Listening, "lived experience", and synodality: My latest in Catholic World Report
This will be my last essay on "synodality" for a very long time. My focus on this topic of late has been precipitated by a series of events in the Church and encounters I have had with various interlocutors over these past months. But I have now "said my peace and counted to three". Time to move on to other topics, including a return to the theme of theodicy and kenosis. But in what follows below what is most salient is my concern that we are in the Church now treating "listening to people's real 'lived experiences'" in a manner that suggests those experiences are to be accepted at face value as something thoroughly legitimate and unproblematical. The suggestion is that the Church needs to "listen" to these voices because she can learn much from them, but that the reverse is not really true. The Church's teachings are held up as these rigid and impossible "ideals", with truth pitted against mercy, and doctrine against compassion. And it is mostly superficial, tiresome rubbish. Thankfully, as I note at the end, Pope Leo seems fed up with such nonsense as well. At any rate, here is my latest:
Larry Chapp