Not Even the Council Imagined What Is Going on Today!

Fr Zed has some comments on Cardinal Grech's statement that the Synod is the 'mature fruit of Vatican II'. The Council Fathers must be spinning in their graves.

From Fr Z's Blog

From Vatican News:

Cardinal Grech: Synodal process is mature fruit of Vatican II

As the Pontifical Lateran University begins the celebration of the 250th anniversary of its founding, Cardinal Mario Grech reflects on the Second Vatican Council and synodality.

Cardinal Mario Grech, the Secretary General of the Synod of Bishops, spoke Wednesday morning at the opening of the #250PUL with a Lectio Magistralis on the Second Vatican Council and synodality. For the Secretary General of the Synod, the current synodal process is a “mature fruit of Vatican II” and shows how “a correct reception of the Council’s ecclesiology [a kind of gnosticism, it seems] is activating such fruitful processes to open up scenarios that not even the Council had imagined and in which the action of the Spirit that guides the Church is made manifest”. [Ummm… what was that, again?  Not even the Council imagined this?  But it is something of the Council? ]
Dwelling then on the next steps of the ongoing synodal process, the cardinal explained why the Document for the Continental Stage will be sent to the local Churches, explaining at the same time the concept of “Restitution”. [I’d like an explanation of that, frankly.] “If the prophetic dimension resides in the People of God — the totality of the baptized (cf. LG 12) — and the first act of the Church is listening, then it is precisely to the People of God that the outcome of that listening must be returned. And since the People of God live in the Churches, the Document must be sent to the Churches.” [“Restitution”.  When terms like this get flashed around, I think about the Latin.  Restitutio… “a rebuilding”.  Or, and this is probably the meaning for the mandarins of the Synod (“walking together”), it is in juridical terms “the act of replacing, reinstating one condemned or proscribed in his former condition; the restoration of rights which have been forfeited by law” and “a recalling from exile”.  I suspect they see this as the “reinstating” of the right of El Pueblo that was so unfairly denied them before the Council’s restorative and transformative superseding of all the previous Councils and laws of the Church back to and including the Council of Jerusalem.  Trent, for example, and Vatican I conceived of the Church as a “perfect society”… ONLY. Those unenlightened laity-deniers were myopic.  They lacked a broader spirit-led vision of blue-skying together, while walking together.]

For the Secretary of the Synod, this important ecclesial act “is neither a concession nor a deference to those on the margins of a project; it is not a gesture of bon ton [HA!] to gain some sympathy or some cheap consensus; [The last thing ramming this consensus through will be is “cheap”.] not even a report — indeed, an account — to someone who claims the right to know. It is a purely synodal ecclesial act, reflecting in the circularity of the process, the ‘mutual interiority’ that exists between the particular Churches and the universal Church.” In short, for Cardinal Grech, sending the Document for the Continental Stage to the Churches is “a due act”.

Lastly, the Secretary-General concluded his speech with a wish that “the Church continues to live the synodal process in the logic of listening to God and to others, to the Spirit in others… [Unless they are attached to the Vetus Ordo, of course.]  If there is one disposition that the Council Fathers lived and handed down to the Church as a legacy, it is that of listening to one another to hear what the Spirit is saying to the Church”.  [Yeah… because listening to the Holy Spirit was something that started at Vatican II and no one ever did before.]