THE VATICAN'S "GREEN PASS"

and pope francis continued to make headlines this week delving deeper into his vision for the upcoming 2023 worldwide synod of bishops while a canadian diocese will require vaccinations for everyone attending mass here to discuss all of this is the professor of theology at the catholic university of america chad pecknell chad thanks for being with us before we start some breaking news speaker of the house nancy pelosi lashed out at comments made by archbishop of san francisco salvatore corleone who said that catholics who support the effort to codify roe v wade are in fact supporting what he calls child sacrifice here's pelosi yeah i'm catholic i come from a pro-life family not active in that regard uh different in their view of a woman's right to choose than i am in my right to choose i have five children in six years and one week and i keep saying to people who say things like that when you have five children in six days six years in one day we can talk about what businesses of any of us tell anyone else to do for us it was a complete and total blessing which we enjoy every day of our lives but it's none of our business how other people choose the size and timing of their families my uh the my the archbishop of the city of uh that area of san francisco and i have a disagreement about who should decide this i believe that god has given us a free will to honor our responsibilities chad your reaction to those comments i mean is this just up to others there is no operative objective morality at play here even for catholics i mean it's clear that pelosi is not a catholic in good standing she doesn't believe that abortion is is murder she she clearly thinks it's like you know just choosing a form of birth control that you just dispense with a human being is is like any other choice that a human being makes which is absurd you never say hey what i i think murder is bad but um you know whatever you want to do is fine you have free will that's absurd so i think it's you know not surprising that pelosi takes this position she's not only is she not in communion with the church on on such questions but she's not even in communion with reality that we're actually talking about a human being in the womb that dismissing and dispensing with a human being because you're taking and honoring responsibilities as a mother it's just an absurd logic yeah well clearly she's on a collision course here with archbishop corleone we'll see what happens next i'm sure he'll respond uh chad this past saturday pope francis addressed representatives from the diocese of rome to speak about that upcoming church-wide synod now we emphasize the two-year-long sonatal process that will involve a quote dynamism of mutual listening conducted at all levels of the church involving the whole people of god then he added it is not about gathering opinions no it is to listen to the holy spirit and what the spirit wants for the church to discover that god is always the god of surprises now chad what do you think he means by asking that we be open to discover the god of surprises well i mean it's very romantic it's it's it's sort of a romantic idea that that um really how the church thinks and moves and has its particular style of living and having a mission is is that it discerns uh the spirit through popular opinion the church doesn't discern the spirit through the opinion of the faithful the church discerns its life and mission through reflection on scripture on revealed truths i'm sort of dismayed that a synod on synodality or class on classes or a seminar on seminars doesn't actually take substance to be it's you know something of substance you know he talks about synodality as denoting a particular style um the faithful don't need a particular style they need truth they need substance and so i'm very worried about the way in which cinedality actually just becomes a political technique um for you know using using popular opinion in order to allow liberal elites to say they're listening to the spirit yeah well this is the pope keeps saying and he says it adamantly we are not gathering opinions but this sonatal process is really about uh taking surveys gathering opinions from even non-believers um so i i you know it is it is a a kind of an odd process here because on the one hand he's saying we're not gathering opinions but we're for two years on the local level gathering opinions aren't we it's extraordinary all these listening persons you have the listening person in the local church and how how will the listening person collect and curate all of those opinions and how will those curated opinions be passed up to the national conference and how will the listening committee at the national conference curate those answers as they're passed to rome as they produce the instrumentum laboris it's this long process of not just collecting opinions but curating them and i think this is the the problem that that is implicit in the whole question of of discernment and discernments right at the heart of the preparatory documents and it's clear that pope francis means discernment in the kind of ignatian spirituality sense of discernment right where in for saint ignatius it's about discerning the spirits discerning where the holy spirit is leading you which includes convicting you of sin and leading you into truth conversion basically is what saint ignatius means but the question i think for the synod on cynidality and especially for the bishops who have a apostolic authority here to conduct the synod is does synod does cinodality mean what saint ignatius means by it conversion basically or does it mean something like a political technique for something like germany's cenotal way which is radical reform right right we're watching a sonatal process that has run into some problems in fact even cardinal walter casper has come out and said i don't even do we even see a semblance of catholicism here but the pope went on to say chad that during the sonatal process quote it may be necessary to leave to change direction to overcome beliefs that hold back and prevent us from moving and walking together now this is not the first time pope francis has said that changes may be necessary and that we need to overcome beliefs that hold back what beliefs might he be referencing here what changes well i mean you know i'm just reflecting on when you've lost cardinal casper things aren't going well i i mean i think that i don't know what he has in mind i don't know what changes he has in mind i know the changes are fear are the changes that that minority groups are already organizing right now to influence the shape of the synod and they're largely trying to influence the shape of the synod in exactly the way um that we're seeing in germany in which the the aim is social progressivism to get the church to take on a new style a particular style that particular style is the style of the world we live in in which you know you have an acceptance of civil unions between people of the same sex you have you have a sort of liberalizing of many of the church's social teachings and that is what we cannot have that's not that's not a synod of substance that's a synod which is going to die it's a synod that's not going to stand the test of time i think about this democratic spirit that can that conciliarism embodies and that maybe synodality bodies and i think i keep thinking about chesterton's quote about the democracy of the dead will this stand up to the democracy of the dead i don't i hope i hope that we go in the saint ignatius of loyola way of discernment for conversion and not the and not the kind of german way during his 40-minute speech uh the pope recalled that the acts of the apostles in the acts the holy spirit teaches peter that quote god has no favorites and one cannot discriminate in the name of god we cannot understand catholicity without referring to the large field hospital which has no borders and quote this is a long time theme of pope francis chad but your reaction to its invocation here in the terms of this synodality and the synod on the synod well i mean it's interesting even in the preparatory documents you already mentioned that it's desiring a greater inclusivity which includes including the opinions of people who aren't catholic now when you're trying to collect the opinions of people who aren't catholic they're not going to give you catholic opinions and so it seems like this synod of synodality risks being so open that it's actually closed to the mind of the church and i think that's that's my that's my great fear here and my great hope is that we'll have bishops who don't want to manage a process but who want to be shepherds who are protecting their flock from wolves the the pope noted again and he's spoken about this often the rigidity in the church uh and in the church today and he says there can be a rigid way of considering things that can mortify the patience of god rigidity is a sin against the patience of god your thought there i mean i guess that would include ignatius and chesterton and all the people you've been invoking all day long here chad yeah i just i don't know what holy father means by rigidity i mean i think i think once again it comes down to style rather than substance and that worries me when when a certain style is named as a sin then i don't know what that means if rigidity means something like the sub i don't know what it means what does it mean what's the substance of the claim about rigidity i don't know what it would mean to call that a sin yeah no this is and look i've spoken to a number of theologians of churchmen uh the people who've spent their lives in ministry in the church the imprecision of some of the language here we're not quite sure what it refers to that in the confessional how would you father i've i've been rigid three times what how would you how would you even confess that well i yeah you know i i don't know i i'm you know as somebody who's done as somebody who's done as much as i've done rigidity is not the problem it's so you know but probably too much flexibility too many things at once uh there was a moment in this barely covered address and again chad we are often the only media outlet that takes these addresses seriously enough or has the time to actually delve into them to report them when uh but when they point to what's coming in this synod that seems worthy of our eyes i think and the pope referenced a rigid model of the church perhaps this will give us clarity he says there is much resistance to overcome the image of a church rigidly divided between leaders and subordinates between those who teach and those who have to learn forgetting that god likes to overturn positions now what do you make of that chad i mean the bishops and the priests are supposed to be the teachers and the shepherds here but what is he trying to help us understand look i here's my fundamental worry is that we had john paul ii and benedict xvi secure kind of settlement for how to receive vatican ii and the desire throughout the last you know decade or so has been to unsettle that settlement and the trouble is is i never know what the what the end goal is because all were all we're ever asked to do is to be open to unsettlement um for what for what end and it's that uncertainty that ambiguity the confusion that arises from being asked to move in an unknown direction and to unsettle uh settled truths that makes i think everyone a bit anxious about what the aim and end goal of a synod on cynidality really is i want to move to something else there was a transcript of a private meeting pope francis had with jesuits in slovakia on september 12th it was published on tuesday and during a q a session a jesuit pointed out that some people want the certainties of the past in their faith and he asked what vision of the church can we follow and pope francis responded this way i'll put it on the screen you said something very important which identifies the suffering of the church at this moment the temptation to go backward we are suffering this today in the church the ideology of going backward it is an ideology that colonizes minds i think of the work that was done at the synod on the family to make it understood that couples in second unions are not already condemned to hell it frightens us to accompany people with sexual diversity this is the evil of this moment namely to seek the path in rigidity and clericalism which are two perversions okay chad uh in is the church suffering from this ideology of looking backward today is that what ails the church i mean in my experience that that's not what young people are searching for say when they when they want a more reverent um liturgy when they want a more reverent liturgy they're actually they're actually uh reacting against this kind of libertinism this kind of fluffy 70s no-nothing therapeutic kind of liturgy they're not trying to go back to the past they're actually rejecting the most recent past and so whenever i hear that i think well actually the rigidity here if if there's a if we can identify rigidity is this desire to preserve the 70s and 80s that's that's the real rigidity here and that's an interesting point because you know the pope the pope mentioned following on the quote i just read he mentioned stopping what he called the automatism of the ancient right by limiting celebrations of the traditional latin mass but you know i thought as i read that isn't that in some ways going back almost half a century before benedict and john paul who legitimized and allowed greater celebration of the old right yeah i i think there's a kind of nostalgia for the 70s here um and um i think this i think bishop should really pay attention to this you know maybe rigidity is the right category for for you know being for discerning the spirits and that the discernment of spirit should actually entail a little bit of self-criticism uh by those who actually want to to rehash the 70s wow during this chat with jesus woods the pope also called what he labeled gender ideology and then he added this has nothing to do with the homosexual issue though if there is a homosexual couple we can do pastoral work with them move them forward in our encounter with christ chad your reaction uh i have no idea what to say other than james martin must be very happy um i think i think we have i think we have to reach out we have organizations like courage that that help helps people uh reach out but once again the question is what is accompaniment is accompaniment discernment like what it means for saint ignatius of loyola which entails conviction of sin and being led into truth and being converted to holiness which would completely uh you know negate any notion of of homosexual action or union um or does it mean holding hands with sin and and i think if it means holding hands with sin that's not real discernment of the spirits that's kind of following the spirit of the age chad before i let you go you heard our headline about the vatican announcing on october 1st all visitors and personnel entering the vatican city state will have to show a vaccine passport proof of vaccination or recovery from covet within the previous six months uh your reaction to this and what kind of precedent do you think it sets we're already seeing similar things in the archdiocese of moncton in uh in canada where they're requiring vaccine passports to go to mass well again it's i mean it's standard procedure in europe and the vatican's in a sense following standard procedures in europe the good thing about it is that they they are including natural immunity recovery from cova right positive tests so i i i think in in a sense it's less bad the worry is less access to saint peter's and and more i think the canadian uh the diocesan problem is more severe i think because there you're actually asking for proof of vaccination to receive the sacraments and there i just think you know did you know jesus jesus said i'll only heal the vaccinated no the lepers come you know and and i think i think this is a huge problem for for any any ecclesiology that takes um takes the kind of access to the sacrament seriously as something which is a divine gift um i mean we've had priests in the past go to leper colonies you know the church goes to leverage we we have we have a tradition of being like jesus and actually putting ourselves in harm's way in order that people have access to the sacraments so that the diocese would would choose conformity to safetyism and restrict access to the sacraments to only the vaccinated seems to me a betrayal of the gospel yeah i agree with you and you know we have seen heroic efforts over the last couple of years of clerics uh bishops going out of their way to make those sacraments available to people during this pandemic you know having outdoor masses on corners in the streets bringing the sacrament to people in interesting and innovative ways that's what the church should be doing not barring people from coming to the sacraments on september 26th very quickly the swiss people will vote in a referendum on whether or not there should be quote marriage for all now open state bishop joseph maria bonamayne the bishop of chur has repeatedly entered into the debate claiming that he has no objection to same-sex unions in a recent article the bishop wrote it is for me self-evident that other forms of partnership can be oriented toward an enduring love as well my only concern is and here i'm neither judging or dismissing i plead for maintaining this difference when naming these different marriages what do you make of that statement the corruption of the best is the worst raymond uh i mean it's a sad statement to me because what it what it presumes is there's a kind of rear guard um acceptance of the the spirit of our age which is absolutely harming human hearts and souls to be led into sin and that kind of you know rear guard acquiescence to civil unions i i think is absolutely contrary to what the church teaches about marriage and as as soon as you allow that to be an unresisted claim a claim which is actually teaching the people something um you you've sort of sacrificed your own wisdom the wisdom that's been given to you by christ himself and and i think that this is another sort of betrayal that we should be that we should also repent of professor chad pegnol i thank you for being here we'll check in with you later thanks again [Music] you

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Length: 21min 34sec (1294 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 23 2021