Cardinal Kasper accuses Synodality of strangling the Church

At the 4th Study Day of the "New Beginning" initiative last Sunday, Cardinal Walter Kasper was extremely critical of the Synodal Process and its procedure. He pulled out all the stops and left no doubt: The Synodal Way has nothing to do with reforms, because Church reform does not make "the Church a mass that can be kneaded and shaped according to the situation", said the Cardinal. The Holy Spirit must be the yardstick, Kasper reminded the audience several times. The original sin of the Synodal Path was "that right at the beginning it more or less put aside the Pope's letter and his proposal to start from the Gospel and the basic mission of evangelisation, and took its own path with partly different criteria".

Synodal Path fails because of the Gospel

The Cardinal did not leave a good mark on the Synodal Way. True reform is not about being as contemporary as possible, trying out new things or even inventing a new Church, but about being "as Christ-like as possible", the Cardinal said in his lecture. Christ is the standard, "the Alpha and Omega of every renewal". And the identity of the Church is given to the world for all times. "Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever. The Gospel of Jesus Christ, interpreted in the Holy Spirit today, must be the standard, he said.

Renewal from the source

But the Synodal Path already fails because of the Gospel and the interpretation of it. "If we want to interpret the Gospel with one accord, then it is not enough to have the unanimity that we find among ourselves today; we also need unanimity with the faith of earlier times of the Church," Kasper explained. The Church must not turn its back on its history and think that it can construct the Church anew from scratch. The Cardinal compares such forgetfulness of history with "one of the worst diseases a person can be afflicted with", dementia. But as a Church we must not become demented and lose our identity, he warned. Not only is it completely wrong to equate human points of view with the Gospel; that also means "a tectonic shift in the foundations of theology, which must then necessarily lead to an ecclesial earthquake".

A rotten trick and the break of the Church's neck

He then spoke clearly to the conscience of the followers of Christ, the shepherds: The episcopate, he said, was one of the cornerstones of the ancient Church, "common to all the Churches of the first millennium in East and West to this day". Attempts by the Synodal Path to introduce a kind of conciliar system, Kasper calls an idea coming from the "un-spirit" and the self-commitment of the Bishops a "lazy trick". 

As a Bishop, "to renounce one's duties and authority and to declare that one will follow the decisions of the synod or the future synodal council" are in fact the end of the episcopal office. "Whoever saws away at this pillar breaks the neck of the Church." 

We will have to give an account of this one day

Ultimately, such a self-commitment would be tantamount to a collective resignation of the Bishops, the Cardinal said. Such a Synodal Supreme Council would have no basis in the entire constitutional history of the church. "It would not be a renewal, but an unheard-of innovation," Kasper warned, and then became fundamental: it is not enough to testify to good will. "I don't deny it to anyone," the Cardinal clarified. But well-intentioned is often the opposite of right. 

It is about the truth of the Gospel, about staying on the track of the Gospel, as every bishop had publicly promised at his episcopal ordination. He added urgently: "We will have to give an account of this one day."

Listening and praying must be in focus

A synod means interruption. It is about listening to the Spirit of God and "sharing what the Spirit has to say to us today. More specifically, what he is telling us, about corrections we need to make and about the direction we should take." There cannot be ideologically predetermined answers to these questions that are imposed by majority votes.

Rather, the focus should be on listening and praying, as well as on growing and maturing together "in attentive conversation". Christ promised the faithful the Spirit of Truth, "who reminds us of all that he has said and done and who introduces us to all truth", the Cardinal recalled, referring to Revelation, which urges us "as a legacy for the future, a total of six times" to listen to what the Spirit is saying to the communities".

Renewal through Christians gripped by the Holy Spirit

Renewal has always happened in the history of the Church when people have given space to the Holy Spirit, i.e. "by individual Christians, men and women, gripped by the Holy Spirit", and "ultimately we can only pray that such prophetic figures will be given to us again and again", the Cardinal said. 

He is convinced that the Church will be renewed. Eventually. Because God is faithful. At the moment, he could only state one thing: He does not have to judge others. But he could not see how, at the last judgement, he could represent individual statements of the Synodal Path that had already been decided as being compatible with the Gospel. 

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