at the localized level living out this communio church, which I'm going to talk about here in a second with Bishop Barron. But yeah, so I just think that's. I think we need to be clear about because some people will get do the. Well, actually, you know, synods have always been around. Yes, but this is completely different. So. And I, this leads me though, I want to, I want to. This is a clip. Bishop Barron, actually, Robert Barron, you know, I think everybody knows who he is. He is. He was at the synod. He was one of the American appointees, bishops who went. And obviously in comparison to a lot of the appointees we hear he is leans much better. I mean, you know, he's definitely. And I'm not, I'm not doing this video of him to pick on Bishop Barron, but at the same time, I do think it evidenced some tone deafness and actually, let me just play it a little bit and then we'll talk about ways. Because he's talking about like the whole point of synodality and what does it mean? So here we go.
[00:18:19] Speaker C: Hey, everybody, I'm here on the roof of the North American college where I'm staying. We just finished week one of the synod on synodality. I mentioned how much they work us. I mean, we go all week, Monday through Saturday. So today is Saturday evening. We just finished our work. The main thing we're doing is we're looking at the instrumentum laboris. We're looking at it in our small groups and then we hear from everyone that wants to speak in the large group. Today our table refined our contribution. So it's our analysis of this first section, what we think is really good, what's problematic, et cetera. So that was the work of the week. And then with each, each section will do basically the same thing, finally producing at the end a document that speaks the mind of the Synod. I want to say just one simple thing, and I don't think I'm giving away any great secrets from the synod, but, you know, one of the issues that we've talked about, I know it's been on the mind of a lot of people is, well, what do you mean by synodality? Does Synodality mean the church becomes a democracy. We base our doctrines and practices on the consensus of the baptized. I know people have expressed concerns to me about that. Well, I'm pleased to tell you that this issue came up very directly in the conversations. And what emerged to me really clearly is that the delegates of the synod fully understand synodality does not mean some democratization of the church. It doesn't mean that we're going to put our doctrines up for a vote. We've insisted that synodality, and this is the way I put it actually in our small group was synodality is the practical expression of the communio ecclesiology that comes up out of Vatican ii, lumen gentium, and out of the pope, the papal magisterium of the post conciliar period. Now, what am I talking about? We'll go back to lumen gentium, go back to the Vatican ii, and you see this great idea of the church not so much as institution primarily, but as communio. It's communion, mystical body, if you want to use older language. And that communio is grounded in the communio of the trinitarian persons. And the church is the means by which the whole world is to be drawn into the communio of those divine persons. Think of. I don't even see it behind me there, but the. The colonnade that comes out from St. Peter's like two great arms gathering in the world. That's communio ecclesiology. If you want.
[00:20:50] Speaker A: Okay, that's. That's enough of bishop Barron. I have thoughts, but I want. I want. I want to get your. I sent you this yesterday. I wanted to get your reaction of kind of what. How Bishop Barron describes synodality and how he. How he expresses it.
[00:21:07] Speaker B: Well, first, I want to give his excellency, Bishop Barron a lot of credit because he's doing probably a thousand times more than most bishops to evangelize. And, you know, I'm sure many, many souls have been brought to the church by his work. So we thank you, your excellency, for this. So, with all due respect, I'm not trying to, you know, criticize you or anything, but I am concerned by what Archbishop of the fev. In fact, at Vatican ii, he suggested that they should make two documents. They should make sort of the theologians. Theologians documents, and then sort of documents for the lay people, because this language is so complicated and so mystical that it's so difficult for the average layperson to even understand what's being said. Talking about communio, maybe an easier Way to say this would be that the church is not a building, it's the people. The mystical body of Christ is the persons, perhaps you could say that.
But it's a difficult concept, I think.
And so that's one concern. And if you start with that, you can lend yourself to that democratization nevertheless, because there's no safeguard against that.
But I like the fact that he's saying that this is the same thing as the mystical body of Christ doctrine. He's trying to equate them, which is good. That's like continuity here, what we're trying to attempt here and there. On the other hand, we. I do want to say very strongly that there is a very traditional aspect to the ecclesiology of Vatican ii, which is eucharistic ecclesiology, meaning that the Church, the Catholic Church refers to the bishop celebrating his Eucharist with his people, with his flock. That's the Catholic Church, full stop. And then he is in communion with other bishops who also form the Catholic Church in Cincinnati, the Catholic Church in Michigan, the Catholic Church here in each diocese. So the diocese itself is the Catholic Church, the wholeness. And then that is in communion with the bishop of Rome. So that doctrine restores subsidiarity. It restores a traditional. The office of bishop, the divine, you know, not these bishop conferences, everything that's up here. And so that is a very powerful concept. It also helps with a true ecumenism with the East. So that's an very, very important aspect that is not. Not well discussed. That's also, by the way, why I would consider the SSPX not to be in schism is because of the ecclesiology of Vatican 2, which is in more tradition. So I would, you know, why could I see that? You know, so those are some of the aspects of this.
I think that's my main concern, is a restoration of subsidiarity and the divine office of the bishop.
[00:23:59] Speaker A: I, you know, I. The funny thing is when I, when Bishop Barron was sharing some videos on X about being at sin, this was shared very early on in the Senate process. So last, you know, early October, I honestly was looking forward to hearing his perspective because I knew, you know, he's not Mueller. He's not going to be, you know, even Strickland or something like that there. But I was like, okay, this is a guy. Clearly he is trying to bring souls to Christ and he's trying to do his best to be a Catholic bishop. And, you know, he's there. So I'm like, okay.
But like, I was so disappointed by this video, I admit it. And the funny thing is the comments, a lot of them were like the same as me. They were just like, honestly, your excellency, I understand it less now than I did before you start. I watched this. I mean, it's like, it's like he wants to use his $10 words, you know, to explain it. And, and it's like there's such a break there, like in his. I know he said he threw back the, the comment about the mystical body, but really there's a break in his mind or something between pre Vatican 2 and post Vatican 2. I mean, because he talked about this is all post conciliar, the papal magisterium. The post conciliar church. There is no such thing as a papal magisterium of post conciliar church. There's a papal magisterium. And so anything that came before the, after the council is in, has to be in continuity with what came before the council. There is a. And the funny thing, of course is I know he's a big Herman Newton continuity guy, but like, in this case, it looks like he's really trying hard to fit a square peg into a circle hole. And he's like, okay, I'm here. I got to do my best to make the, you know, to make this work. And so I'm just going to try to put it in this context of, you know, community communio, ecclesiology, Vatican 2, things like that. But ultimately, like, I agree with the comments, people said he made it more confusing in a lot of ways because it's just like, I think, honestly, I wonder if there's a certain naivety here that Bishop Barron being a good guy, he is looking for the best in people like Father James Martin and others at, you know, Cardinal Fernandez and people like that at the, at the synod. And so he's trying very hard to say, okay, we're going to, I'm going to fit this into what I believe is the proper context, which is Vatican 2 communal ecclesiology. But I think it fails. I think it's, I think, you know, ultimately what it does is it ends up endorsing some bad aspects. You know, kind of what you were saying, the, the agitation, the communist kind of a way of trying to revolutionary type of attitude that a lot of people. So I think he ends up being a.
I was going to say useful idiot. I don't mean that in like the most derogatory way. I just mean like he ends up being somebody who the agitators can is useful for the agitators because he gives it a kind of conservative, orthodox veneer to some real problems that are going on there.
[00:27:06] Speaker B: Yeah. And that. Excuse me, that makes me think of Bishop. So Bishop Barron has published the Vatican II collection, which is, in my opinion, actually, I'm thankful for these because it's. To me, it's like the best primary source collection of Vatican 2 documents. But his introduction, His Excellency's interaction basically puts Vatican 2 in a hermeneutive rupture with the past. Because he says it this way. He says. He says there was a neo. He said there is neoscholastic approach before the council. And he says this, quote, it is fair to say that they, the neo scholastics before the council, were clearly defeated at the council. And then he says, the radical traditionalists. That would be me, I guess, of the present moment, represent an energetic comeback of the neo scholastics who lost the day at Vatican 2. So he's. He's creating this. He's. He's using this liberal language basically, like. And he talks about the vote counts. He's like, oh, they're all overwhelming majorities. So he. To me, this is not a Catholic way of thinking about the tradition, because any council. Excuse me, any council, it's like. It's like a building. Like a council is something that's put on top of the next building. It's just like another level of the building. And all. The whole building can only stand unless if. If all the other parts stand. But he wants to say, oh, this council threw out that part. And they. They w. They lost the day they were defeated at the council. This language is not Catholic. And that's very problematic to put Vatican 2 in opposition to what came before, because that's. That's what he accuses the progressives of doing, which they do do. That's correct.
But Vatican 2 can have. No, and I. I want to emphasize here, too, Joseph Ratzinger, to his credit, he. He thoroughly opposed what was done at the council, even though Joseph Ratzer was a critical part of doing this. He said they shouldn't have thrown out the original documents. He said, he was criticizing, like, defontibus revelationibus. He said, this is. This document has a lot of issues. He was very critical of it, but he said it shouldn't be thrown out. Like, we shouldn't just throw them out because they threw out all the original documents, made new ones. And that was the main of the winning of the day. So Joseph Ratziger was in favor of a much more moderate approach than Bishop Barron seems to be advocating in his own text here. And so that's very problematic. And that's what gives the agitators their power, is that we're going to create this sort of liberal framework of seeing we're just going to get all the votes and then we can move on and throw out these neo scholastics. And, and that's just not a. I don't think that's very good.
[00:29:47] Speaker A: And I think this reveals the fundamental difference. I mean this is going to be very crude. But like the best way to put it is, you know, there's kind of three major camps among Catholics today, and that's the progressives or liberals, conservative Catholics who are more Hermanic continuity. That'd be a Bishop Barron and then more traditionalist. And this is the real crux of the, of the debate between conservative Catholics who want good things, who want. I mean they're not like I have a hard time trusting the progressives, let's be honest. But I trust that the conservative Catholics like Bishop Baron want Christ to reign and all that stuff.
And then the traditionalists, because I think ultimately this they do. Like you said, they advocate for a hermeneutic continuity, but it is a hermeneutic rupture in the end because they look at everything from like trent to Vatican 2 as something to be kind of just at the very least ignored, if not discarded completely. And so I think this is where we really have a problem. And you see this in what Bishop Barron said and he's trying to make this inality kind of work in the context of Vatican 2 because he's not willing to criticize some of the issues with Vatican 2 itself, which, you know, ultimately we're not going to get into here. But. But I just thought that was an interesting perspective he had. But I want to talk about now though, kind of move on. We kind of talk about this generically, but this synod session itself, I feel like, like I'm thinking about titling this episode, the synod cinematic fizzles out because I feel like on a lot of ways this was a big defeat for the progressives. And I'm not doing that saying this with like rose colored glasses, trying to be know. Mr. Optimus. I really do think that's the case because in fact there was a, the, there's been articles last week or two about the progressives being very upset with how the synod went. In fact, I have this quote here. It said, we are told repeatedly that this synod is about a new way of being church this is a Zach Davis in America magazine. I worry that many Catholics will come away from this process disillusioned if the new way leads to the same results. In other words, the progressives went into the sin on sendality expecting that when it's over there would be real doctrinal changes that you would have women deacons approved, you would have some type of approval for same sex relationship like that. And none of that happened. And so I think they're really, you know, they're disillusioned. I mean do you, would you agree that ultimately the serial incidentality, if it wasn't a defeat for the progressives, at the very least it was a, it wasn't a defeat for traditional and conservative Catholics either.
[00:32:42] Speaker B: Yeah, I think there's, there's two, there's. I, I would say there is. On the one hand I agree with you in the short term. In the. So in the short term I think that there is a, there is a defeat because this was a very drawn out process.
Three plus years and you know they were producing the official Vatican graphics. I was trying to find it before I commented but I couldn't find it. But if you recall one or two years ago, I can't remember, but there was this official Vatican sponsored graphic that had a woman priest and these young people who were saying we are the generation, whatever it was sort of thing, you know, so this is the hopes and dreams.
But on the other hand I think there is a long term victory that has been won over these 10 plus years of this pontificate which is the dream of the Saint Gallon mafia to create a synodal church. And as I said, this was already happening back in Vatican 2 and even Vatican 1. By the way, this is like I said, 1 Peter 5 it's not just Vatican 2 that's any issue goes back to Vatican 1 and before. But the, this agitation process is what Cardinal Martini and the other members of the St. Gallen mafia, they, they were disappointed in Vatican 2, that to them Vatican 2 was a defeat. But it, they said at least it opened the door to this whole process that we want to continue because they, they succeeded to a degree at Vatican ii, because they succeeded throwing out the original documents, creating this sort of atmosphere of rupture at least where it's just is implicit, at least in Bishop Barron, like I said.
So I do think that we can see it in another sense in terms of the synod, synodality, in the fact that Pope Francis did not do a final document himself. He just let it go.
That can be interpreted in two different ways, one positive, one negative. Positive thing is that we can see the subsidiary to the office of divine right of bishops to being restored. So the good bishops can sort of take back control of their diocese in the sense, in one sense. But on the other hand, we could see that move as giving a win to the long term goals of the St. Gallen mafia, which is basically like the Pope is just going to say whatever you guys work out, I'm just going to let it go. And so because the other context of the synod, synodality is the German schismatic way that's been going on during, concurrently and they've been pushing for all sorts of things. We just published an article at 1 Peter 5 by a German Catholic and she says the German Catholics just kind of shrug when Pope Francis says something heretical because they hear so many worse things from their bishops all the time that would make American Catholics go crazy if they heard these things. But this is just routine in Germany. And so they have this whole process that they're doing. So I see this as creating this synodal church in a bad way, this democratization of the church that the mob agitators can just kind of get what they want. And the bishops are kind of effeminate in terms of they can't manfully stand up to the feminist mob. They're scared, they're scared to say, wives, submit to your husbands or some, you know, scary doctrine like that.
And so I see that as kind of a long term victory because Pope Francis now, you know, he's dying. He's, he's going to die soon, in the next five years at least, probably, you know, God rest his soul, God grant him a higher place in heaven, God save his soul. But I feel like on the other hand, you can see kind of a long term victory in that sense. What do you think?
[00:36:34] Speaker A: Yeah, I kind of think like the synod on synodality has two had two potential paths to harm the church.
One is it changes, it actually tries to change doctrine. I mean we could talk about like it could actually do that, but it actually says things like we're going to implement women deacons now or something like that. The second thing is just the cause of bad thing is the cause of just like what we've talked about, the agitation just cause, like making everybody question, making a Catholic confused about what does the Church actually teach on this? What is, you know, are these things open for debate, things like that? I think on the first hand, on the first part, I think, you know, we won in the sense that that didn't happen. And in fact, it was pretty, pretty, like definitively didn't happen. On the second part, though, you know, we lost in a sense, because it's not like this. You'd have to reject the whole synodality process in order to win that. That aspect. I do want to look a little bit more because I feel like, you know, let's be honest, trads can be a little pessimistic at times.
I do want to look at the victory, though, because there were people definitively declaring that when the sin's over, we're going to have women deacons, we're going to have all this stuff, and we don't. And I think it's like, let's take a moment and appreciate that fact that we don't have. I know that maybe you could say it's a low bar, but the fact is there were a lot of powerful people in the Catholic Church who were trying to make that happen, and they failed. And I think that's something we had to remember. And I think there's a couple reasons, and I want get your input on this as well, why they failed. I think a big one is the response to both traditionus custodes, but more so the response to fiduciary supplicants.
What we saw in both cases was a real pushback from bishops. With traditionus custodis, it was a little softer pushback. It was kind of like, we're going to just ignore this a little bit. A lot of bishops just were kind of like, we're not going to implement this. But it was real. I mean, there's really. I mean, bishops were not as enthusiastic about it as I think, you know, Vatican officials like Roche and others wanted it to be.
But fiducia's supplicants, that I think was the big one, because that was, of course, just last December.
And the African bishops were just like, no, we. We not only won't implement, we reject this. You had, I mean, you had the usual suspects rejecting, like a Bishop Schneider, God bless him, and some un, Strickland and others. I mean, thank God for them. But it expanded. And all of a sudden the bishops, like, I think bishops looked around and said, wait a minute, we can do this. We can actually say, no, we're not going, because this is not part of our tradition. This is not what we believe were simply going to reject it, even though it's a Vatican document that's got the approval of Pope Francis. And I think it, you know, definitely Pope Francis and maybe others at The Vatican were like, oh, I. Maybe the power we have isn't quite what we thought it was. And I think there was a pullback. I think there was an. I mean, and we see that, like, traditionally, I don't. I almost feel like I want to knock on wood if I was superstitious. But I feel like, you know, there's been a lot of losing esteem when it comes to implementing tradition custodes. You know, fiducia's supplicants has been just basically, you know, rejected. And so like, the idea, I think a lot of people at the Vatican realize and, and like, like, if we try to do this, it's going to fail because the bishops will speak out. They will finally just say, no, we're not. So if they had produced a document that said women deacons today, I think like, for example, the African bishops, a lot of American bishops, other bishops would just be like, nope, that's not happening.
[00:40:25] Speaker B: Right.
[00:40:25] Speaker A: And I think they knew that. So I feel like we want to look at everything bad going in the church. I get that. But that is a victory, a real victory that we don't have women deacons. Yes, I know the final document said it's still open for discussion, and really it's not. So I'm not claiming like a total, you know, I'm not doing a, you know, touchdown dance here or anything like that, but at the same time, we got a first down at least or something. So I mean, what do you think about. Am I being too like rose colored glasses here?
[00:40:56] Speaker B: No, I agree. I mean, they, they tried to kick the game winning field goal and they didn't make it.
They have not won the game because they didn't get their, their rubber stamp. And I want to strongly emphasize the contrast between the mob agitation that we've discussed and these filial appeals is what I would call these. Like the way the bishop bishops of Africa worded their rejection. It was so filial. They basically said, oh, we asked, we talked to the Holy Father, we consulted with him, and this is what we're going to do. So it's like, wow, you had like no opposition to the Holy Father, even though you're clearly opposing the Holy Father. So it's like this, you know, and this is the way, this is what St. Paul says to St. Timothy. He says, an ancient man, an elderly man, rebuke him not, but appeal to him as a father. And that's the difference right there. We're not agitating like mo, like democr, you know, liberals, communists or whatever. We are sons of Holy Mother Church, and we appeal to you, Holy Father, as your sons. And that is the Christian response. Even if your father is abusive, you cannot harden your heart against your father. You still must love him and fast for him and pray for him and appeal to him as a father. And if you must resist him to his face to protect yourself and your siblings who are being abused by the abusive father, you will do so, but you will not break with him and agitate against him and hate him as the mob violence does. So I think that this is, this is showing. I, I love what you said, Eric, because I think it's showing the strength of Catholic culture.
The. Which I, I would, you know, I would say that the Latin Mass is the centerpiece of the strength of that culture because we've seen how this, you know, beleaguered little group of people, Latin Mass Catholics, some, some with the sspx, others in these little hamlets and hotels all throughout the world, you know, persecuted for decades, maligned. Now they just endured.
And we have continued as a traditionalist movement. And after Tradition, many, as you said, many bishop, most bishops ignored it. You had the support of like, non Latin Mass Catholics, like Novus Ordo Catholics, you know, attend the new Mass. They were supporting us, too.
And as you said, Vedicia Skans was just very, very rejected. And then they had the rumor of the new tradition 2.0 this summer. And there were significant appeals, they were petitions, but again, they weren't mob agitators. They will filial appeals. And this according to the reports, all we know is that this seems to have moved the Holy Father in some sense, whether he, as was the unrighteous judge of the parable of our Lord, when the unrighteous judge gives widow, gives the widow justice, even though he fears neither Gordon or man. Maybe that was the case with the Holy Father, or maybe he was truly moved. I don't know. He just released what appears to be a beautiful encyclical on the Sacred Heart of Jesus. So that's exciting. But I don't know, but I, I agree with what you just said. I like what, you know, we need to be grateful for what we have. We. We have way more than we deserve.
[00:44:07] Speaker A: Right? And I think like a couple of these things that happen at the end of the synod this session, I think we're just peculiar. I do think the fact that Pope Francis did not issue an apostolic exhortation just said, here's the final document.
I understand that they kind of made a declaration a couple years ago that this is now part of the ordinary magisterium. When he does this. Okay, I'm not going to get into technical law and stuff like that, but I'm going to talk about just the optics. I think it's obvious that to the average Catholic, I mean, most average guys aren't paying attention to stuff. I get that. But like, the point is, even for those who are paying attention, this final document has way less like real life authority than if the Pope had written an apostolic exhortation that said basically the same things. Because this is a beer crack document, like you said, nobody's going to read it and it's just going to have some points of context and like, whether you want to say it's an ordinary magisterium or not, it has no real authority now in the eyes of the world, in the eyes of the, of Catholics. And I think that's, that's meaningful. I also think that literally, like a couple days before the synod is over, the Pope basically steals all the thunder by issuing a document on the Sacred Heart of Jesus that's completely unrelated to anything the sin is talking about. That's a good point. I, I, I, I, I read it. I mean, I'm not saying I studied it, I'm saying I went through it and I kind of quickly read it and I thought it looked, it looked very solid. You know, it has some Francisms in it and I get that, you know, it has some, you know, more modern ways of looking at things. I get that. But it quotes, you know, lots. I mean, it's kind of funny. I, this is probably not good on my part, but I've gotten a habit that when a new Vatican document drops, I look at the footnotes first, and if it's like I want to see if all the references are deposed Vatican 2 stuff or Pope Francis.
Yeah, right, right, exactly. And this was not the case. I mean, tons of references to past saints, theologians, you know, all this stuff. And so like, but like that, I mean, that was the Catholic News last week, wasn't the synod. I mean, literally, this dropped, I think, three days before the last day of the synod. Instead, it's a papal encyclical, which is only his fourth, I think. Encyclical. It's about something that's spiritual. It's kind of what a Pope should be writing about.
[00:46:31] Speaker B: Right.
[00:46:31] Speaker A: And I kind of felt like that kind of undercut the Senate as well. And so I just, like I said, I felt like the whole thing fizzled out. Like there's all this, you know, activity and like, you know, pushing for it and all this, you know, sound and fury, you know, for years. And in the end it signifies nothing and it just. And like. And the progressives are mad. I think we should recognize that and be happy about that because if they're mad, something good happened.
[00:47:03] Speaker B: Any type of. The heretics throw a fit. That's right.
[00:47:07] Speaker A: That's right. And again, I'm, I, I understand it's not complete victory. It's, it's like you said, they had the game weighing field gold and they missed it. It doesn't mean we won, it just simply means they didn't. And so, and I, and I, I mean, I want to get your honest opinion.
What do you think, like, what do you think Francis, like, is doing here by like, releasing encyclical then by not having an apostolic exhortation and kind of seeming to undercut the synod itself? I mean, my, I don't know. What do you think?
[00:47:39] Speaker B: I mean, there's, I think there's two ways to see it.
On the one hand, you have the dictator pope interpretation, which is that Pope Francis, the Holy Father, does not care about anything but power. And so he'll just, he'll do one thing for one people, and then he'll contradict himself in the other, and he doesn't care about anything but more power. And one of those things is, is the vain glory and the eye, the, the praises of men. And so if he gets praises from men from doing this, then he'll do it that way and do. So he's, he's just playing on all cylinders because he loves power. That's interpretation number one. Interpretation number two, which pious Catholics should hope and pray for, is that Pope Francis is meditating upon his death, which is imminent, and he's thinking about the fact that he's going to die and he's going to stand before the judgment of Almighty God, which will be the strictest judgment any human person can have, is that of the Pope. And he's thinking about how Dante put various popes in hell because of what they did. I think Boniface viii, he put in hell.
And Pope Francis is thinking, is it really worth it to continue this St. Gallen mafia dream? And all this stuff that I thought was so great. And so then he publishes Sacred Heart of Jesus because maybe he's afraid of the fires of hell. And he's thinking, I want to think about the Sacred Heart of Jesus instead of all this progressive dream, so let's hope it's that, right? And he said, no, I'm not going to crack down to the Latin Mass because all these people are freaking out. I'm just not going to do that. As you wanted. Me too. This past summer he's going to publish this and which totally undermined. I didn't even think about those optics. That's a great point. His Sacred Heart document totally undermines the whole Synod of Cities been working on for three years. So that's pretty significant if he's. If he's really thinking through the optics of what this looks like.
So let's hope it's number two and not number one.
[00:49:33] Speaker A: And I think, and I just want to also be clear that. And I know you think this too, that I'm not. We're not being insensitive to those people who attend Latin Mass that has been canceled. I mean they in some were canceled this summer and so I don't want to be insensitive to them. It's a real cross that they've had to bear and we pray for them that would be restored. So. But you know, there, there was a lot of talk about it being completely abolished everywhere and that just hasn't happened. And the steam behind it has kind of run out. I also want to say that, like, I know there. I've at least seen them on X and other places, social media. There are Catholics who would just reject interpretation number two is not possible. And I'm saying that that's heretical to think that.
[00:50:17] Speaker B: I would agree.
[00:50:18] Speaker A: It's heretical to think that a person on earth cannot. Cannot be converted, cannot change their heart. Because what you're saying is that the person actually resists the grace of God and unable to accept the grace of God, I should say. And that's just not the case. Yes, it is. You can have a hard heart until your death and die and face the fires of hell. Obviously we believe that that's a possibility and that's one we fear for ourselves. But we also have to believe that every single person until the moment of their death can convert. Can. Can. And conversion doesn't always happen overnight. It happens over time. So if you think it's just impossible, like no, there's no way that interpretation number two is correct. That's actually a heretical.
[00:51:02] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:51:03] Speaker A: Thought to. To reject that out of hand. You. And actually honestly and more prudentially, that is what you should be hoping and praying for as well. Like you can say, I don't think. I think it's. If somebody says, I think it's interpretation one is more likely. Okay, fine. I'm not, you know, obviously that's just a. Just, you know what you're analyzing things. But, but you can't just reject interpretation 2 as is not possible and it should be hopeful.
[00:51:26] Speaker B: Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. If you have a very strict judgment of the heart of Pope Francis, do you not fear God that your own judgment will be just as severe and even more strict because you failed to have. Think of the unmerciful servant. I mean Lord Jesus, have mercy upon our souls. I mean the unmerciful servant when choked his fellow servant.
And then the Lord says so will my heavenly Father deal with you if you do not forgive your brother from your heart. So if we're not having, you know, if you're hard hearted towards the Holy Father, you could end up in hell even if the Holy Father's a terrible. And the other thing I would say is think go read one of those beautiful prayers of repentance is actually the prayer of Manasseh. And this shows up in the Greek liturgy in great compline and it was published by St. Jerome in the Vulgate in an appendix. So it's not, it's like apocryphal. But go read the story of King Manasseh. He was the worst, he was like the worst king ever of Israel. He burned his sons in the fire, he worshiped the idols, he did all sorts of terrible things and God punished him severely. And then he repented at the very end. And he has there's this beautiful. The prayer of Manassas that's attributed to him is one of the most beautiful prayers of repentance ever. I think it's like Psalm 51, but perhaps even more beautiful than Psalm 51, if that can be said. So we should never despair of anyone repenting at the last second.
[00:52:51] Speaker A: Right? Yeah. So I think that's. So I'm going to wrap it up here because I think that's a good way to end it. I just think our, as Catholics, the way we look at this, we can't be like the Marxists who look at everything from a very political aspect as these are our enemies we need to defeat, we need to crush, we need power instead of them having power. I think that's a whole wrong way to look at it because like you just said before, who has not had any power in the church for 50 years. The traditionalist.
[00:53:24] Speaker B: Yeah, right.
[00:53:25] Speaker A: Who has moved the needle though more than probably any group in recent years? Probably the traditionalist. I mean, which one is the one that's, that's that where all the energy of the young people is, is their traditionalist. Was it through the levers of power? Yes. We had a favor, you know, from, from Pope Benedict obviously, and we should be very grateful for that and be thankful for him. But at ultimately we had no power. There was no bishop who was advocating for the traditional Latin Mass who was other than who wasn't SSPX bishop. And they, they were obviously ostracized and sidelined. And so you did not have any power yet. And so I do think that's a lesson for us when we try to analyze the sin on sin down things from a purely power structure kind of viewpoint. No, instead what we should be thinking is we're being faithful. We're doing prayer and penance for our leaders. We're trying to do our best in our own families, building up our parishes, things like that. And I think we can see it has a real impact. I honestly do believe the prayers, the penances of the people of the faithful are, is why we don't have like, you know, women deacons being instituted today.
[00:54:45] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:54:45] Speaker A: You know, even though I. People were guaranteeing just a year or two ago we're going to have women deacons by now and we don't, maybe five years from now something happens and it, you know, they started trying to do that. I don't know. But the point is right now it didn't happen. So we should continue with kind of that path forward, you know, in responding what these things are going on.
[00:55:07] Speaker B: So yeah, it's the prayers of the pious grandmother who is sacrificing and she's holding up, he's. She's holding back the wrath of God from us and she's holding up the church. Just a single saint, as Saint James says in his epistle, Elijah was just a man, but he stopped up the heavens. And you know, the Marxists and liberals just think about numbers, like how many numbers, how many souls. But you think about the intensity of the holiness of a single saint can just move mountains. And I totally agree with you. There's just saints among us and it's great. We have All Saints Day, which is the feast day of all the unknown saints in particular. So we thank you for all you the unknown saints out there who are meriting the graces that we need to conquer all these enemies and convert them to Christ.
[00:55:57] Speaker A: Yeah. So the next time you get annoyed because that old lady can't, you know, at church is not praying the rosary in sync with everybody else. When you're praying it together, remember she might be literally the person who's holding back Satan. So for me, it's like, just remember that before you get to. That's a pet peeve of mine. That's why I came to my mind. So I gotta remember that for myself. So. Okay, well, we'll, we'll finish it here. I appreciate you being on again. Go to 1 Peter 5, subscribe to the YouTube channel. Tim's putting out some great content there. You know, subscribe to their email newsletter also Crisis as well. So anything else, anywhere else that we should point people to?
[00:56:35] Speaker B: Tim1peter5.com crusade if you want to join, try to try, please God, to be a saint, to move mountains. That's what you know. We want all the faithful Catholics to join our crusade, Bishop Snyder's crusade, 1 Peter5.com crusade which is where we offer eucharistic reparation to our Eucharistic Lord. And that's the fundamental spiritual effort that we're trying to offer. And so go there and join our lay fidelity. Also, I should say I mentioned that it's not a ball of Vatican 2. One thing we promoted Peter 5 is the pro the big problems with Pope Benedict XIV way back in the 1800s when he allowed meat during Lent. We think that's a huge no, no. A big, big wrong move we made. So we promote the fasting fidelity onebetter5.com fast St. Martin's Lent is just a few weeks away to start St. Martin's Lent, aka the Advent fast, so you can join hundreds of Catholics throughout the world practicing traditional fasting, which is critical to cast out the demons, as Jesus Christ himself said. So join us. Let's stop complaining on the line and let's get to work.
[00:57:51] Speaker A: Amen. I'm looking forward to St. Martin's Lent. I'd forgotten about that. I did St. Michael's Lent for the first time this year and it was transformed, transformational for me. So I really, you know, it's great stuff. We need to recover. So, okay, everybody, we'll end it there. Until next time, everybody. God love you. It.
The final session of the years-long Synod on Synodality just ended; what did it ultimately accomplish?
