In reality, what McElroy is advocating for is a synodality that is a kind of crypto Vatican III where the progressive wing of the Church will finally have their day absent the peskiness of a universal meeting of bishops in Council, and where the Holy Spirit will be, apparently, quite busy “doing a new thing”.
Cardinal Robert W. McElroy of San Diego greets Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, retired archbishop of Los Angeles, during a consistory led by Pope Francis for the creation of 20 new cardinals in St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican Aug. 27, 2022. (CNS photo/Paul Haring)
Why? Because he has given us the clearest articulation to date, from a high ranking prelate who enjoys the favor of Pope Francis, of what this whole synodal thing really is all about. He finally puts the guessing game to an end and tells us that the processes of synodality are leading the Church into a realm of deep “conversion”—to a radically “inclusive” Church that ordains women, has no eucharistic barriers or discipline beyond valid baptism (in a nod, I guess, to some exclusionary limits to the distribution of the liturgical hors d’oeuvres), eliminates for all intents and purposes all non-criminal sexual sins from the books, and which openly embraces and celebrates those who have previously run afoul of Church teaching on these matters.
And the latter would most especially include welcoming the divorced and civilly remarried to receive communion, as well as the entire spectrum (apparently) of our ever-expanding alphabet acronym sexual identity movement.
Cardinal McElroy is also quite clear that what the synodal process seeks is a big tent Church committed to the systematic deconstruction of all of the “structures of exclusion” in the Church. He does not explicitly define what he means by structures of exclusion, but it is clear (from what he goes on to describe) that he means all of the Church’s traditional teachings on the topics mentioned above. By direct implication, therefore, and in thinly veiled ways, what he means when he says that the synodal way is committing us to a path of deep conversion to the movement of the Holy Spirit is that we must overcome the current intolerable state of “polarization” by overcoming those who stand on the wrong side of that binary – i.e. those who still accept the Church’s traditional teachings on these matters.
Thus, the good Cardinal’s lament over the sad polarization in the Church today is a faux concern. It is a mere rhetorical device designed to mask over the latently non-dialogical, non-inclusive nature of his message, which is a not-so-veiled attack on those Catholics of a more traditional bent who are the sources of the very exclusionary practices McElroy loathes. He directly links the polarization in the Church with the marginalization of his favored groups within the Leftist acronym sandbox, clearly saying that the “conversion” he thinks we are being called to is the path of a radical “re-education camp” mentality wherein such retrograde folks are themselves drop-kicked to the margins.
This is not hyperbole or some kind of conservative fever-swamp, overreactive tantrum. I am quite sober in my analysis since there is precedent in the Church’s recent history amply illustrating what I am saying. I was born in 1958 and grew up therefore in the lunacy of the immediate post-conciliar era. I was in the seminary from 1978-1986, both minor and major. And so I can testify to the fact that McElroy’s language about inclusion, dialogue, welcoming, diversity, and radical openness are now, as they were then, a grand deception.
What liberals want is dialogue and inclusion until their views prevail—whereupon all dialogue and inclusion end. Just ask any conservative, orthodox seminarian from that era what words such as “dialogue” meant to them back in the day. They will respond with one word: totalitarian. A seminarian in that era fear nothing more than to be labelled as “rigid,” which really meant they disliked that you opposed their preferred forms of rigidity.
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