Comments on: Synod on Synodality TAKE 2 https://nzcatholic.org.nz/2022/10/07/synod-on-synodality-take-2/ The New Zealand National Catholic Newspaper Mon, 10 Oct 2022 01:14:29 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.7.1 By: Gregory https://nzcatholic.org.nz/2022/10/07/synod-on-synodality-take-2/#comment-87777 Mon, 10 Oct 2022 01:14:29 +0000 https://nzcatholic.org.nz/?p=25992#comment-87777 I agree with Dan.
As a 40 something with young children I am not interested in taking on quasi-clerical roles in the sanctuary. I am interested in evangelization and mission. But what do I evangelize? What is mission when parish closures and falling membership is spun as ‘movement of the spirit’.
The same Sunday celebration of the Eucharist that is supposed to form me and my young family is a variety-show with talking-points, collects, and prayers-of-the-faithful indistinguishable from National Radio, the NZ Herald, and TVNZ. That’s partly why we track the population on abortion, LGBTIQA+, sexual ethics, pornography use, less on euthanasia, gambling, gluttony, and probably similar on any other less socially fraught sins such as petty theft, avarice, business malpractice and dishonesty etc. Don’t rock the boat. What type of people are attracted to that?
It’s no different from the ‘world’, there’s no ‘sign of contradiction’, so it’s not going to be transformative.
Maybe that’s why laity are currently so keen on being clerical – we fundamentally don’t see any risk, suffering, transcendence, and boldness in many clerics. We rightly conclude that it’s all just another political power-position to be shared up.

I hear and read supposed profundities built on the hermeneutic of God is Love, which is true but it is used to explain away and justify everything. I am hardly ever presented the Kerygma and conversion.
I am told lofty things such as “Eucharist is the source and summit” and “Imitate the Saints” but am shown something quite different.
I am unconvinced by the response to sexual abuse and legalistic hair-splitting over ‘vulnerable’ and ‘under age’ and I am unconvinced that our lay chancery and clerical leadership are going to create or even interested in a parish-school environment for my children to be encouraged as Catholic over the next 10 years.

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