My latest in First Things:
https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2024/10/letters-from-the-synod-2024-4
Larry Chapp’s Synod Diary
October 7, 2028
The news hit yesterday of the pope’s decision to appoint twenty-one new cardinals. The announcement understandably, if temporarily, shifted the local focus away from the Synod and toward the next conclave. Nevertheless, my task here is to stay focused on the Synod, since nobody really knows what the full significance of the new cardinals might be, and the Synod too is a key component in what might play out at the end of this pontificate and beginning of the next.
It was raining the other day in Rome, so I had the occasion to spend some quiet time in my apartment, wherein I was prompted to ponder the significance of something that has gone relatively unnoticed by those writing on the Synod. And “unnoticed” is an understatement, as I have not seen a single report highlighting what follows.
That “something” is the uniquity of members of the Society of Jesus here at Synod-2024.
The Jesuit Pope Francis, who regularly visits with local Jesuit communities for wide-ranging conversations during his global travels, has probably appointed more cardinals and bishops from his own religious order than any other pope from a religious congregation in history—despite the Jesuits famously vowing to resist such appointments. It is therefore unsurprising that several ordained members of Synod-2024 are Jesuits. Nonetheless, given the rather modest proportion of religious brothers, priests, and bishops in the world Church who are members of the Society of Jesus, one would expect, at least statistically, perhaps two or three members, experts, or facilitators at Synod-2024 to be Jesuits. There are twenty-five. No other institute or order has more than half a dozen, with most having one or none.
The Holy Father is, of course, a Jesuit. Cardinal Mario Grech, the Secretary General of the Synod of Bishops, is often confused for a Jesuit but is not one. But his deputy, the Special Secretary of the Synod, Fr. Giacomo Costa, S.J., is. And so is the Relator-General of the Synod, Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich, S.J.
Including the Holy Father, the Relator-General, and the Special Secretary, fourteen Jesuits are full members of the Synod out of a total of some 310 clerics and religious: Cardinal Pedro Barreto, S.J.; Cardinal Stephen Chow, S.J.; Cardinal Michael Czerny, S.J.; Cardinal Ángel Rossi, S.J.; Bishop Alan McGuckian, S.J.; Apostolic Prefect Msgr. Enrique Figaredo, S.J.; Fr. James Martin, S.J.; Fr. Agbonkhianmeghe Orobator, S.J.; Fr. Elias Royon, S.J.; Fr. Arturo Sosa, S.J.; and Fr. Antonio Spadaro, S.J.
The two Jesuit theological experts are Fr. Paul Béré, S.J., and Fr. Christoph Theobald, S.J. One more is amongst the theological observers present in the Synod hall: Cardinal Gianfranco Ghirlanda, S.J., often described as the pope’s favorite canon lawyer.
Out of thirty-seven Synod facilitators, eight are Jesuits: Fr. Adelson Araújo, S.J.; Fr. Clemens Blattert, S.J.; Fr. Juan Bytton, S.J.; Fr. Carlo Casalone, S.J.; Br. Ian Cribb, S.J.; Fr. David McCallum, S.J.; Fr. Miguel de Oliveira, S.J.; and Fr. Konrad Grech, S.J.
Even given Pope Francis’s insistence that the Synod is not a parliamentary assembly, Jesuits are massively “over-represented” here. Does it really matter? Well, it's likely to have at least two effects.
First, the methodology of the Synod—which relies heavily on the 1970s Canadian Jesuit approach known as “conversations in the Spirit”—will be very familiar to some Jesuits and their allies, but alien to many of those at the Synod. As even its admirers acknowledge, it’s a methodology that contributes to good relationships amongst those involved but not to theological precision. Many Synod members would have preferred a different methodology, and requests that this be the case were plentiful after Synod-2023, not least among members of the Synod General Council. Those requests were denied.
Secondly, many of the positions that found favor in the reports of the consultation phase of the Synod and in the Synthesis Report of the first session of this Synod are ones long advanced by members of the Society of Jesus, whose common spirituality, formation, and projects are likely to point many of them in particular directions.
For example, Cardinal Hollerich, Cardinal Czerny, Fr. Martin, and Fr. Orobator have all called for change in Catholic teaching on homosexuality.
Cardinals Hollerich, Barreto, and Czerny have all publicly favored the ordination of women, despite definitive papal teaching on the impossibility of this.
Cardinal Chow has said that he doesn’t want to convert Buddhists and communists to Catholicism.
Fr. Sosa has denied the reality of Satan.
Fr. Spadaro has described Jesus as in need of conversion (from “nationalism” and “rigidity”) and been an outspoken critic of what he oddly terms the “integralist fundamentalism” of the Catholic Church in the United States (with which he is manifestly unacquainted in any serous sense).
Though the promoters of this Synod and of the synodality concept emphasize hearing a wide range of voices, it is striking how many of those voices come from a very particular location within the contemporary Church. We’ve been told repeatedly that the three-year long synodal process has been a genuine exercise in listening to “the People of God” and, indeed, to the Holy Spirit. But it seems that the Spirit has made a preferential option for listening to Jesuit voices above all others, and that the Jesuits represent the People of God in a strikingly outsized way.
All this adds fuel to the fire lit by those Synod critics who have long been dubious of the claim that this affair is an attempt to gauge where the Holy Spirit wants to take the Church, by understanding in depth where the People of God are. In a global Church that is, indisputably, the most multicultural, multiethnic, multiracial, multilinguistic, and multinational institution on the planet, the claim that a Synod, dominated in its leadership positions by Jesuits from the global north, is representative of the world Church is prima facie implausible.
And this casts a long shadow over the synodal path the Church is being told to walk, both as to its ultimate destination and the direction being taken to get there.
Dr. Larry Chapp is a retired professor of theology at De Sales University in Allentown, Pennsylvania, and a cofounder of the Dorothy Day Catholic Worker Farm near Wilkes-Barre in the Keystone State.
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