Jumping off the Synodal Cliff With Your Favorite Bishop

Even modernists like Christoph, Cardinal Graf von Schönborn, OP are beginning to question the German 'Schismatic Way, which says something about it!

From Catholic Stand

By Jerome German

We are almost to the point where the shenanigans of the Church in Germany are too print-weary to be newsworthy, and yet the headlines continue. Recently, Cardinal Christoph Schönborn of Vienna sharply criticized the German synodal path procedure. “What I find somewhat alienating is the speed with which it skips from the abuse issue to canon law issues…” he remarked, going on to argue that, “The fact that priests and bishops have covered up abuse is not an argument against the episcopal constitution of the Church.”

He recalled how, at the third meeting in February 2022, the German synodal members had voted to discuss whether ordination was actually any longer necessary. In the words of the Cardinal,

Something has plainly and simply gone wrong here as one cannot vote on such issues synodally…That is not a negotiable issue. There are certain prerequisites that are deeply rooted in the Bible and in church tradition…

Historically, whether the subject is theology, philosophy, or politics, no one is particularly surprised to find Germany offering us the very best and the very worst. It is a land of bold ideas; some divine, some vile. But is all of the synodal brouhaha about blessing same-sex unions the result of bold thinking? Is the gross presumption required to kick the tires of the faith to see if she needs an overhaul the result of bold thinking? Is it driven by strident pride? Or are we witnessing yet another pathetic, cowardly exhibition of going along to get along—a following of the zeitgeist?

“If everybody jumped off a cliff, would you jump too?” my mother asked me on more than one occasion, her question calculated to get me thinking about something other than fitting-in socially. My adolescent gut response (wisely left unspoken) was that a group of people jumping en masse off a cliff seemed an unlikely event; there would always be those with more common sense than that.

And, of course, I was right. Not even all of Jim Jones’ brain-washed minions drank the Kool-Aid willingly; some of them were shot while attempting to escape. There is always that die-hard remnant clinging to common sense that has to be dealt with violently.

It is said that pride comes before the fall, that it is the progenitor of all sin. And yet, while pride is oft the sin of leaders, its flamboyance is uncharacteristic of the dull sin of followers—the sin of minions. The sin of Kool-Aid drinkers is a sin of smallness, repugnant not for its creaturely audacity but for its subhuman whimper.

The mother of all the living, Eve, committed a great sin of pride when she threw caution to the wind and decided to “be like God.” Eve did not want to replace God; she wanted to be equal to him—to have her own way. She offered the forbidden fruit to her husband, who quickly followed suit.

Original sin, referred to by the Church as the sin of Adam, was sin of a different sort for Adam than it was for his wife. Eve’s sin was truly a sin of pride, but her husband’s sin seems to have been a sin of smallness. Was he afraid to lead? Afraid to think for himself? I think that, more than anything, he feared estrangement from his wife—he went along to get along. To be sure, pride is ultimately self-centered and reckless, but at least it is bold.  In this instance, Eve led, boldly and effectively, and Adam followed. His was a pathetically greater sin, a sin against his state in life.

So, what am I trying to say, that the followers of errant leaders are worse than those they follow? No. I am saying that we come into this life, into the human family, with many gifts, talents, duties, and obligations. Those gifts are a huge part of the context in which our lives are set. In short, many of us are born with power.

It is a very grave sin to cowardly hand over the reins to that power, to go along to get along, to choose comfort over conflict, or to just plain be too spiritually lazy to recognize our responsibilities. In his parable about the vigilant and faithful servants, Jesus tells us that “Much will be required of the person entrusted with much, and still more will be demanded of the person entrusted with more.” The gravity of sinning against the virtue of fortitude is amplified when we lead those born with far less power than we into the same sin.

But let’s be clear: the act of following—far from being inherently cowardly—can be the bravest and most effective form of leadership. Jesus is both “the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world” and “the Good Shepherd”—that is to say that he is both a follower of the will of his Father and the leader of all the faithful: He is both sheep and shepherd. When we follow the teachings of his Church, we are automatically accepting a leadership appointment. Christ’s front line—the apostles—followed him to a sacrificial death. There is always that die-hard remnant that has to be dealt with violently.

And what about today’s apostles, the German bishops? Stalwart leaders of the remnant? In the words of Bishop Georg Bätzing,

In Germany and in other parts of the universal Church, there have been discussions for some time about the way in which the Church’s sexual morality, also regarding homosexuality, can be further developed with viable arguments—on the basis of fundamental truths of faith and morals, progressive theological reflection, and likewise in openness to more recent results of the human sciences and the life situations of people today.

Wow— “progressive”, “further development”, “openness”, “recent results”, “human sciences”, “life situations”— ladies and gentlemen, put on your rose-colored glasses. We are enlightened; we have recent scientific findings; we have new life situations—all of which make us just like every generation that has gone before us! Flaunting modernity is centuries old, so old-school it’s become nauseatingly stale. The errors of the past, made with the same narcissistic confidence, are not a concern because we are so much smarter and better informed than any who have gone before us. Ugh! How many more generations empowered by the same worn-out mantra will the Almighty be willing to suffer?

What about us? Are we part of the enlightened vanguard of the times or part of a die-hard remnant? Do we stand with the true apostles? The truths of the faith are the fruit of the longest, broadest, deepest, holiest, most intense—most intimate, and yet, most public—vetting process in history. If knowledge is power, we were baptized into immense power, and with it, immense responsibility: the duty to counter evil.

For the faithful believer, fighting the battle is not only unavoidable, it is the very crux of being faithful. And no effort is required to reach the front lines; they are at our doorstep. The enemy’s attack is, as always, against the integration of the human person, and by extension, the family, and by further extension, the Church.

If Catholic moral theology is anything, it is the champion of the integration of the human person, the integration of body and soul. Among world religions, Christianity makes a very singular claim—the resurrection of the dead; the dogged insistence that, even in eternity, we are incomplete without our bodies.

And so it is that the integration of body and soul is built into our spiritual practice. Take for instance the sign of the cross. It is not some archaic, superstitious leftover from the dark ages, it is the body/soul integration anthem. In performing the sign of the cross, we make an affirmation of faith in the Trinity while blessing both body and soul through an act of the will performed by the body—integration of body, soul, will, and intellect.

Catholics have been humorously cast as having “built-in calisthenics” in the Mass, and, yes, we get a little exercise in our worship because we worship as integrated beings: we kneel, stand, and sit as appropriate to the rite—we worship with our entire beings.

But cowardly elements within the Church, baptized into immense power and ordained into even greater power, are very busy going along to get along, choosing comfort over conflict. They long ago lost sight of their rightful place in the cosmos, their Baptismal heritage. They have abandoned grace and placed their hope in a sordid, twisted counterfeit of the beautiful social-justice doctrine of the Church.

The integration of the human person is so under attack that the very concept of sins of the flesh is fading from our vocabulary. The enemy is busy dissecting the human person, isolating the spiritual from the physical while prompting us to just let flesh be flesh and do that thing that the flesh does. Hell knows that flesh disconnected from spirit cannot respond to the will, and that, once relieved of duty, the will sighs with relief and welcomes the scapegoat that the flesh has become.

To say that procreation has lost its place at the table in the discussion of sexual morality, thereby negating the discussion, is to only scratch the surface (Indeed, in a world terrified of over-population, future generations have not only lost their place at the table, but they have also become public enemy number one). With the body and the soul successfully compartmentalized, morality is moot; procreation is demonized; virginity is mocked; innocence charicaturized; gender neutralized; fidelity trivialized; sobriety marginalized, and human life itself relativized.

There is a misconception that those who approve of abortion, same-sex unions, contraception, euthanasia, assisted suicide, and easy divorce embrace these abominations as a set because they are all progressive ideas. But the uniting principle, far from being progress, is clearly the disintegration of the human person.

Our responsibility is great because our gifts are monumental. Ours is the mission to herd the herd, to be both lamb and shepherd—both meek and bold. Jumping off a cliff with your favorite bishop won’t mitigate the abruptness of the landing; going along to get along never ends well. We know who wins the war, but the battle rages. The stakes are infinite and there is no neutral ground—you can’t sit this one out. You were not created for smallness, but for magnanimity, so stand up and be counted.