What Would a "Synodal Church" Look Like? Another Protestant Revolution!

I fear it would not be pretty! And Fr. Z seems to feel the same way.

Pope Francis wants a transformation of the papacy and a synodal Church

Note that the pope wants to weaken the curia and talks about "decentralization." How would things be if the pope were just one among equals? If Peter were no longer "the rock" but a pebble among pebbles? Wouldn't the Church then be built on sand instead of rock?

Catholic Family News (CFN) has an interesting and worrisome article on the decentralization and "regionalism" of the Church. Here's the beginning of the article:

Happy Feast Day, St. Isaac Jogues

From an article at EWTN:

The labors of the Jesuit and Franciscan missionaries in the New World form an important chapter in the history of the Church and of the Western Hemisphere. These missionaries were for the most part men of culture and learning, carefully chosen and rigorously trained. Many of them gave up important careers in the Church to endure the dangers and privations of the wilderness. In New France, as Canada was then called, where Isaac Jogues spent his missionary years, their lot was hardship, disease, solitude, and, not infrequently, torture or violent death. The perils of forest and trail, the intense cold, the wretched food and verminous huts of the Indians, changed them, after a few years, into haggard old men; yet their spirits remained undaunted, strengthened as they were by an indomitable faith. What the American historian, Francis Parkman, in , wrote of Father Brebeuf, Jesuit leader in Canada, applies almost equally to the other members of this noble band: "His was the ancient faith uncurtailed, redeemed from the decay of centuries, kindled with new life, and stimulated to a preternatural growth and fruitfulness." [More here...]

Here's what Fr. Jogues wrote in a letter to a friend:

My heart tells me that if I have the happiness of being employed in this mission, (I shall go and shall not return); but I shall be happy if our Lord will complete the sacrifice where He has begun it, and make the little blood I have shed in that land the earnest of what I would give from every vein of my body and my heart.

Now don't you wish you had a bishop and pastor cut from this cloth?

More on the Pope's Latest Interview

Martyrdom of Jean de Brebeuf and Gabriel Lalemont 

The Pope They’ve Been Waiting For

Ah...conscience...such a beautiful thing...especially in a liberal who believes that good is a woman's right to choose to kill her baby and evil is daring to judge her action as immoral. 

What is the pope thinking? Can this mish-mash really lead people to and through the narrow gate? (If you haven't read the interview see it here.) Do we want a church where "Each of us has a vision of good and of evil." where "We have to encourage people to move towards what they think is Good." What if what they "think is good" is really evil?

Jesus warned us there would come a time when people would call good evil and evil good. We're there and now the pope seems to have created a situation where liberals can quite comfortably bash those "obsessed" prolifers with their skewed vision of life and marriage. But we don't want to "proselytize" them because "Proselytism is solemn nonsense." Oy vey!

I wonder what the North American martyrs who were savagely butchered in their mission of "solemn nonsense" would say to their Jesuit confrere in Rome. Ah, for Jesuits like them. The Church would not be in the mess it's in! 

NB: The picture hints at the suffering of the two Jesuit priests, John de Brebeuf and Gabriel Lalemant. The Iroquois applied hot coals to their feet. They heated tomohawk heads fiery red and hung them around their necks. Flaming torches were thrust down their throats and applied to their bodies. In a mock the Indians poured boiling water over their heads. Their fingers were chewed off and their eyes gouged out with burning sticks. Finally, their hearts were cut out of their chests and eaten by the Iroquois who admired their incredible bravery. Oh for shepherds like these men willing to suffer all for the conversion of the Indians in the New World.