Anthony Esolen has penned a great essay about pride, especially in connection with the just-concluded Synod on Synodality. He rightly notes (at The Catholic Thing, linked below) that it is pride to believe that modernity has “discovered” a “new way of being Church” and that all we need to do is accommodate the Zeitgeist. He begins by talking about the Synod not dealing with the question of ordaining women deacons but then goes into the accommodationism of the last half century, exemplified by the lunacy last week of a Vatican dicastery prefect presenting an anime doll as the “mascot” of something (Expo? The Vatican Pavilion? Holy Year?). That sound you hear is Michelangelo, Bach, and Fra Angelico collectively rolling over in their graves.

As much as Esolen hopes that Rome might take a lesson, it seems its movers and shakers are doubling down on their prideful “modernity.” Just last week, Archbishop-Emeritus of Brussels Jozef de Kesel — from a country where much of the cancer of the “theology of secularization” originated (along with Karl Rahner and his “transcendental Thomists”) — gave the inaugural lecture for this academic year at the Theological Faculty in Bologna. As summarized here, the lecture essentially argues that secularism is a good thing because the Church is not called to create a Christian culture (much less “Christendom”) but to be content as an appealing option in the world. It’s this kind of thing that saps ecclesial vitality.

So, while Professor Esolen applauds the fact that the Synod laid aside women “deaconesses,” I have to say I am only temporarily relieved. The termites eating through the Church have not given up their goal, and the fact that they are serving up 1970s theological leftovers seasoned with “synodality” suggests as much. I am only temporarily relieved for two reasons:

First, the controversial issues that emerged in Synod Phase I were all sent to “study groups” by Francis, with report due dates next June. Barring a papal conclave in the interim, all these groups are likely to resurface with something in about half a year. And I have visions of John XXIII’s misguided “Papal Birth Control Commission” which changed its own mandate and then leaked its conclusions so as to pressure the Magisterium and create opposition to Humanae vitae when the Magisterium finally spoke.

Second, the “decentralization” trope of the Synod is also likely to fuel this. Since married clergy and deaconesses seemed to be obsessions of “Querida Amazonia” and “dear Deutschland,” can one exclude an “experiment” in those places? Of course, that would reprise what led to schism in the Anglican Church: American Episcopalians have “priestesses,” Nigerian Anglicans don’t, and the Brits allow lady priests in parts of England.

One commentator observed that the Synod was, in some sense, theater for the real, behind-the-scenes action. Riffing Shakespeare and Esolen, one can only hope we avoid coming “to this great stage” of proud foolishness.

[The Esolen essay is here.]