Once the discussions were concluded, they voted on 50 propositions, ranging from the sacraments to the liturgy to the priesthood.
And that's where the trouble begins.
You see, while some people liked the open dialogue that characterized the synod debates (and is yet another example of how Pope Benedict XVI is hardly the close-minded authoritarian his critics warned us of), they object strongly to what the bishops decided.
“They opened the issue, talked solutions, then ran as fast as they could in the other directions,” huffed Sister Christine Schenk, CSJ, to Associated Press. You'll be shocked — shocked! — to learn that Sister Schenk is with Call to Action and FutureChurch.
We Are Church released a statement, quoted in the same Associated Press story, that decried the bishops' “lack of courage” in not making the changes they hoped to see. If their “Appeal to the Synod of Bishops on Eucharist” is any indication, this would include eliminating the notion of the Eucharist as a sacrifice, the doctrine of transubstantiation, allowing married priests, women's ordination, etc.
In the coming days, we can rightly expect more foot-stomping from the usual gang. I'm thinking of instituting a Crisis Magazine office pool on what Rev. Richard McBrien will complain about first. The smart money is on priestly celibacy, but really, it could be anything.
The fact is, on the well-publicized issue of married priests, bishops from around the world discussed and debated the matter freely — and then voted overwhelmingly to maintain celibacy in the Latin Rite. Critics claim they lost their nerve. But isn't it simply more likely that they realized that married priests won't fix the vocation shortage? Indeed, many Eastern Catholic Churches have married priests, and a goodly number of those are experiencing the same crisis as the Latin Rite. As many careful observers have noted, the proven method for increasing vocations in a diocese is the promotion of dynamic orthodoxy, that is, a fidelity to the historic Faith that is energetic and evangelistic. Look at the Archdiocese of Denver. Archbishop Charles Chaput has made it one of the premier dioceses not only in the US, but in the worldwide Catholic Church. And he did it by surrounding himself with faithful Catholics and by standing up for authentic Catholicism. As a result, they have more seminarians than they can handle.
That's the solution. Not married priests. Not women's ordination. Not anything on Charles Curran's “Things To Do Before I Die” list. Fidelity, pure and simple.
Let's keep that in mind in the days to come.
Brian Saint-Paul is editor of Crisis Magazine. This article is reprinted with permission.
