The "National Synthesis" On the Synod
Francis X. Maier The Catholic Thing
When I did read the text of the National Synthesis the day after its release, I found that diocesan consultation efforts were impressive. Intentions were admirable. Portions of the final document have real merit. But overall, the text is crippled by tone and focus.
Having spent a year or two in therapy myself as a teen, the language has a familiar therapeutic ring. This starts early and continues throughout. The first section – “Enduring Wounds” – captures the theme of the entire document. It’s a warm bath in varieties of victimhood, marginalization, “pain and anxiety,” and vulnerability, with the unborn tucked in among LGBTQ+ and other concerns. Listening, healing, walking together, accompaniment: the vocabulary of the current pontificate understandably dominates throughout. But the effect is reminiscent of post-sweetener fatigue.
The authors take pride in the fact that the comments of some 700,000 Catholics from across the country fed into the National Synthesis. But the data collection was loose and unscientific, and the results reflect barely 1 percent of the official U.S. Catholic population. Worse, the document’s cavalcade of complaints and distress is not only alien to the lives of millions of faithful U.S. Catholics; it also embodies exactly the kind of prejudices against the American Church, her experience, and her culture that seem to pervade current Roman leadership. The report leaves the reader with the uneasy feeling that it tells the Vatican’s 2023 synod organizers what they already think and want to hear. Regrettably, that same kind of predetermined spirit marked both the 2015 and 2018 synods.
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