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Of Pilgrimages and Synodality

Written by Robert Royal

Tuesday, December 5, 2023

It could almost be a riddle: What’s the difference between a pilgrimage and synodality? Almost. There’s a long, legitimate place for synods in the life of the Church (“synodality,” by contrast, is quite a different and doubtful thing, since no one seems to be able to say what it is, or isn’t, other than more people talking). So, there need not be an opposition, much less a division, between a synod and the equally legitimate – and even longer – tradition of pilgrimage. But nota bene: in this man’s view, if you want real “walking together,” it’s best found on foot, body and soul on the way together – in the midst of God’s Creation – rather than sitting and talking, for hours, days, weeks, a month around tables in a large conference hall.

A pilgrimage has the further advantage of  a journey to a specific destination for a clear purpose, not a perpetual “process.” Jesus, Mary, and Joseph made the pilgrimage to Jerusalem together at least once (that we know of) when the boy Jesus was lost and later found in the Temple with the learned rabbis. (Luke 2:41-49) In His day, Jewish men – following an already centuries-old tradition – were supposed to make the pilgrimage to Jerusalem three times a year (Passover, Pentecost, Sukkoth). That’s what he was also doing when He presented Himself to be crucified.

People go on pilgrimage for all sorts of reasons. Besides the Jews, even ancient Greeks and Romans made pilgrimages to places like Delphi or Epidaurus (the Lourdes of the classical world). There’s Mecca, of course, for Muslims.  And Buddhist and Hindu sites all over Asia. There’s something about this impulse to leave home – not permanently, but on a journey that will take you to a “home” of a different order than the everyday one, from which – if all goes well – you bring back something that enhances, even reveals unsuspected depths in your ordinary dwelling place.

For the rest of the column, click here . . .

Most Unkindest Cuts: a review of ‘Journey to Bethlehem’

Written by Brad Miner

Monday, December 4, 2023

Director Adam Anders has made Journey to Bethlehem, a singing-and-dancing version of the Infancy Narrative in Luke’s Gospel, that seems like a remake of Disney’s Aladdin, although less like the 1992 animated version, in which the genie was exuberantly voiced by Robin Williams, and more like the 2019 live-action version with Will Smith as a joyless jinni.

Journey to Bethlehem is a wholly non-sectarian re-telling of events culminating in the Incarnation of Jesus Christ, and it includes some questionable interpolations about how that all went down. Of course, every film about the birth of our Lord has taken poetic license. In fact, as the end credits roll, we read: “While taking some creative license, the filmmakers strive to remain true to the message of the greatest story ever told.”

Mr. Anders, the Swedish music producer behind the TV series Glee, wrote Journey to Bethlehem with Peter Barsocchini, whose most famous credits are (speaking of Disney) the three very popular High School Musical films. Anders’ wife, Nikki, is lyricist. These good people probably have the pulse of teenagers as well as any filmmakers do.

But Alan Menken, Howard Ashman, and Tim Rice wrote more interesting music and lyrics for Aladdin (as did Mr. Rice with Andrew Lloyd Webber for Jesus Christ Superstar).

The story begins, in Shakespearean style, with the prattle of fools – in this case the three magi. Balthazar has seen the star through his (anachronistic) telescope (the first was invented in the 17^th century), and he shows Gaspar. Together they run to tell Melchior, who thinks about nothing but food. But he knows where they need to go: Judah.

“Are you certain?” Balthazar asks. “Those are King Herod’s lands.”

“You, don’t insult me!” Melchior says sharply to Balthazar and then to Gaspar, “You, get me a kebab!”

For the rest of the column, click here . . .

Holiness Rather Than Peace

Written by Robert Royal

Monday, November 27, 2023

The Devil likes to make us stupid, particularly those of us who think we’re smart. He’s had a  very good run for quite a while in the secular world. But he’s also done pretty well lately even in the Church. At present, his strongest game is to mesmerize us with simple oppositions: progressives/backwardists, tradition/development, synodality/rigidity, truth/mercy. Once that sort of thing gets up a head of steam, many people don’t think about anything. They just join one party – or another.

The usual Catholic response is to say we’re a “both/and” faith. And that’s good – for a start. But it doesn’t resolve an ever more urgent question: What do we mean by progress? Or tradition? Or mercy? Above all, by Truth? We need people to dig – and dig deeply – into such questions, people with learning and discipline, wisdom and consistency. Of which there are few, in any generation. Which is why we often need to resort to earlier, brilliant predecessors.

It’s telling that in our present moment of confusion, the name of St. John Henry Newman is often cropping up, not only – naturally – among those who believe in his criticisms of liberalism in religion. But he’s being invoked even among those who believe – much less plausibly – that “paradigm shifts” are somehow in a direct line of descent from Newman’s brilliant exposition of “development of doctrine.”

All that remains to be sorted. And fast. The present writer is willing to bet that we’ll hear Newman’s name repeated, and also taken in vain, often between now and next October’s concluding session of the Synod on Synodality. The bishops of England and Wales, and our own American bishops, have in recent weeks petitioned Rome to name Newman a Doctor of the Church. So, like much else these days, even the great Newman is about to become a bone of contention.

For the rest of the column, click here . . .

Caravaggio in Rome

Written by Brad Miner

Sunday, November 19, 2023

Mostly unrelated to the Synod on Synodality, my wife Sydny and I went to Rome in the last week of October. Upon arrival, we did have lunch with one journalist covering the synod: Robert Royal. You may have heard of him. We were exhausted because of jet lag, and Bob was weary of the synodal process. Walking around Rome, which Syd and I would do a lot of, is not nearly as tiring as “walking together” in a synod. Or covering it. But Rome does offer many compensations.

We began our second day in Rome with a tour of the Galleria Borghese, which houses a remarkable collection of paintings and sculptures in the Villa Borghese, 17th-century home of one of Italy’s great families. (Camillo Borghese of Siena had become Pope Paul V in 1605.)

Today, the Villa and the surrounding gardens are among Rome’s major attractions. The house was built by Cardinal Scipione Borghese, nephew of the aforementioned Paul V. As “Cardinal Nephew” (an official post at the time), Scipione engaged in what today would surely be illegal benefices that allowed him to build the villa and procure the art that fills it. (Scipione is buried in one of Rome’s most remarkable churches, the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore – or St. Mary Major.)

The Borghese Gallery features most prominently the work of two great artists: Gian Lorenzo Bernini and Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio.

For the rest of the column, click here . . .

The Remedy for Our Confusions

Written by Robert Royal

Monday, November 13, 2023

Catholicism is a religion of Faith and Reason – and has a rich, centuries-long tradition of deep thought about God and man. But the Catholic “thing” is also a religion of mysteries – not superstitious mumbo-jumbo as some critics believe, but mysteries in the sense that human reason has limits obvious to reason itself. We don’t know – and cannot know – via ordinary human reasoning, where the world and we ourselves come from, or where we are going. For guidance in living with those and other mysteries, reason at its best recognizes that we need Revelation, a revelation from the One who does know. And we have a reasonable Faith, therefore, in what He has delivered.

In an unsettled time like ours – a time when great confusions are rife even within the Church – it’s more urgent than usual to maintain that Faith. Amidst confusions and worse, skeptics point to the many evils in the world as evidence that our belief in a loving Creator is mere wishful thinking. Why, for instance, would such a Being create human beings who – as we see over and over in history and no less in our own “enlightened” age – are quite capable of industrial-scale murder (including the holocaust of tens of millions of innocents in the womb), war, torture, rape, slavery, oppression, and the thousands of other acts that constitute what St. Augustine called the mysterium inquitatis – the mystery of evil.

One traditional answer is that God took the risk of creating free human beings in the knowledge that He would do something even greater in redeeming us, after we’d fallen. If you want to read a brilliant example of how all that signifies something of unsuspected gloriousness, it’s worth spending some time with the first pages of Tolkien’s Silmarillion (free online here), in which God sings the world into existence along with the angels. And then, like a musical prodigy, incorporates the discordant notes introduced by the Devil into a breathtakingly beautiful symphony.

For the rest of the column, click here . . .

The Greatest Catholic Event Since Vatican II?

Written by Robert Royal

Monday, October 30, 2023

So. We’ve been told that the Synod on Synodality is not about theology. Or doctrine. Not about “the media’s” favorite issues: LGBT, women’s ordination, married priests. Nor is it intended to subvert or replace the hierarchical nature of the Church or to democratize the decision-making process. The Synod on Synodality is – at least this year – about discerning“what synodality is.”

Meanwhile, in recent days, a theologian invited to speak to the whole Synod announced that, “When we reach the consensus that the Church is constitutively synodal, we will have to rethink the whole Church, all the institutions, the whole life of the Church in a synodal sense.” A participating bishop openly affirmed that it will be necessary to depart from Apostolic Tradition. And they’re far from being the only ones making such radical claims.

But we’ll all have a chance to do a bit of discerning ourselves later this week, after the publication of what’s being called a “brief” final report, and also a “Letter to the People of God.” Maybe then we’ll know whether synodality now dwells firmly among us, or awaits further synodalizing. The Holy Spirit has, so far, not tipped his hand.

There’s an old theological approach to understanding God called the via remotionis (“way of removal”). You take away all the things that the Biblical God is not – matter, form, time, place, change, which is to say all the attributes that pertain to material beings and not to their Source, the Supreme Being – so that contours of what He is become somewhat clearer. The human mind cannot know God until He reveals Himself to those blessed with the Beatific Vision, but at least the via remotionis removes misconceptions.

Sadly, the same does not seem true of the via synodalitatis.

For the rest of the column, click here . . .

There’s Got to Be a Better Way

Written by Robert Royal

Monday, October 23, 2023

So. We’ve been told that the Synod on Synodality is not about theology. Or doctrine. Not about “the media’s” favorite issues: LGBT, women’s ordination, married priests. Nor is it intended to subvert or replace the hierarchical nature of the Church or to democratize the decision-making process. The Synod on Synodality is – at least this year – about discerning“what synodality is.”

Meanwhile, in recent days, a theologian invited to speak to the whole Synod announced that, “When we reach the consensus that the Church is constitutively synodal, we will have to rethink the whole Church, all the institutions, the whole life of the Church in a synodal sense.” A participating bishop openly affirmed that it will be necessary to depart from Apostolic Tradition. And they’re far from being the only ones making such radical claims.

But we’ll all have a chance to do a bit of discerning ourselves later this week, after the publication of what’s being called a “brief” final report, and also a “Letter to the People of God.” Maybe then we’ll know whether synodality now dwells firmly among us, or awaits further synodalizing. The Holy Spirit has, so far, not tipped his hand.

There’s an old theological approach to understanding God called the via remotionis (“way of removal”). You take away all the things that the Biblical God is not – matter, form, time, place, change, which is to say all the attributes that pertain to material beings and not to their Source, the Supreme Being – so that contours of what He is become somewhat clearer. The human mind cannot know God until He reveals Himself to those blessed with the Beatific Vision, but at least the via remotionis removes misconceptions.

For the rest of the column, click here . . .

A United Nations of Exorcism: ‘The Exorcist: Believer’

Written by Brad Miner

Wednesday, October 18, 2023

Pretty sure I don’t have to offer a summary of the 1973 film The Exorcist, which you probably saw and, even if you didn’t, could probably write as good a synopsis of it as I could. But let me remind you that the poor possessed girl from the late William Friedkin’s blockbuster film (based upon the late William Peter Blatty’s bestselling novel) was named Regan, played by Linda Blair.

David Gordon Green, the director of a new iteration of the series, The Exorcist: Believer, has said Miss Blair declined to play a significant role in the new film, although she served as a “technical advisor.” As NBC Insider gushed:

you’d be hard-pressed to find a better person who truly understands what it’s like to be an innocent teenage girl spewing unimaginable profanities, taunts, and even torrents of pea soup [vomiting] at concerned parents, priests, and medical professionals.

Not the first time I’ve thought the Peacock Network was becoming a bit pea-cockeyed.

This time, however, the projectile vomiting more resembles black bean soup.

For the rest of the column, click here . . .

Homophobia & Homo Sapiens

Written by Robert Royal

Monday, October 16, 2023

Despite all the talk about the Holy Spirit at the Synod on Synodality, an objective observer would have to say that the tongues of fire that produced John’s Gospel, Paul’s Letter to the Romans, and Revelations seem to be at a loss for words as the event grinds on.

The great Irish poet W.B. Yeats, though not a Catholic, observed a century ago:

“The Holy Spirit is an intellectual fountain,” and did the Bishops believe, that Holy Spirit would show itself in decoration and architecture, in daily manners and written style. What devout man can read the Pastorals of our Hierarchy without horror at a style rancid, coarse, and vague, like that of the daily papers?

And Yeats never saw the “modules” of an Instrumentum laboris or listened to cloudy reflections about mission, communion, and participation.

The Catholic Church has the longest and richest cultural tradition in the world. Which must make the angels weep to see the threadbare, self-important, pseudo-sociological, pseudo-psychological, mind-numbing ecclesial language in which the current synod is being conducted.

For the rest of the column, click here . . .

Confusion Worse Confounded

Written by Robert Royal

Wednesday, October 4, 2023

If you wanted two words to describe the Synod on Synodality, the event that begins today in Rome, it would have to be deep confusion. Unless you wanted to add a third, deliberate. Because it’s been clear from a series of concrete measures that what’s been said is not what’s going to happen. And what’s going to happen has not been said. Yet there’s a method, of a sort, to this madness.

To begin with, the very format of this Synod is already a kind of deliberate confusion – and for a reason.

On the one hand, we have been told by the very highest synodal authorities – from the pope on down – that synodality is a recovery of an ancient dimension of the Church that was preserved in the East but had been lost in the West. This is to assume, as really cannot be assumed, that this is a truthful statement of intention. Because. . .

On the other hand, we have the words of the exarch (leader) of the Greek Catholic Church– part of that very Eastern tradition (though in communion with Rome) – warning:

if the West understands synodality as a place or as a moment where everyone, laity and clergy, act together in order to arrive at some ecclesiastical, doctrinal, canonical, disciplinary decision, whatever it may be, it becomes clear that such synodality does not exist in the East.

Historically, this is correct beyond question.

For the rest of the column, click here . . .