Does the Synod of Bishops on Young People, running this month in Rome, strike anyone else as same-old same-old? The Church continues to come across as bureaucratic and uninspiring. Aside from some free trips to Rome for some motivated young people, it’s hard to see how a train of meetings will affect anyone’s evangelizing efforts. The end product will be a document — another document!

Does anyone else wish that Rome (and most bishops’ conferences, for that matter) would just stop issuing documents? One wonders what bishops would do if all document drafting and bureaucratic management were put on indefinite hold.

Peter Maurin, co-founder with Dorothy Day of the Catholic Worker movement, wrote a blank verse poem about what Catholic scholars have done to the Gospel.

From “Blowing the Dynamite” by Peter Maurin:

If the Catholic Church
is not today
the dominant social dynamic force,
it is because Catholic scholars
have failed to blow the dynamite
of the Church.
Catholic scholars
have taken the dynamite
of the Church,
have wrapped it up
in nice phraseology,
placed it in an hermetic container
and sat on the lid.
It is about time
to blow the lid off
so the Catholic Church
may again become
the dominant social dynamic force.

Maurin’s words ring as true today as ever.