Meetings and More Meetings

[00:00:00] Foreign. [00:00:13] So this week, Pope Leo held his first consistory. And by the way, I will misspell, I will mispronounce consistory at least once in this podcast. If you can find it and mark it, let me know. [00:00:27] Okay, so this week, Pope Leo held his first consistory, and we're going to talk a little bit more about in general, what consistories are and versus synods and councils in this podcast. But I just want to real quick review what he actually talked. What, what was going on during this consistory that happened on January 7th and 8th, 2026. [00:00:46] So it was the planning for it was they're going to cover four topics. They're going to cover evangelization based upon the 2013 Francis apostolic exhortation, Evangelium Gaudium, they're going to cover synod on C. [00:01:01] They're going to cover the liturgy. And the fourth topic was going to be curia reform. [00:01:07] However, note that this, when they say it was two days, it actually was not even two full days. It was like basically a day and a half. [00:01:14] So four topics is a lot to cover. [00:01:17] And so right at the beginning, it was announced, okay, you know, we actually don't have time for four topics. We're going to let the cardinals vote on the two they want to talk about the most. [00:01:28] And they chose. The topics they chose were evangelization and synod. On synodality. So liturgy was dropped and curia reform was dropped. [00:01:38] Now, a lot of traditionalists leading into the consistory were thinking, hey, they're going to talk about the liturgy. [00:01:43] Maybe they will address the whole issue, all the issues related to the traditional at Mass, tradition, custodes and things of that nature. [00:01:52] Obviously that was all shelved. And so now it was talked about. I know it was a disappointment for some people, but ultimately that those are the two they talked about. Two topics they talked about. [00:02:02] But what is interesting, I think, is that the fact that Pope Leo announced that there will be another consistory in, at the end of June of this year, 2026, and then he hopes to have them annually after that. And in fact, the one in June, I think it's going to be two days like this one. And then after that, he hopes to have them be three or four days long. [00:02:26] So the idea is he wants to have a regular meeting of the cardinals. That is what consistory is, if you're not sure it's a meeting of the cardinals, and they all get together to meet every year, basically during his pontificate. [00:02:40] And so it brought to mind, I think it brought to mind A couple things in my thoughts, and others as well, is just the idea that under Francis, we seem to have perpetual synod. [00:02:54] There was a synod almost every year. It seemed like there was a synod on synodality for a couple years. [00:03:00] And I think I did a podcast on this where it really seemed like we've been church of meetings, that meetings seem to be the most important thing we can have. [00:03:12] Like I said, there was perpetual synod under Francis. There seems they're going to be regular consistencies under Leo. [00:03:19] I will say that I have a kind of natural allergic reaction to meetings. I hate them. [00:03:26] I've always liked working for myself because I don't have to meet with anybody. I have had I jobs where I've had meetings and I've always hated them. And I've had jobs where I've had to conduct meetings. I've been in charge, I had to have meetings. I still hated them. But I know when I had meetings, I was like, okay, we're going to get in there, we're going to get things done, we're going to get out. Meetings that just drag on are the worst. But for some reason, progressives, liberals, seem to love meetings. They seem to love committees and getting together and talking. It seems to be something that is just innate to them, that they want to have as many meetings as possible. [00:04:02] And I don't really get this now. I will say meetings are necessary at times. It's not like you. You know, we're communal beings. We're made to be in communion with other people in communities. We're going to meet at times. So I'm not saying all meetings are wrong, but it just seems like we have meetings upon meetings. We have meetings about meetings. It's like a Dilbert cartoon at this point. [00:04:25] And so I just, I admit I had a little bit of that reaction to this, but I do think the more I thought about it, I do think there's some distinctions we need to make about what Pope Leo is doing and contrast it with what Francis is doing, what Francis did with the synods. And also, I want to address something that Bishop Barron said, which I thought was relative, basically excellent, about synods and councils and things of that nature. [00:04:53] Because I do think this is something that, I mean, church. I mean, okay, the average layman, who's probably the person watching this, could care less about most of this stuff. I get that they don't care about councils and synods and consistories. They're just like, hey, I'm in my pew. I want a decent liturgy. I want a church that knows its identity. I know. I want a church that is bold and unapologetic. [00:05:18] I want to believe. [00:05:21] I want the bishops to believe, I want my priests to believe. [00:05:25] I don't care about your meetings and your bureaucracy in the Vatican. That being said, though, it's very obviously important to church officials, to the church at large, to the bishops, to the Vatican, to the pope. And so I do think we should address this. So the first thing I want to do is just kind of break down the difference between a council, a synod, and a consistory. [00:05:48] A council. When I say council, I am talking about ecumenical council. Here there have only been 21 ecumenical councils. 21 councils. Count them all. You know the sound. Okay, so that is the most solemn gathering of bishops. And only bishops are technically participants in an ecumenical council. Yes, I know at Vatican II and at Vatican 1, there were non bishops invited. There might have been other councils, I don't know. [00:06:14] But I know there's like royal representatives sometimes, things like that in the past. But the point is, the only voting members, the only members that matter are the bishops. So ecumenical council is when a pope calls all the bishops together to talk about in traditionally, to talk about historically, to talk about a specific topic like a heresy that needs to be combated. Maybe there's some crisis in the church, some practice that needs to be redone or something like that. [00:06:39] But they will talk about dogma, they will talk about doctrine, and that's what a council is. And like I said, there's only been 21 of them in total. [00:06:48] Synods are like councils. And in fact, sometimes you will find in church documents and historical documents there's an interchange of the term synod and council. [00:06:59] And they can mean the same thing. [00:07:02] But in modern language, when we say council, we mean ecumenical council. [00:07:09] When we say synod, we mean something different, something lower. And this is typically a synod of bishops. [00:07:16] Historically, I'm not going to talk about under Francis, but kind of before Vatican ii, synods were simply gatherings of bishops, usually localized. So in ecumenical council, the word ecumenical means universal. That's for the whole. Every single bishop in the world is invited. A synod. Rarely. I mean, really, if every bishop's invited to a synod, it's an ecumenical council. [00:07:37] So instead, a synod is usually a localized gathering of bishops. So for example, there could be a synod of American bishops. I don't think there's been one in a very long time because they have something that's replaced it, which is awful. Which I'll talk about in a minute. [00:07:51] Yes, I'm talking about the usccb like there was a synod in Baltimore. That's how the Baltimore Catechism came about. [00:07:59] Now in recent years, synods have been basically called by the Pope and have met in Rome. [00:08:05] And it's basically select bishops he selects on a specific topic. Now to be clear, it's not just Francis who did this. [00:08:13] JP2 did I assume there was a synod during Benedict's eight year reign, but I don't, I can't remember exactly. Yeah, I know there was one. It was like on the word of God maybe or something like that, I can't remember. But I know of course the JP2 did one, that the Catechism came out of a synod of bishops. And so synods are in modern post Vatican II Catholic Church, it's really gatherings of a select number of bishops to gather in Rome to talk about a specific topic. Maybe it's catechesis, evangelization, the word of God, synods, synodality, whatever. And so that is what a synod is. Now I would. And lately synods have not just included bishops, they've included priests and lay people, religious nuns. And so the synod, the term synod has gotten broadened in recent years to mean more than just a gathering of local bishops or topic of bishops, it includes more. [00:09:17] And so really they've become deformed from what synods really are. And sometimes you'll hear defenders of synodality like, oh, the east has always had these synods and we're being like they were. They are. No, you're not. [00:09:31] The east is doing the synods like they did it in the early church, which is just simply a localized gathering of bishops about a topic, about something going on in the area now consistory, that is something very different. That is a gathering of all the cardinals of the world. Now you could have one that you only have some cardinals go to, but the Pope basically calls all the cardinals. Now let's remember what a cardinal is. [00:09:56] A cardinal first of all is not a sacramental order. It's not a sacrament. [00:10:04] A cardinal is simply honorary title given to a bishop and it can actually be given to a non bishop and it has been given to priests. You know, John Henry Newman, St. John Henry Newman is a perfect example. He was a priest who was named a cardinal. [00:10:16] And so but typically it's a bishop. [00:10:19] And I don't think they very rarely, although of course Francis did it, they very rarely would pick a non bishop under the voting age because cardinals, their first task is, as we all know, to vote for a new pope. When a pope dies or resigns but the job of a cardinal is to be an advisor to the pope. That's what they are. They're basically advisors. And this goes back. This is an ancient custom. I mean, cardinals, the College of Cardinals as we have it today started in the Middle Ages, I think the 11th century. But really it dates back much further than that because you had the bishop of Rome, he had the priest in the diocese of Rome who he consulted with. Those were kind of like the cardinals. And so now the cardinals are, of course, all over the world, but ultimately they are the advisors to the pope. In fact, all of them are given. [00:11:09] Basically, they're pastors of parishes in Rome. [00:11:14] And the reason they do that is to kind of hearken back to the old days, the ancient church, when the pastors of the various churches in Rome were the advisors to the pope. [00:11:23] So a consistory is when cardinals are gathered together and the pope calls them together and say, hey, let's talk about this topic. [00:11:30] Now, under Francis, he held very few consistories. I think he held one in 2022. I think he held maybe two or three in his 13 years. [00:11:37] He did not like getting all the cardinals together. I think, honestly, this is my personal opinion now. I personally think he didn't feel like he could control the room well enough. And so he was worried about that. [00:11:49] And so that. That is basically what a consistory is in its comparison to a senate or council. They're all meetings, though. That's an important thing to notice. They're all three meetings, but they're very different types of meetings. [00:12:01] And so another thing I want to note is in the history of the Church, there's actually a heresy related to this. [00:12:07] There's a heresy I would call, like the meeting heresy. It's called conciliarism. [00:12:11] And it's this idea that the councils, ecumenical councils, are over the pope. They have authority over the pope. Now, in Catholic teaching, that is not the case. The pope is the top authority, and ecumenical council is also top authority. But ecumenical council is not above the pope. [00:12:27] If an ecumenical council like the pope can be infallible when it declares something definitively in faith and morals, an ecumical council is infallible, just like the pope was infallible. It is the highest authority of the Church in a certain sense, because it works with the pope. There is no such thing as an ecumenical council without the pope. Not that the pope has to physically be there, but that he is basically the one who calls it and, and, and confirms it. [00:12:54] But concealerism, I mispronounced that. Word said consistory. [00:12:59] I'm terrible at pronouncing words, you all know that by now. But concealerism, I don't know how to pronounce it, whatever that is. This idea that cropped up in the Middle Ages when all of a sudden you have two or three popes and it's a real crisis, obviously in the church. Two or three men claiming to be popes. Obviously you don't have two or three popes at the same time ever. But two or three mean there's meaning a Pope and at least one anti pope claiming to be the Pope. [00:13:23] And this, this was the idea that councils are above them. And I, you know, honestly, this is probably the heresy I'm most sympathetic to because I understand if you're in a situation where you only know who the freaking Pope is, like which man is the Pope. It'd be nice to have somebody, an authority that could just say, okay, we're, we're above them. We're gonna, we're gonna declare it. [00:13:44] And at the Council of Constance, this was kind of declared. [00:13:49] This, this idea was really popular. And they declared. What they decided was we're going to have an ecumenical council in like, I think five years and seven years into every 10 years, they want to have an ecumenical council every 10 years. [00:14:03] Now remember, I've said there's 21 ecumenical councils and we've had about 21ish sensor centuries. So there's on average one council every hundred years. Every century we've had less than that over the past 400 years. We've only had three, you know, Trent since, you know, a Trent. But like before we had Trent, Vatican 2, 1, Vatican 2. But before Trent, there was actually ecumenical council in that same century just few decades before, I think it was later in five. It was a failure. That's why they needed Trent. But the point of this is that they wanted, at Constance, they won an ecumenical council. Every team. That never happened. It never happened where they had the councils like they wanted to. But the idea was the same as you kind of see in the C idea now that we have constant meetings, constant meetings. Let's just keep talking, get the bishops together, keep talking, keep, keep deciding things, keep producing documents, keep, you know, talking, talking, talking to each other. [00:14:57] That's why it's like the meeting heresy, the heresy of meetings. And while I'm sympathetic to the point about if you don't know who the Pope is, it's nice to have somebody who could tell you for sure and the council could do that in this idea. Ultimately, of course, I don't like it because it's about meetings. [00:15:14] Now Bishop Barron had a tweet the other day that kind of talked about some of these issues and I want to bring it up here and read it for you and talk about a little bit. [00:15:24] And he writes here. He says, I understand one of the topics under consideration, consistory of cardinals, is synodality. He wrote this two days before the day before it started. [00:15:34] I'm speaking as a bishop who is an elected delegate to both rounds of the sin of cindality and who has just presided over a local sin in my own diocese. Oh, that's actually. That's a good point. I forgot to mention sins can also be local of one bishop with just his priest. That can be a synod. [00:15:50] Sinners are good and useful tools for the determination of practical pastoral strategies. And I agree with that. That is very true. I think they can be overused and you can do too many of them. But he's absolutely right in what he says there and then Bishop Baron continues, but they oughtn't be forums for debate regarding doctrine. Amen, your excellency. And that's the problem is that I'm sure I don't know what Bishop Barron's synod was about, his local one, but I'm sure it's about practical nature of how can we evangelize, how can we share the faith, how can we grow the church, things like that. [00:16:19] Well, the sin on synodality has been a lot about doctrine, like how can we change doctrines. [00:16:24] And Bishop Barron said that's not right. [00:16:28] Then when settled teaching becomes a subject for synodal. Boy, I'm having a hard time today. Determination. The church devolves into relativism and self doubt, as is clearly evident by the misconceived sonatal way in Germany. I'm sympathetic to the founders of the journal Communio. [00:16:47] You know, you're not going to have bishop Barron talking much with. He's not going to bring up Communio and new theology and stuff like that. But that's just who he is. You know, Joseph Ratzinger, Hansa von Balthazar and Henry de la Bach, who broke with the journal Consilium with the stated purpose to perpet which the state purpose of which was the perpetuation of the spirit of Vatican ii. In other words, there was this journal called Consilium that people like Ratzinger, von Balthazar and de Labak were part of and they really were into the spirit of Vatican ii and Ratzinger, de Lubac, von Baltzer, some others Broke away because. No, this is wrong. The spirit of Akintu is stupid. We're going to found communio. The great communio. Theologians said that councils are indeed sometimes necessary in the life of the church, but that one sides with relief at the end of a council. For the church can then return to its essential work. [00:17:37] As long as it sits in council, the church is in suspense, unsure of itself, wringing its hands. It was precisely the perpetuation of the spirit of Vatican II that led to so much vacillation and drift in the years when I was coming of age. This is bishop Barron talking. [00:17:53] So if we must continue with sydality, let it be dedicated to the consideration of practical means by which the church can move more effectively to do its work of worshiping God, evangelizing and serving the poor. Let not be a defining and permanent feature of the church's life, lest we lose our verve and focus. I want to say amen. I. I go. I'll go a little further than bishop Baron, but I just want to commend bishop Baron. This is very good. I love what he brought up about the fact that, you know, sometimes the council is necessary in life at church, but that we sigh in relief when it's over. That is so true. Because during a council, you just. You're in a situation then where things are up for debate. I mean, literally, doctrine's up for debate in a certain sense. [00:18:38] Not that new doctrines that. That contractual doctrine can be declared, but like, you don't know what's going to happen because the council is debating these important topics. You don't want that as the perpetual mission and. And state of the church. And I think what bishop Barron's saying, and I agree with him, is that that's what cinnadality, sin on synodality is doing. This idea of sendalities. We're perpetually talking about doctrine and talking about all this stuff. Now, I would go further than bishop Barron and be more critical of synodality. I think it just should be scrapped. [00:19:09] But that being said, I think Bishop Baron and I are probably on the same page in a lot of ways, because the problem with synodality, as it has been promoted by Francis and many others like him at the Vatican, is that is this perpetual meeting, this perpetual debate about what we believe, and that's not healthy. We need to be doing. What did bishop Barron say? Oh, let me look at this again. [00:19:33] At the end, he said, sinners should be dedicated to consideration of practical means by which the church can do more effectively its work of what worshiping God, evangelizing and serving the poor. In other words, meetings are not the mission of the church. Meetings are not the mission of the church. [00:19:57] Glorifying God and saving souls is the mission of the church. [00:20:02] And so even a council is a disruption in the life of the church. It might be necessary because heresy is rampant and we got to clamp down, we got to make sure it's clear what we believe. [00:20:13] But it's a disruption. It's not the norm. It should not be the norm. Synods, like I said, are good in theory, but really they've been awful in practice. [00:20:23] At least the sins called by Rome because what they do is they. Every time a new sin happens, what happens? Oh, we might have women deacons now that's a settled issue. [00:20:33] There's, I mean bringing it up is just ridiculous. Or we're going to debate like divorce and remarried, communion for divorce, remarried things of that nature. All these things are settled and they, they're not topics for modern C or anything. Cardinal Zinn, actually it came out that Cardinal Joseph Zinn, you know, heroic Cardinal, just, you know, a holy man, one of the saints alive today. [00:20:58] It came out what he did a searing critique of the synod on cican's history and he denounced it as a process, as an, it's a, he denounced the process as an iron, quote, ironclad manipulation. [00:21:13] And Warnett's continual invocation of the Holy Spirit is quote, ridiculous and verges on, quote, blasphemy. [00:21:21] Because that's what you hear all the time about these sins. Oh, it's the Holy Spirit working. It's the Holy Spirit working in, in the church. We got to listen to the Spirit. We got to listen to the Spirit at these synods. No, it's a bunch of bureaucrats getting together trying to, you know, push their pet ideology, their pet, their pet projects. And it really is harmful for the life of the church because as Bishop Barron said, it kind of leaves us in this, this idea of like, you know, constant like stress of like, oh, what do we really believe? Instead of getting the job done of our mission, we're always, always navel gazing. It's always navel gazing. Let's just keep talking about ourselves. I mean there's one thing that's ascended on cindality is it's 100% self referential. It's simply your, your navel gazing, looking at yourself and you're, you're not outward focusing, focused at all. [00:22:14] Now what about consistories though? You know, I said councils are necessary disruptions at times. Sinidality as it's understood today in the church, is basically awful. [00:22:26] But consistories, I personally think this is great. I actually think it's great. I believe. I totally support Pope Leo, the idea of regular consistencies, because what this is the cardinals doing their job as advisors to the Pope. I'm assuming they're not going to rehash doctrine or anything like that, but if they're advising the Pope, this is great, because then the pope's not sitting in Rome kind of just listening to a bunch of Vatican bureaucrats. Instead, he's hearing from cardinals in America, in Australia, in Asia, in Africa. I mean, please, from Africa, listen to them. You know, for all over the world who are actually. Because, remember, there are many cardinals who are based in Rome, but there are many cardinals who are actual pastors of diocese. And I think the Pope needs to hear from them regularly. So I'm fully support. I'm not a big meeting guy, but I think an annual meeting of all the cardinals to meet with the pope makes total sense to me. So I completely support this. And I hope Pope Leo actually enacts it. I hope it's not one of these things that kind of. He wants to do it, but then it doesn't actually happen. [00:23:32] And I also like the idea of them being longer. I mean, two days, a day and a half. What are you going to do? They didn't have very limited time for the cardinals to speak to all the cardinals. [00:23:41] They did mostly small groups. You need three or four days. I get. The cardinals are busy. You can't, you know, have them take off weeks at a time every year. But three or four days, I think that then you can really get some things done. Because that first day, you're just saying hi to everybody. I mean, we all know that that last day, you're thinking about getting out the door, going home. [00:23:59] And if you have two days there where you're completely focused, that's a very good thing. Whereas when it's literally a day and a half, the first day you get there, you meet everybody. The second day, you're thinking about getting out the door. So I. I'm hopeful, and I'll pray that that Pope Leo kind of follows through on this, and he does this. [00:24:15] Now, one grouping of bishops I have not yet mentioned is the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, like the usccb. Most all countries have these, and I've already had podcasts about this. So I'm not going to beat this dead horse, because it is a dead horse. It is very dead. The USCCB is worthless I mean it really is. And I don't like using that super strong language normally, but it really has become just. I'm not saying it does nothing of worth. I probably shouldn't say worthless then, but it's not worthwhile to have it because that's just a bureaucrac institution. That's not really, that's not doing anything. [00:24:51] So again, councils, necessary disruptions, they should be, you know, very rare. [00:24:58] Synods, local synods like Bishop Barron had of his priest. That sounds like a great idea. [00:25:03] Even synods in countries like if this, if there's a synod of Catholic bishops in America about a specific topic, I could see that I would not. Please do not have a hotel room though. Or hotel, hotel conference room. Having it in like a monastery, at a retreat center, something like that. That could be useful in consistories. Yes, let's do that. [00:25:22] Ultimately, what this comes down to is just simply. And I think this is what Bishop Barron was saying as well. [00:25:27] We need our shepherds to be pastors, not administrators. We need our bishops to be pastors, not administrators. They are primarily ministers. And you know what administrators do better than anybody? They hold meetings. They love their meetings. Administrators, they have meetings all day long every day. And that's how they, that's how they check box that things got done for an administrator. How do you know things got done? You had some good meetings. I always, that always drove me crazy. I was in the corporate world when people like, oh, that was a good meeting. That was good meeting. I'm like, no, it just got the. I mean, no, no means are good meetings. Meetings sometimes are necessary evil. But like. And there's bad meetings. But like I just didn't get. People get excited because they had a good meeting. Because ultimately if they don't, if they go after the meeting and they, and they don't implement it because I've been to. Oh my gosh, anybody who works in the corporate world, you know what I'm talking about here. [00:26:17] You have a meeting, it's a good meeting. [00:26:20] Everybody's tasked with these things and none of it gets done, nothing happens. And you have another good meeting, same thing. And that's what I feel like these kind of sentence can be. And the consistory, that could be a danger of it is you have a good meeting but then nothing really gets implemented. But that's what administrators do. Pastors, they go out to the flock, they preach, they teach, they do the primary duty of a bishop. Now a bishop is to govern and preach and teach. I mean yes, they are going to Govern. So they are administrators, but that's not exclusively, not even the most important thing. They have to preach the gospel. They have to teach a catechism to souls. [00:27:01] Because the mission of the church, like I said, is not to have meetings. [00:27:05] The mission of the church is to save souls. Anything that distracts from that mission needs to be jettisoned, frankly. [00:27:13] I mean, let's remember what Christ said at the end of when he was about to be ascended into heaven. He said to the disciples, all authority in heaven and earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and Son, the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And, and lo, I am with you always to the end of the age. [00:27:34] So make disciples, evangelize, baptize them. You know, bring them into full communion into the church, teach them, make sure they know their catechism, they know doctrine. [00:27:45] What did he not say? He did not say, go, therefore, and have meetings of with all nations, consulting on how to be more like the world, which is what the synod synodality does. [00:27:56] So, bishops, I know you're all listening to this podcast. I know every bishop in the world, every cardinal, they, they lock in the crisis point. We all know that. [00:28:05] I'm begging you, cut down the meetings and amp up the evangelization and the teaching. Please be pastors more than we're begging you. [00:28:16] I know, actually, they're not watching this. A few do, actually. I know that. But, you know, let's encourage and pray for our bishops. Praying fast for a bishop, that they would be more pastors and not administrators. I'm very, I'm very happy about Bishop Barron, what he is saying. He's trying to be a pastor, clearly, not just an administrator. He has to be an administrator on some level, but not just administrator. So, yes, Pope Leo, please have consistories of cardinals to get advice on how best to run the church. Let's drop the synods and pray God that we don't have to have a council anytime soon. And let's pray that, you know, his consistories really bring good fruit into the Catholic Church to save souls, because that's what really it's all about. So, okay, I'm going to cut it out there until next time, everybody. God love you. And remember the poor.