

One of the primary problems with the implementation of a more “synodal” Church is that there seems to be a double standard in play. Rome speaks a good game about wanting to develop more “collaborative” structures of governance. But it apparently boils down to Rome doing whatever it wants to do, whenever it wants to do it. The reality is more like “synodality for me, but not for thee”, which is to say, no real synodality at all.
This raises the deeper question of what all of this synodal chatter is all about.
A controversial Cardinal with heavy baggage
A case in point is the recent appointment of Cardinal Robert McElroy as the new Ordinary for our nation’s capital. This appointment has provoked, as one could have guessed, both fervent praise and fevered criticism. This dual reaction is no surprise as Cardinal McElroy is a polarizing figure, an outspoken theological progressive who has not hidden his desire for major changes in Church teaching on issues including the ordination of women to Holy Orders and the entire edifice of Catholic moral theology in matters relating to sexuality. He has also proposed a model of Eucharistic discipline that would open the reception of Holy Communion to those Catholics who live in what a traditional moral theology would consider a gravely sinful state. That list would include sexually active cohabitators, the divorced and civilly remarried, and “LGBTQ” Catholics.
All of these groups are specifically mentioned by Cardinal McElroy as folks who, after a period of “discernment”, might be allowed back into Eucharistic communion. He does not say exactly what is being “discerned” but one gets the impression he is talking about a subjectivized theory of the moral conscience wherein we must allow the private conscience to negotiate its own modus vivendi with Church teaching without ecclesial interference. His entire approach is therefore little more than the venalization of most consensual sexual sins as it is hard to imagine the good Cardinal arguing for a radical freedom of private conscience when it comes to racism or the mass deportation of immigrants. Can someone now negotiate in his conscience a form of extreme form of Christian nationalism and to declare its consonance with his Catholic faith? I think not, which means that what Cardinal McElroy is pointing toward is a revisionist project in the domain of sexual morality.
Cardinal McElroy is also on record, in a now famous essay in America magazine, as saying the Church needs to drop the distinction between those who have a same-sex orientation while remaining chaste, and those homosexuals who are sexually active: “The distinction between orientation and activity cannot be the principal focus for such a pastoral embrace because it inevitably suggests dividing the L.G.B.T. community into those who refrain from sexual activity and those who do not.”
All of which implies that Cardinal McElroy does not consider such sexual activity to be of much moral and/or spiritual importance. For example, nobody talks about how awful it is that calling adultery a gravely evil sin drives a wedge into the marriage community by dividing it up between those who are faithful to their spouse and those who are not. This is absurd on its face, but only because everyone agrees that adultery is indeed gravely sinful. Therefore, for Cardinal McElroy’s complaint to have legs, one must begin with the assumption that homosexual sex acts are not gravely sinful.
Once again, what is in play here is the venalization of homosexual sex acts and not just a shift in pastoral tonality.
There is also the fact that Cardinal McElroy has been accused of abandoning the victims sexual abuse in San Diego by moving to declare diocesan bankruptcy, as well as turning a deaf ear to the pleadings of the late Richard Sipe to pay attention to the misdeeds of one (then) Cardinal Theodore McCarrick. But these accusations seem not to have troubled Rome, even as the McElroy appointment to Washington reopens wounds for the victims of clerical sexual abuse in San Diego and elsewhere.
It is not a stretch to say that Cardinal McElroy is a deeply divisive figure, for better or for worse, in American Catholicism. But he is one of Pope Francis’s favored prelates which means that his divisiveness matters little in the big picture. Furthermore, one gets the impression that his divisiveness is viewed by many in Rome as a badge of honor and a point in his favor since the folks he most annoys–tradition-minded Catholics—are the same people that the current powers that be in Rome appear to most intensely dislike. Indeed, just a few days after the McElroy appointment it was announced that the Pope had accepted the papally requested resignation in France of a bishop (Dominique Rey of Fréjou-Toulon) whose only ecclesial crime seems to have been being overly friendly with traditionalist Catholic groups.
Both decisions, in short, were anything but “synodal”. They involved the exercising of Roman authority in a fashion that would have been equally at home in 1925 as in 2025. Cardinal Robert McElroy is elevated, and Bishop Dominique Rey is deposed with a simple stroke of the same papal pen. Roma locuta est, cause finita est.
The talk of synodality not matched by the walk of synodality
Which brings me to my deeper point in terms of my reaction to the McElroy appointment: where is the synodality in this appointment and in the many other moves made by this pontificate about the canonical rights of (now) deposed bishops or of local episcopal conferences and their say in who gets appointed where?
The McElroy appointment makes this issue a burning one since all indications are that McElroy would not have been the choice of many influential American bishops and was not the recommended candidate from Cardinal Christophe Pierre, the apostolic nuncio to the United States. According to The Pillar, not even Cardinal Wilton Gregory or the retired Cardinal Donald Wuerl wanted McElroy appointed to Washington. Cardinal Pierre apparently thought McElroy was too polarizing a figure, but offered the pope no clear-cut front runner as an alternative.
If all of this is true, then this was a decision made “from above” in Rome in a manner standiung in sharp contrast to all the rhetoric about a more synodal Church, wherein local episcopal conferences are given a much greater role to play in the choosing of episcopal candidates. Instead of collaboration and broad consultation, what we have is just old-fashioned Roman curial lobbying of the pope by a few episcopal influencers.
To be sure, the Pope retains the right to appoint anyone he wants to any position he wants and whenever he wants. He has universal jurisdictional authority over the Church and can do as he pleases. Pope Francis has not been shy about exercising that authority in a unilateral way, and I have no problem with that. But I do take issue with acting in this fashion even as there is an endless stream of pronouncements from Rome about the brave and bold new model for a synodal Church that putatively moves us beyond the bad old days of autocratic Rome. But these recent moves display, not a synodal Church, but rather an exercise in papal authority that is autocratic and little different from how, say, Pius IX would have done things.
After all, we are not talking here about an appointment to some tiny diocese in the middle of nowhere. This is the capital of the United States in an era of deep political division. And yet the American bishops apparently had little or no say in this decision. What American Catholics needed in the current hour of political acrimony–both inside and outside the Church—was a conciliatory centrist bishop who is adept at diplomatic negotiation and building bridges across the political and theological divide. What we got instead was a pro-LGBTQ liberal culture warrior with all kinds of dubious theological baggage.
Therefore, I repeat: where was the synodal listening and collaboration? Where is the synodal empathy for the “lived experience” of American Catholics who have grown weary of divisive prelates?
Have we not been told endlessly over the past three years that the new synodal model for the Church is one characterized by a deeply spiritual “listening” to the “people of God”? Have we not also been told that this new synodal model is the culmination of the ecclesial vision of Vatican II where bishops are not to be viewed any longer as branch managers of a papal corporation, but are fully vested partners in the apostolic governance of the Church? Why then does this pontificate treat some bishops, usually traditional, who have committed no canonical offenses, as just so much ecclesial flotsam and jetsam to be disposed of at the slightest papal whim? And then elevate other bishops, usually progressive, to high office over the clear distaste of the local episcopal conference?
The cynicism grows because of the double standard imposed
Once again, the suspicion begins to arise that the entirety of the “synodal process” is nothing but an empty word game meant to deflect attention away from the true agenda at play. And that agenda is the ongoing efforts, dating back to the immediate aftermath of Vatican II, to accommodate Catholicism to the prevailing Zeitgeist of the secular West.
For example, one week after the ending of the first Synod on Synodality in late October 2023, the Vatican, without warning or consultation with the world’s bishops, issues Fiducia Supplicans. How to explain that decision? The Synod participants had been led to believe that the issue of how best to minister to homosexual Catholics was a topic for the synodal process. Much energy was expended, and much ink was spilled, and many collars were ruffled in the rough and tumble of the debates on the topic at the Synod. Delegates debated just what the final document should say on the topic, if anything at all, and the issue was seen as still open and in need of further synodal discussions.
And then … Fiducia Supplicans emerges as a Roman sky hook deus ex machina that undercut the entire synodal process.
This cynicism about the true aims of the promoters of synodality is even more justified when one reads comments from Pope Francis, as we see in his newly released autobiography, wherein he says that those who like the old Latin Mass are suffering from “backwardism” and “rigidity”. Such folks, in their preference for “elegant and costly tailorings,” says the Pope, may well suffer from “mental imbalance, emotional deviation, behavioral difficulties…” Perhaps there are some in that crowd who are mentally imbalanced. But there are also many in the crowd of those who love the Novus Ordo who are mentally imbalanced. Therefore, the comment from the Pope as such tells us next to nothing beyond the fact that this Pope dislikes the old Mass and really dislikes those who favor it.
Once again, where is the synodality? Where is the “listening to the people of God”? You want to kneel for communion? “Get up, you narcissist and move along properly and efficiently!” You are a pastor who wants to install altar rails because your parish wants it? “Not on our watch, you indietrist scoundrel!” Therefore, it does seem that as far as Rome is concerned, it is “synodality for me but not for thee” with the “thee” being anyone of a more traditionalist persuasion. “Todos! Todos! But not you people! We meant the other Todos!”.
I think the McElroy appointment represents more of the same that we have repeatedly seen from this pontificate. This pontificate is marked by a deep bifurcation, if not an open contradiction, between what it says and what it does. It talks big about synodality and collaboration and listening, but then does whatever it wants in largely old-fashioned, non-synodal, autocratic ways. And all it is going to do is breed more cynicism, more division, and more rejection of the so-called synodal way as at best an irrelevance and at worst a Trojan Horse for progressive causes.
Cardinal McElroy may turn out to be a stellar prelate in Washington. We should all pray for his success, and in meaningful ways that go beyond lip service. But his appointment, in my view, was non-synodal. And in a Church in which we are being lectured every day from Rome about the need for us all to get on board the synodal train, I think it matters that Rome itself seems to ignore its own advice and does not seem willing to board the same train and pursue the same track.
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