A very shrewd observer once remarked that all political power is mechanical. He meant that all political success is the result of human effort, usually strenuous effort, and not something one could count on to occur naturally, like the tides. Political power is only gained or wielded through human effort. What he did not mention is that there are other types of power: that of nature, of course, but also the power of God, which is certainly not “mechanical.” One might even say that all merely human power is really mechanical when it comes down to it.
I have been thinking about this observation a great deal over the past few weeks, as it appears that the meeting of the “Synod on Synodality” in October will be a “crisis” in the original Greek meaning of the word. The past few months and weeks have seen a flurry of activity, from the appointment of Victor Fernández as doctrinal chief in the Vatican to the rumored defenestration of Bishop Strickland of Tyler, Texas, and the remarkable warning issued by Cardinal Gerhard Müller, effectively saying that no Catholic must obey any Church official that authorizes the blessing of same-sex couples or women deacons.
The fallout from such an action by Pope Francis and his progressive allies, should they actually take the step of declaring the blessing of homosexual relationships or women deacons somehow part of the Catholic faith, will be catastrophic. The suffering that faithful Catholics would have to endure would be unimaginable. No one should have any illusions how damaging it would be to the Church if the Synod actually does this.
But whether it does or not, the “Synod on Synodality,” and the “progressive” Catholic project it embodies, is doomed.
This is not merely wish fulfillment on my part, nor is it an expression of hatred or ill will toward those engaged in this Synod on Synodality. It is a fact. It will fail because the organizers of this clumsy coup d’etat only understand political power, only the power of “institutions,” the machines for producing political power.
The Synod Synodality is driven by a generational dynamic: most of its enthusiasts are Boomer (and older) activists who have largely abandoned the Catholic faith but are deeply invested in – and in some cases, even genuinely loyal to – the Catholic Church as an “institution.” These were the last generation that grew up trusting “institutions” and believing in them, but also the first generation to largely reject the Church’s faith. They still believe in the Church-as-institution because it provides funding, resources, prestige, access (i.e., provides them with the mechanics of political power) and believe it can be salvaged by altering its faith to fit the ethos of the current age.
That is why they have hijacked most of the Church’s “institutions” and are now on the cusp of bringing their plans to fruition. To their credit, they understood, as faithful Catholics did not, that the Church will always be an “institution” in this world to a degree. Faithful Catholics did not understand this, because they do not care about political power, and were busy trying to live up to the hard demands of the Gospel, while progressive activists were subverting it. These activists are neither faithful nor good at governance but very good at subverting and/or capturing institutions. They understood that to run the Church requires hard work, and cannot be outsourced to others. If you want it to teach the true faith, you will have to do the work yourself to ensure that it does, and engage in the gate-keeping necessary to ensure those who don’t believe can gain control of the Church. Such things do not happen naturally, nor can you presume on divine intervention to prevent them.
