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Letters From the Synod 2023: Special Edition 4
BETWEEN SYNODAL ASSEMBLIES: THE DECONSTRUCTION PROJECT CONTINUES The second assembly of the “Synod on Synodality: For a Synodal Church—Communion, Participation, Mission” is now only forty-seven weeks away: a thought...
Letters From the Synod 2023: #12
THE SYNOD’S “LETTER TO THE PEOPLE OF GOD” AND RELATED MATTERS The Letter of the XVI Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops to the People of God is...
Letters From the Synod 2023: #11
INSIDE THE SYNOD: AN IMBALANCED ECCLESIAL ECOSYSTEM There are some 1,378,000,000 Catholics on Planet Earth today. They live in almost every imaginable cultural, social, economic, and political circumstance. They...
Letters From the Synod 2023: #10
LIBERATING DOCTRINE, VILE BEASTS, PROCESS ÜBER ALLES, AND THE LIMITS OF DIVERSITY The Bearable Lightness of Doctrine Synod-2023 begins its final work week this morning with a Mass...
Letters from the Synod 2023: Special Edition 3
Erik Varden is bishop-prelate of the Territorial Prelature of Trondheim, Norway. A native of South Norway, he grew up in the village of Degernes. Varden was educated at Cambridge...
Letters From the Synod 2023: #9
“Domus Australia,” a pilgrim guest house and hotel near the Porta Pia in the Castro Pretorio neighborhood of Rome, is a living memorial to its founder, Cardinal George Pell,...
Letters From the Synod 2023: Special Edition 2
THE ISSUE, OR NON-ISSUE, OF WOMEN DEACONS On Monday, October 16, several small discussion groups reported to the Synod general assembly that their “Conversations in the Spirit” had included...
Letters From the Synod 2023: #8
You May Not Be Interested in the Culture War, but the Culture War Is Interested in You It will doubtless strike some as eccentric for me to play “Variations...
Letters from the Synod 2023: #7
YOGI BERRA AND THE SYNOD: DÉJÀ VU ALL OVER AGAIN? As these LETTERS reach an international audience, it will be best to begin by explaining that Lawrence Peter Berra (1925–2015)...
Letters from the Synod 2023: #6
THE “OFF-BROADWAY” SYNOD, NEOCOLONIALISM, AFRICA RISING—AND VERITATIS SPLENDOR The action at Synod-2023 is not confined to the Vatican’s Aula Paolo Sesto, the Paul VI Audience Hall where Synod members...
Letters from the Synbod 2023: #5
THE SYNOD AND A MURDEROUS NEW WORLD DISORDER A Synod dedicated to advancing the Church’s mission cannot ignore the world in which that mission must take place. Nor can...
Letters From the Synod 2023: #4
THE SYNOD ON SYNODALITY AND THE WAR OF THE CONCILIAR SUCCESSION Nothing was more predictable than that Synod-2023 would reignite what I once dubbed (with apologies to the 18th-century...
Letters fronm the Synod 2023: #3
THOUGHTS ON “CONVERSATIONS IN THE SPIRIT” The name of the methodology being used in Synod-2023’s small-group discussions, “Conversations in the Spirit,” prompts some thoughts on what listening to the...
Letters From the Synod 2023: Special Edition
A LETTER FROM CARDINAL JOSEPH ZEN Editor’s Note Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-kiun, SDB, was born in Shanghai on January 13, 1932, and, after joining the Salesians of Don Bosco...
Letters From the Synod 2023: #2
HOPES, FEARS, AND THE PEOPLE OF GOD “ON THE MOVE” Synod-2023, which opens today with a concelebrated Mass in St. Peter’s Square, is the subject of a broad range...
