Latest / The Catholic Current / Does Synodality Trump Hierarchy? (Fr. Gerald Murray) 6/25/26

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Does Synodality Trump Hierarchy? (Fr. Gerald Murray) 6/25/26 · The Catholic Current

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In the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, Almighty God, through the intercession
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of St. Ignatius of Loyola, we ask that you pour forth your Holy Spirit upon us, a spirit
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of discernment.
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We might hear your voice and obey your command.
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In the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen.
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You know, friends, there used to be certain magic words.
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You know, there was abracadabra and there was hocus pocus.
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Later the magic word was the spirit of Vatican II, and then there was the new evangelization.
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But here is the newest, newest, new magic word, and it's synodality.
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And it can mean whatever you want it to mean, and it can excuse, justify, or validate whatever
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you aspire to.
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At least that's the way that I'm reading it these days.
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Maybe I have a John's-esque view.
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But I thought I'd talk about it with someone whose judgment and expertise I trust.
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He's a well-known pastor, author, and canon lawyer, and you see his good work frequently
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in EWTN.
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Father Gerald Murray, welcome back to The Catholic Current.
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Well, thank you, Father McTague.
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Great to be with you again.
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You know, there was the old rallying cry of two Jesus through Mary, and then it became
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two Jesus through meetings, and now it's two Jesus through synodal documents.
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And I've been looking at the documents of the various study groups, and today I want
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to talk with you, Father, about from study group number four.
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It's the revision of the rules, the recipe, if you will, for the formation of priests
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from a synodal missionary perspective.
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Now I think of Kaiser Wilhelm, who said whenever he hears the word culture, he instinctively
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reaches for his revolver.
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I'm in a slightly different place.
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Whenever we hear synodal and we mention priesthood, I start to get anxious.
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Is that concern justified on your view?
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Because I know you've read the document, too.
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Yes, it is concerning, absolutely.
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What's coming out of the synod office is very worrisome, because it enunciates principles
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which are not according to Catholic tradition, not according to existing norms, and certainly
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not according to the way seminary formation and other topics were dealt with under Pope
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John Paul II and Pope Benedict.
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So very concerning.
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Gosh, even in the table of contents, some things leaped out at me.
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For example, first page of contents, part one, conversion to a synodal style.
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I noticed that there wasn't very much in the way of content or truth or dogma or doctrine
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or tradition, but there was a lot of reference to style and posture and feeling.
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Is synodality primarily a mood?
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It certainly sounds like a mood, because style, if we use it in the common acceptation, style
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is what people wear one year and not the next.
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Things go in and out of style in clothing, food choices, liquor choices.
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What's stylish now is kind of out of style later on.
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So as regards something called the synodal style, who determines that?
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Who identifies it?
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Who understands what it means?
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Synodality is a neologism.
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It's a word that Pope Francis invented, you could say.
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The word synod exists.
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But the idea of synodality as describing an aspect of the church, almost a mark of the
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church, this is a complete new thing.
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And as with any verbal engineering, it's the engineers who tell you what it means, because
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otherwise you don't know.
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You can't go to a dictionary written 30 years ago and find out what is synodality, because
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it doesn't exist.
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To call it a mood is precisely the way it is, because moods are indeterminate.
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We know what they are to a degree, someone's angry, smiling, happy, worried, but what's
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the reason for it?
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Is it reasonable?
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Is it medically induced?
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So what is synodality?
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Is synodality an imposition that's coming from outside the church?
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Is it something inherent in the nature of the church we never understood before?
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Yeah, vagueness is one of the tactics that's always been used by those who want to promote
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heresy, because they don't want to claim a break with the past in any real sense, even
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though that's what they're doing.
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So they pretend it's simply a new discovery.
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And I happen to take words and language very, very seriously, as any of my students would
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tell you when they would get back their essays with all that red ink all over it.
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And again, just even in the table of contents, Father, there's a portion here called Formation
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of Candidates for the Priesthood in a Participatory Story and Synodal Style.
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I says, does style apply to the formation or to the priesthood?
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It seems to me to be ambiguous.
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On the one hand, the synodal obviously applies to formation, because there's my goodness,
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these poor guys coming up for priesthood are going to be talked at a lot, an awful lot.
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But also, I think synodal is going to apply to priesthood, is that priesthood doesn't
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mean what you and I were taught what it meant, what you and I have been living for all these
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decades.
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And priesthood doesn't seem to mean what the saints and popes and doctors and fathers had
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said for generations and millennia.
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If you took out the word priesthood and you put community organizer, I don't think that
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would do much violence to the text, would it?
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No, it wouldn't, because the conception here of the priesthood is someone who occupies
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a position of authority, but that authority has been misused in the past based on an outdated
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approach, which they would say is theologically no longer in style.
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And they want to bring a new style forth, which is essentially, you could say, a convener
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of charisms and ministries.
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A priest is basically like an orchestra leader who's going to let everybody express themselves
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in a way and try to come up with a harmony of sound.
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It's not what the priest is.
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The essence of the priesthood is Jesus Christ, and Jesus is priest, prophet, and king.
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So there's an aspect in which he's a governor and a teacher in addition to being a sanctifier.
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And that's the essential mission of the priesthood.
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The essential mission of priesthood is not to call meetings and listen to people and
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then agree with them.
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But that's essentially what a synodal style implies.
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People get up, they talk, and you agree with them.
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That's not what the priesthood's all about.
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I knew a priest who really suffered heroically as a pastor, and he was making corrections
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that needed to be made, and there was a ruckus.
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And he was called into his superiors and says, you have to give the people what they want.
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And he goes, well, you know, I'm a people too.
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And the superior didn't catch the reference.
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Going right to the introduction here on page four, the end of the first full paragraph,
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it says it should be born in mind that this is not a matter of making minor adjustments
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or simple reorganizations, but a conversion of the heart-mind relationships and processes.
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And the changes must be structural so that for all the references to style and posture
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and mood, they're aiming at the essence of priesthood, aren't they?
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Yes, they are.
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And this is this revolutionary aspect of the synodal church that you and I have been talking
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about for a couple of years now, and it's always couched in the sense of, we have to
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make the church thrive through all of its aspects, through the laity, through religious
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priests, bishops, deacons, pope, and everybody has to have a share and a say in this.
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That's the cover language.
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The real antagonism, though, is toward a hierarchical church in which the hierarchy
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exercises authority, not granted to it by the people.
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The authority comes from God, from Christ.
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So therefore, the people are, of course, the object of God's love, and therefore the love
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of the church and the ministry of the hierarchy.
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But they are not the sources of authority who can withdraw it or circumscribe that authority.
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And this is what this document is trying to do and trying to say.
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The priesthood does not exist in a relationship to the people as classically understood, and
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the basic difference would be shepherd and sheep.
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They want to get rid of that.
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They basically want to say there's an equality in the church, everybody has a baptismal call
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to ministry and to participation, and that includes governance, so therefore priests
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have to be re-educated.
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It's not their job to go in and say, as your pastor, I want to lead you in this direction.
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No, they basically have to come in and say, as your pastor, I want to listen to you and
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see where you'd like to go, and then we're going to figure out how we can do that.
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Right.
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And, you know, no father governs his household that way.
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Nobody asks the toddler what he wants for dinner.
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Nobody asks the teen, what do you think your curfew should be?
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Now, are people going to scream, oh, you're treating the lay, faithless children, ah.
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Well, no.
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No, I'm not.
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But, you know, if people are spiritually mature and they're educated, we will see that Christ
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did not form a congregational church, and he did not form a democracy.
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He generated a church that is hierarchical, hieros arche in Greek, which means holy order,
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and that God made the church a certain way so that it can fulfill its purposes.
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And it looks to me, some people have a better idea than God.
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Friends, we come back and continue our conversation with Father Gerald Murray.
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We're talking about synodal documents and whether synodality trumps hierarchy.
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My returning guest today is canon lawyer, Father Gerald Murray.
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We're talking about a synodal study document about reforming the formation of priests.
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Father, you and I both take language very seriously.
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We read the footnotes, we check out the bibliography.
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And I noticed in this document on priesthood that Christ is never, not even once, referred
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to in his three-fold office as priest, prophet, and king.
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But it was referred to only as head, shepherd, and servant.
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I have my own take on that.
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I wonder what yours is.
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Yes, well, the three-fold monera, or tasks, or office of Christ, the priest, is to be
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a priest, a prophet, and a king.
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And in that, these are all prefigured in the Old Testament, Abraham, Moses, David, the
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prophets.
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And the priest is the culmination of that entire preparation given to the people of
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Israel so that we would see that, indeed, God exercises sovereignty over his people
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and leads them in all the aspects that priests, prophets, and kings carry out.
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But naturally, who designates Christ as priest, prophet, and king?
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It's God the Father who sent him into the world.
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So, as priest, he sanctifies.
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As king, he governs.
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And he teaches, as teacher, naturally, giving his doctrine.
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These are the essential aspects of the mission of the church to bring salvation to the world.
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We do that through preaching, through the administration of the sacraments, and through
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governance, which is, in the church, making the means of salvation available to people
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in an orderly way and protecting them from influences that would lead them astray and
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guiding them toward the green pastures of holiness.
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So, all of that is so very important.
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The priesthood, being a shepherd, guiding the faithful, this is not a committee-arrived-at
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decision.
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Whereas, you know, basically, people say, we're all together.
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Who's going to lead us?
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Who's going to take care of this community?
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Well, we're going to delegate some authority to people, and we're going to give them a
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role.
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But in essence, there are representatives, and we can recall them, we can constrain them,
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you know, we can do what we want with them.
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And that's the democratization of the church, which is, in the synodal world, they always
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deny there's any democratization going on, yet all of their processes for picking delegates
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to go to these meetings, it's all based on a democratic ideal.
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You know, it's based on representation, and, you know, who's participatory, and how can
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they meet together?
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And we got to listen.
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Remember, they had a thing, you know, we synod on the youth, had to have, like, 50% youth
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or something.
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I mean, there was, so, in other words, they used statistics to try and arrive at what
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would be democratically acceptable, all the while denying that this is a democratization.
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It certainly is.
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Why would you not talk about Christ as king?
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Well, it's uncomfortable if you're trying to democratize the church.
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Right.
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Right.
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And I, you know, I think back to my younger days.
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I was talking to a pastor of a very large, prominent parish, and he said his primary
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role as pastor was to call a meeting, put on a pot of coffee, and get out of the way.
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And he was formed, he was told, to, his primary role as priest and as pastor was to be an
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enabler of other people's giftedness.
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So it seems to me that the pastor is, above all, the delegate for HR, and that, you know,
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he's, again, he's the community organizer, he's the guarantor of good feelings and a
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sense of inclusion.
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But there's no reference to sacrifice, because even, and they're talking about, you know,
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the linking of priesthood to the Mass, it's only about presidency of the celebration and
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not being in the person of Christ making the sacrifice of Calvary present again.
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Isn't this, I don't know, what would you call it, a unitarian, congregationalist approach
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to what the church is?
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It's very much exactly a notion which is inherent in the way the Protestant churches are organized,
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which is that they are responsible, the community designates its leaders, and the community
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determines its doctrine, and the community determines its rules, so, you know, in the
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Catholic Church, it's not that way at all.
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The hierarchy, the successors of the apostles, the priesthood, who works closely with the
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apostles, successors, the bishops, and the deacons who assist both priest and bishop,
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their role is to safeguard the deposit of faith, to bring the sacramental life to the
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people, and to guide, to lay down your life for the sheep, as Jesus himself did.
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Jesus on the cross embodies what it means to be priest, prophet, and king.
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You know, he was the king who rules over the universe from a position of being put to death
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unjustly, you know, his crown is a mockery of thorns, he's bleeding, he can't breathe,
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he's suffering, he is, that's how the kingship in the church is.
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The martyrs, and particularly bishop martyrs and pope martyrs, are inspirational, heroic
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figures because they show us what the church is.
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The church is not where you elect a bishop for five years and then get rid of him.
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But, you know, in the German-Syndical way, which is in the background of all of this,
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you know, they want to have recall.
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One of their proposals in the discussion was a recall mechanism if bishops aren't doing
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a good job.
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So you don't have to be a genius to see what's going on here.
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Protestant thinking has invaded the synodal structure and really inspires in so many ways,
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and they just cannot abide the traditional Catholic categories and doctrines.
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So they either ignore them, make light of them, and then come up with, as we were saying
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earlier, the justification is all the baptized have an equal dignity, therefore all the baptized
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have an equal right to govern, to teach, and to sanctify, and that is just not the
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way it is.
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Well, you know, and again, I want to talk about, you know, what equal dignity means.
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Yes, we're all members of the body of Christ, yes, we're all called to sanctity, yes, we
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all have a role to play in Christ's mission in the world.
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But surely, Father, no one has ever disputed that, have they?
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No, we don't.
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I mean, I wonder which battle they're—apparently the church has always been horrible until
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very recently.
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Well, it's horrible in the eyes of those who don't like the way it's structured.
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And this is, you know, this is the push.
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We see it very much.
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There was recently a seminar with Cardinal Grech talking in about lay governance in the
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church.
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The basic grievance is the following.
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An all-male priesthood, which is not selected by the people of God, but by the bishops themselves,
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they're the ones who select the priests and the bishops and the deacons, this is manifestly
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unjust, because ordinary people have no say in the matter.
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So basically we want to change it.
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So everybody's going to be depending on participating and being in agreement with, and that's why
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this whole spirit thing is so, you know, we could say undermining of the church order,
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because only the people in charge can tell you what the spirit is, the synodality style.
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So they will tell you, oh no, you can't do that.
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So, you know, priests, for instance, who are in seminaries with just seminarians and they
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wear clerical clothes and they dedicate themselves primarily to academic study, oh no, we can't
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have that.
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We have to have mixed groups in the seminary, lay people together with priests.
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We shouldn't de-clericalize the whole experience.
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You know, some want to get rid of seminaries completely.
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So we just, we're at, you know, you and I are old enough to remember what happened in
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the late 60s, early 70s.
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This is the feeling I'm getting now reading all this documentation.
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It's basically, in the name of Vatican II, rejecting the very things that Vatican II
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affirmed and claiming that we're at the dawn of a new age.
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Well, we're not at the dawn of a new age, we're at the rerun of past heretical movements
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in the life of the church.
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Gosh, I think that can't be stressed enough.
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Because, Father, I've been around for a while and I had a lot of friends who were seminarians
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in the 70s and the 80s, and I'm just having traumatic flashbacks.
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This is the theological equivalent of bell-bottom pants and platform shoes in disco.
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And we already know that it led to disaster, and if we're unsure of how disastrous it is,
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let's look at the Anglican Communion.
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Talk to our friends in the Anglican Ordinary.
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This is why they had a crisis and this is why they left the Anglican Communion, is precisely
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because of the desacramentalizing of the priesthood and the conforming of the church to what's
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really academic and sociological trends.
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And I don't see a good outcome for this at all.
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No, we're afflicted by the regime of experts.
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And this is a manipulative tactic of bureaucracies, which is, they say, we want to hear from everybody,
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but what they really mean is, we want to tell everybody what they should think.
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I quote my dad frequently, he used to say, when we want to know your opinion, we'll give
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it to you.
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And that's precisely what the synodal office is doing.
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I mean, why do we need all of these lengthy documents, which are self-referential, which
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basically make points on their terms, never engaging in the discussion with the Catholic
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tradition or doctrine?
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This is all brainwashing in a certain sense, meaning you have to read it, and therefore
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that's a spirit.
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If you don't agree with it, you're an obstructionist, you're an obscurantist, you're someone who's
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not moving with the Holy Spirit.
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Now, it's a usual tactic of heretical movements to say, the Church has misunderstood important
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teachings until now, and if you're not on board with us, then you're an enemy of the
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Holy Spirit, because the Holy Spirit is the one telling us that we should go in this heretical
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direction.
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This is really what's at the root, I think, of what this synodality is, rejection of the
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received teaching and practice in the name of a new insight, which is an old heresy.
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Right.
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You know, I think back to when I was studying theology in London, my superior had said,
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you know, all these books that discover the really, really, really, really real historical
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Jesus tend to look very much like the author of the book who discovered the really, really
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real Jesus.
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And I think this is where we are now, that we're rewriting—well, first of all, we're
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erasing the past, and then we're rewriting what our obligations are going forward in
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a way that previous popes and councils and saints simply wouldn't recognize.
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And one of the things—maybe we can talk about this in the next segment—is what status
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do these documents have?
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Because I've been getting conflicting reports as that, you know, are they wholly writ, or
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is it mere speculation, or is it something in between?
24:54
Friends, when we come back, we're going to continue our conversation with Fr. Gerald
24:57
Murray.
24:58
We're talking about synodal study documents, and can synodality trump hierarchy?
25:03
After the broadcast today, go to thestationofthecross.com, get our resources list, download our audio
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I'm joined today, quite happily, by Fr.
26:57
Gerald Murray, a distinguished canon lawyer and Catholic commentator.
27:01
We're talking about synodal documents regarding the formation of new priests.
27:07
I want to go back to the language issue again, because that really stands out for me.
27:12
And two phrases stand out for me.
27:15
One is they talk about a more courageous discernment of what properly belongs to the ordained ministry.
27:23
And then they talk about co-responsibility and a differentiated co-responsibility.
27:31
And they talk about shared responsibility of all the baptized.
27:36
That sounds to me like they're trying to generate coverage for the ordination of women.
27:43
And they're going to do that starting with a diaconate, just like the Anglicans did,
27:46
and before you know it, female bishops.
27:49
I think that's what the long-term agenda is.
27:51
That's what I see when I look in my crystal ball.
27:54
What are your thoughts on that, please?
27:56
I'll just say, ditto.
27:57
I agree.
27:58
You know, your insight is clear because you're understanding the meaning of words beyond
28:05
any ambiguity that is possible here.
28:11
Co-responsibility means the person responsible has to share that with somebody else.
28:16
And that's not how the priesthood is.
28:18
The priesthood is an ordained minister in the church who's priest, prophet, and king.
28:24
He's given these three roles of teaching, governing, and sanctifying.
28:28
He does not share that with anybody else who is not a priest.
28:33
But that's what they're saying here.
28:36
And whenever I hear the word differentiated, they use the expression differentiated fidelity,
28:44
which means in their lingo, the people who want to promote novelties and innovations,
28:50
we're all faithful to the gospel.
28:52
We just do it in different ways.
28:54
And that differentiation allows you to say contradictory things.
28:59
So people say women can be ordained in the church, and it's a matter of justice that
29:03
they be ordained.
29:05
They're just being differentiated in their fidelity to the gospel.
29:08
Again, this is Orwellian use of language.
29:13
It's an attempt to change reality by changing the way you describe it.
29:19
So ordaining a woman a priest is no longer an impossibility.
29:24
Now it's something that requires courage on the part of the church to recognize that,
29:30
you know, cultural conditioning for 2,000 years has produced nothing but unjust discrimination
29:38
against women.
29:39
It's time we get be courageous enough to recognize that and end it.
29:43
It's an heretical notion and needs to be rejected.
29:47
You know, Father, my skin crawls.
29:50
I'm going to draw an analogy, I would talk to my students about, you know, the green
29:53
wire.
29:54
And I said, hey, I'm looking under the trunk of your, the hood of your car, and there's
29:58
a green wire, and I feel like cutting it because reasons, you know, the Holy Spirit, synodality.
30:04
And they said, well, gosh, you know, what does the green wire do?
30:07
I don't know.
30:08
Well, maybe, you know, it governs the light in the glove compartment, or maybe it governs
30:12
the brakes.
30:13
We'll find out the hard way.
30:15
You know, the male priesthood has to do with the very identity of the Christ of God, and
30:25
male priesthood has to do with the very possibility of having sacraments at all.
30:32
This, you know, by computer analogy, we're tinkering with something at the levels of
30:36
zeros and ones.
30:38
I remember years ago poking around, maybe it was Windows 95 before Mr. Engineer was
30:44
born, and they, you know, you open the system folder, and they said, are you sure you want
30:49
to do this?
30:50
Do you really know what you're doing?
30:52
So when people talk about structural change of priesthood and core responsibility, it
30:57
suggests to me these folks have no idea what it is they're actually tinkering with, and
31:03
have no sense of the damage that could be done.
31:06
Yeah, no, absolutely, and, you know, there's a great lawyer, Professor Charles Rice out
31:13
at Notre Dame, and he had a great analogy.
31:16
He said, well, you know, if your car runs out of oil, you've got to put oil in it.
31:20
But if someone says, well, you know, I think molasses is going to work, and, you know,
31:25
molasses looks like oil, and, you know, let's use molasses.
31:28
And he said, you put molasses in, you're now a pedestrian.
31:34
That's what happens when you take a thing that is not possible, and try to produce a
31:38
result.
31:39
If you say that the Catholic Church can ordain women, the man who ordains a woman ceases
31:44
to be a Catholic in belief, and will excommunicate her under current church law.
31:49
The woman never changes into a priest.
31:51
Now she's in the pretend world, pretending to be a priest, so you can't alter reality.
31:56
Now, for them, reality is alterable, you know, it's this liquid modernity notion that every
32:03
aspect of our culture, our laws, our customs, the way we treat each other, these are all
32:09
plasticized, they're things that have no structure or substance apart from external forms imposed
32:15
by the people in charge.
32:17
So now we're going to impose a new set of forms.
32:19
That form includes women priests, it includes, as you say, start with deacons, go to bishop,
32:24
and then it includes, of course, a whole set of alien doctrines, because in the end, what
32:29
is Christianity if not the teaching of Christ that we embrace in order to be in union with
32:34
Christ?
32:35
So if we can change his teaching, you know, Jesus is no longer the ultimate reference
32:40
point.
32:41
He just becomes a contributor to the discussion.
32:43
Well, you see, I think that's really key, that Christ is no longer our meaning, our
32:49
measure, and our mandate, but we have a priori commitments to, I don't know, diversity, equity,
32:56
and inclusion, green energy, the absolutizing of the earth as our common home, when it's
33:05
heaven as our common home, and the common good is arranging a community that helps us
33:10
go to heaven.
33:12
All that is being lost, and Jesus is approved to the degree that he endorses our chosen
33:22
cultural Marxism.
33:24
I think that's the path we're heading down.
33:27
Am I an alarmist here, or do you think I'm on to something?
33:30
Well, alarmists often are right, you know, when—
33:34
Yeah, I've tried to tell people that.
33:37
Yeah, well, you see the fire, then you pull the alarm.
33:40
Right.
33:41
No, I mean, part of the strategy here is to pretend everything's fine.
33:48
We all agree on this, we've just never been able to verbalize it because of the dead weight
33:52
of history, you know, and kind of like, we've always done it this way.
33:57
Pope Francis used to say that.
33:58
We can't just say, we've always done it this way as a reason to keep doing it, to which
34:03
you say, no, wait a minute, what are we talking about?
34:06
We've always done it this way because Jesus said to do it this way.
34:09
Well, yes.
34:10
We use bread and wine.
34:11
That's why we have mass.
34:12
If you want to substitute it with apples and orange juice, you're not going to have mass
34:16
anymore.
34:17
It is different, but it's not the same.
34:20
So, you know, we have, I guess, in the end, it gets down to a combination of philosophy
34:26
and theology, and the theological point is, God exists, he has revealed himself to intelligent
34:33
creatures that human beings are, and he revealed himself in order to tell us certain things.
34:39
And then philosophy says, we, as intelligent creatures, can understand these things with
34:45
God as revealed, and we can actually act upon them.
34:48
So we're free will and intelligence, and we can do all this.
34:53
And what do we get from the other side?
34:55
Everything is historically conditioned.
34:58
Social factors deprive people of freedom.
35:01
Prejudice is one of the main categories of Western civilization has to be done away with.
35:06
It's all this undermining.
35:07
It's, you know, it's like, get rid of the police movement that you see in the world
35:12
of politics.
35:13
Sure.
35:14
Who in the world thinks that that is a rational way to live in the world?
35:17
Well, the people who believe that there is no rational order in the world, they're just
35:22
power structures, and they don't like the way the police exercise power, so they get
35:26
rid of them.
35:27
Of course, this is nonsense, and theologically, it's similarly nonsense.
35:32
You know, they use this expression all the time, reified, calcified, you know, dead weight
35:38
of history.
35:39
So everything that we inherit, all the great ideas, the great institutions, they're all
35:45
put under suspicion.
35:47
And what are we supposed to listen to?
35:49
Well, a convened group of select people who are going to affirm what the people in charge
35:54
want them to affirm.
35:56
That's what synodality has come down to, in my opinion.
35:59
This language, dead weight of history, etc., etc., that's Marxist, isn't it?
36:05
Yes, it is.
36:06
Yeah.
36:07
Okay.
36:08
You know, I'm not an expert on Marx, not by any stretch.
36:11
I have read him, and I spent enough time in academia to know cultural Marxism when I hear
36:16
it.
36:18
But this is a language of Marxist analysis.
36:20
I could philosophy nerd right now and talk about the inversion of Hegel and so on.
36:25
I'll spare people all of that.
36:29
But it seems to me the cult of the expert, and I want to go back to the Marxist example
36:35
again and go back to the Soviet Union, because we used to see this before.
36:38
Comrade, the Soviet Union is the worker's paradise.
36:43
If you're not happy, there must be something wrong with you.
36:49
Now, we saw this in Michael Rose in his book Goodbye, Good Men.
36:52
A man who was masculine and orthodox was described as rigid and then driven out.
36:58
Are we going to see another purge for those who don't participate in seminaries and the
37:03
Maoist struggle sessions?
37:05
Well, if they like the Tridentine Mass, I think they're going to be shown the door,
37:10
except in seminaries that have preserved the spirit of freedom and the life of the children
37:14
of God.
37:15
No, I mean, if this program that is in this document that we're looking at today, document
37:22
number four from the study group of the synodal approach, if this is put into effect, men
37:28
with strong personalities who believe that a doctrinal and dogmatic religion is what
37:34
Christianity is, they're going to be shown the door.
37:37
Because for this, this is basically, I could say this would be called this care bear theology.
37:46
Walk into a room and say, all of you are wounded, here's your teddy bear, now embrace it now,
37:51
but then you have to learn, how am I going to put my teddy bear into someone else's hands?
37:55
And how am I going to trust when people give me their teddy bear and ask me to take care
37:58
of it?
37:59
This all becomes a therapy session for people who are allegedly assaulted by Western civilization's
38:05
rigid doctrinal inheritance.
38:08
No, that is a formula for destruction.
38:12
And by the way, go to any Marxist country and ask, are the people in charge living the
38:17
proletarian life?
38:18
Of course not.
38:20
They're living like kings, because it's all a fraud.
38:23
Marxism is just a power struggle, and the people who win, inevitably they seize the
38:27
money and use it for their own benefit.
38:30
Look at Castro's Cuba.
38:32
It's one of the worst countries in the world.
38:34
It's 90 miles away from one of the wealthiest countries in the world.
38:37
It doesn't matter to them, because the people in charge, they have their money, they can
38:41
do what they want.
38:42
That, unfortunately, the analogy I think applies in the synodal church, the people in charge
38:46
really don't care that a lot of people are going to be upset by these changes, because
38:51
for them, they're the enlightened group who are going to lead us into a new church, which
38:55
is essentially a reversion to Protestantism.
38:58
I think of Mark Twain who said, it's been attributed to him, he says, history doesn't
39:04
repeat itself, but it rhymes very nicely.
39:08
This cult of the experts, I've seen and heard this before, and I still think we're paying
39:15
the bills for that illusion.
39:18
What concerns me going forward is that this is going to become the new normal, and there
39:25
are people who are going to grow up not knowing the sleight of hand that they have been subject
39:32
to.
39:33
I think this is theological three-card Monty, and I think we need to intercede with militant
39:39
and desperate fervor, because I know enough about theology, I know enough about the nature
39:45
of the church, that what they're saying about priesthood not only is not true, it's harmful
39:52
as well.
39:53
And I really wish the Holy Father would pull the plug on this.
39:56
Friends, we come back and continue our conversation with Fr.
39:58
Gerald Murray.
39:59
We're talking about yet another serodal document, and we're asking the hard question, does synodality
40:05
trump hierarchy?
40:07
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Go to thestationofthecross.com slash askfather and help influence the conversation.
41:20
Praise be Jesus Christ.
41:21
This is Fr.
41:22
Robert McTague of the Society of Jesus, your daily host for The Catholic Current, where
41:25
we bring Christ to the world and the world to Christ.
41:27
You're listening to us from the Station of the Cross studios, your local radio station,
41:31
the iCatholic Radio mobile app, and we proclaim the fullness of truth with clarity and charity.
41:36
Hey friends, if you value thoughtful Catholic analysis, help sustain this work at thestationofthecross.com.
41:43
Here on The Catholic Current, we engage issues seriously and faithfully, and that intellectual
41:47
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Support us at thestationofthecross.com.
41:53
My returning guest today is canon lawyer Fr.
41:55
Gerald Murray.
41:56
We're talking about yet another synodal study document and whether synodality trumps hierarchy
42:03
because they're talking about changing the formation of priests.
42:07
Father, we've said some challenging and harsh things.
42:10
I mean, I was taught, you know, in preaching in confessional and spiritual direction, you've
42:15
got to leave people with hope.
42:18
I've got a profound predisposition towards melancholy.
42:23
These look like they're dark times.
42:25
How do we pray and how do we not despair in these dark times?
42:30
Well, you know, look at the martyrs today.
42:34
We have so many martyrs that we know their lives so well that we can reflect on.
42:40
We have martyrs of the 20th century, you know, look at St. Maximilian Kolbe.
42:44
I mean, he was a saint who was, you know, a newspaper publisher.
42:50
He wrote pamphlets.
42:51
He was an intellectual.
42:52
He was trying to, you know, spread the faith by means of the word and writings.
42:57
And what's he known for?
42:59
Being starved to death and then ultimately poisoned by the Nazis because he took the
43:04
place of a father.
43:06
He went beyond the call of duty.
43:08
His faith, you know, led him to imitate Christ by offering up his life for his fellow man.
43:14
And we talk about him today, not because anybody really, most people don't know about his writings
43:19
or his apostolate of the word, but they do know about his charity.
43:23
So for us, looking at that, we can say, you know, the crisis that's going on in the church
43:28
through bad ideas and bad decision making, that's not the whole story.
43:33
The witness of charity and love that we give by staying faithful to the church, not drifting
43:39
into other, you know, other paths, such as just quitting or joining some dissident group
43:44
or something like that.
43:45
No, we're going to remain faithful and we pray to God because, you know, all falls within
43:50
divine providence.
43:51
You know, if the Lord is allowing the church to suffer this, you know, tremendous internal
43:56
dissension, it's for a reason.
44:00
And part of that reason is to prompt you and I to be more faithful to the church, to pray
44:04
and to become better informed.
44:06
Right.
44:07
I think not losing sight of the fact that Christ doesn't stop reigning and that he
44:15
cannot be defeated.
44:17
I think that's essential.
44:20
I think that has to be acknowledged.
44:22
You know, St. Augustine said, no barbarian can rob Christ.
44:26
Our Lord will be victorious.
44:28
And we do have to be mindful of good things.
44:32
You know, this morning I offered Mass.
44:34
I'm sure you offered Mass too.
44:36
Sometime this week you and I will hear confession.
44:39
Children will be baptized.
44:41
Married couples will bring children in the world.
44:45
What's happening on the world stage doesn't necessarily vitiate the ordinary things that
44:51
people do.
44:52
And this is where we need to be mindful that the Holy Spirit really still is at work in
44:57
the church.
44:58
I also want to talk about our brother priests.
45:00
As you can imagine, my line of work, I talk to a lot of priests from all over.
45:05
A lot of them are really sad and really discouraged because they say, you know, they're talking
45:11
about what I gave my life to, and they're talking about it in a way that I don't think
45:17
we're talking about the same thing anymore.
45:21
And there are priests who are heartsick over this.
45:24
What about the poor guy who says, oh gosh, I don't know that I want to wake up tomorrow
45:27
morning and do this all over again.
45:30
What do we say to that priest?
45:31
Well, that's a very good question because there are a lot of priests who are ordained
45:36
under John Paul II and even Paul VI.
45:39
They're getting older.
45:40
But, you know, the John Paul II generation, we had a strong pope who had a very clear
45:45
sense of priestly identity.
45:47
He literally put his life on the line.
45:49
He was almost martyred.
45:51
He was attacked by different people and hated.
45:57
He was a man who did not let opposition or indifference or religious error deter him from
46:04
carrying out his mission.
46:06
And we have to have the same spirit, I think.
46:09
Practically speaking, there are some priests who are going to be in assignments where if
46:13
this synodal program is implemented, and they should just go to the bishop and say, in charity,
46:19
bishop, can you put me in a different assignment because I didn't get ordained a priest in
46:24
order to be the clerk of committee meeting resolutions.
46:30
And I don't want to be in a parish in which, if I don't implement the latest synodal idea,
46:36
I'm going to be attacked by parishioners.
46:38
Now, the reality is most priests have no idea what's going on at the synod, no interest
46:43
in it.
46:44
But there are places where that's very much what's going on.
46:48
And you have dissident movements within the church which are poisoning the minds of people
46:53
with bad ideas.
46:55
So yeah, you know, fidelity, you know, I mentioned the martyrs.
47:00
You know, how about St. John Henry Newman?
47:02
Henry was a convert to Catholicism who suffered much, you know, from fellow Catholic priests
47:08
and hierarchs.
47:09
You know, he had to go on trial because of accusations about different things in the
47:15
seal of confession and all the rest.
47:17
So yeah, he, Cardinal Newman, wrote, you know, Apologia Pro Vita Sua to defend his good name
47:23
and his reputation and all his efforts precisely because he had been attacked.
47:27
But the net result of it is one of the most profound reflections on the Christian life
47:31
in the modern world that we have and one of the strongest defenses of the one true
47:36
church being the Catholic Church by a man who was brilliant and humble at the same time.
47:42
So we can look at those figures and draw a lot of strength.
47:45
Right.
47:46
And I think for our brother priests, we've got to go to the scriptures, you know, the
47:51
Gospels, the letter to Hebrews, for example, to get a clear sense of what Christ is.
47:58
I think that we have to immerse ourselves in the classic documents of the church, including
48:05
what John Paul wrote about priesthood, what Paul VI wrote about priesthood as well.
48:12
There's a book, the author's name escapes me at the moment, it's called The Priesthood
48:16
of Christ and His Ministers.
48:19
There's Manfred Hauke's very, very good books from Ignatius Press about priesthood and diaconate
48:25
and so on.
48:28
But we don't have to guess in what the church has always taught about priesthood.
48:33
And we don't have to guess as to what it looks like when a generous man, in cooperation with
48:39
God's grace, decides to do what the church has always asked of her priests.
48:46
So in that sense, it's not mysterious.
48:49
We don't have to scratch our head.
48:52
I think we need to pray and do penance and make reparations.
48:57
It's still the month of the sacred heart, making reparations to the wounded sacred heart
49:02
of our Lord, which is the heart of a priest.
49:05
I think those are very good and worthwhile things to do.
49:11
And for my brother priests, don't cut corners on prayer.
49:15
Mischief is inevitable if you do that.
49:18
And have a habit of regular confession, my brothers.
49:22
That is absolutely essential.
49:25
You've got to go to confession at least every two weeks.
49:29
Whatever you need to do, do that.
49:32
Make it happen.
49:33
Fr.
49:34
Gerald Murray, thank you for your very good work.
49:36
I'm grateful for your friendship with the show.
49:38
I'm grateful to be your brother priest with you.
49:41
And I do look forward to our next conversation.
49:44
Thank you, Fr.
49:45
McTague.
49:46
I'm Jesuit Fr.
49:47
Robert McTague, your host of Every Day of the Catholic Current.
49:49
I want to give you a heads up on a very special episode tomorrow.
49:53
You know, Friday's the Catholic Current, so let's talk about this.
49:55
You and me, we walk through a complex issue together.
49:58
I'm going to ask a very awkward and painful question.
50:02
Is there a Muslim rape war in Britain?
50:06
Let me say that again.
50:07
Is there a Muslim rape war in Britain?
50:10
There was a report that just came out in Britain about the grooming gangs.
50:15
It is horrifying.
50:18
We have to talk about it.
50:20
It's a significant moral issue in our time.
50:23
It's a religious and spiritual issue as well.
50:26
After the broadcast today, go to thestationofthecross.com, get our resources list, download our audio
50:31
podcast.
50:32
If you can find audio, you can find us.
50:34
Take this to your family and friends.
50:36
Together we'll tell the whole world.
50:38
Let's be more than merely relevant.
50:39
Through the intercession of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, we pray to God bless you, Father,
50:43
Son, and Holy Spirit.
50:44
Go in peace and please do pray for me, for I am a sinner.