Every so often deacons and priests get blessed by unsolicited publications showing up in their parish mailbox. Usually is from some fringey right-wing group, and in our case, gets tossed in the recycle basket.
There is an interesting article in National Catholic Reporter today about the latest one. The author of the article is Bishop Peter Dai Bui. Fear is not theology: A bishop's response to the campaign against the synodal church | National Catholic Reporter
In this case the publication wasn't just a booklet, and was sent to bishops, not priests and deacons. If they want it they'll have to pony up 25 bucks. I don't think many of them will want it. Anyway, from the article:
"A book bearing the title The Trojan Horse in the Catholic Church and published by the group Catholics for Catholics arrived in the mailboxes of Catholic bishops across the country this past winter, warning them of hidden forces reshaping the church from within. The book's central claim is stark: that the synod on synodality, Pope Francis' three-year global process of listening and discernment that concluded in October 2024, is a calculated effort to dismantle the church's hierarchical structure and overturn its moral teaching on sexuality and the family."
"The book's author has given no name, only the pseudonym "Enoch" borrowed from an Old Testament prophet who, tradition holds, never died and will return at the end of the world to fight the Antichrist. Its foreword was written by a participant in the very synod it condemns — one voice among more than 300 in that assembly whose account of what took place is directly and specifically contested by others who were present in the same room."
"The famous Trojan horse from Greek mythology succeeded because no one looked inside of it. I am one of the bishops who received the book. Unlike in the story of the Trojan horse, I opened it. And as I read, I found myself thinking of the two disciples walking away from Jerusalem."
Two disciples, trying to make sense of a catastrophe they could not yet name. And a stranger joined them on the road. He did not announce himself. He asked, "What are you discussing?" He listened before he spoke. Only when they had been fully heard did their hearts begin to burn, and only then did they recognize him in the breaking of the bread.
That sequence — walking alongside, asking, listening, opening the word — is what the church calls synodality. It is as old as Emmaus, as old as the Council of Jerusalem, where the apostles and the whole community gathered to discern together and wrote: "It has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us" (Acts 15:28). Synodality is not a novelty but an inheritance.
Before engaging the book's theological claims, intellectual honesty requires a word about its publisher. Catholics for Catholics is not a theological institute and it holds no magisterial standing. It is a political-religious activist organization founded in 2022 that describes itself as the "fastest growing Catholic movement in America" and serves as an official partner of the White House's "America Prays" campaign.
Pope Leo XIV, himself a voting synod delegate before his papal election, has described synodality as "an attitude, an openness, a willingness to understand."
"I am a Vietnamese bishop, and in our culture we have a proverb: "Một cây làm chẳng nên non, ba cây chụm lại nên hòn núi cao," which means, "One tree cannot make a forest, but three trees gathered together form a great mountain." Well over 300 voices were in those assemblies. One account does not make the whole forest."
"The Trojan Horse in the Catholic Church makes two central theological claims. The first is that the synod on synodality was designed to "eradicate the hierarchical structure of the Church as instituted by Christ, replacing it with a democratic model." The book accentuates the image of an "inverted pyramid" that appeared in synodal discussions as proof of this intent. The argument sounds alarming, but it is a fundamental misreading of both the image and the final document of the XVI General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, available in full at the Vatican's website."
"...The final document reaffirms without qualification the teaching of Lumen Gentium on the hierarchical constitution of the church. It states that the episcopal ministry is irreplaceable. It affirms that bishops, as successors of the apostles, hold genuine authority to teach, sanctify and govern. It calls not for the elimination of hierarchy but for its evangelical purification toward a more servant-hearted, listening, missionary exercise of the authority Christ gave his apostles....Listening to the faithful is not a concession to democracy. It is fidelity to the Spirit who speaks through the whole church, not only through its ordained ministers."
"The book's second claim is more inflammatory: that synodality is a calculated mechanism for overturning Catholic moral teaching, particularly on sexuality and the family. This argument conflates three things that Catholic theology has always carefully distinguished: doctrinal definition, doctrinal development, and pastoral accompaniment. This conflation is not an innocent error. ...The deposit of faith — what God has revealed and what the church guards as sacred trust — is not and cannot be subject to revision by any synod, any council, or any pope. The church's teaching on marriage, on the dignity of every human person, on the moral order that flows from the truth about the human person — none of this is on the table. No vote can or will change it and the final document does not suggest otherwise. Not on a single page."
"...What synodality opens is the harder, more demanding question: How does the church walk with human beings whose lives are complicated, wounded and often far from the fullness of what the church proclaims? "
"...I came to this country as a refugee, crossing the South China Sea by boat in 1977, and the first thing the church gave my family was a community that already knew how to journey together. The boat was not where I began my journey with synodality, but at Mary Queen of Vietnam Church, the parish that eventually received us in New Orleans, where our family first arrived from Vietnam in 1978. Mary Queen of Vietnam was established in 1983 as the first Vietnamese national parish in the United States."
"In Vietnamese Catholic communities, both in Vietnam and in the diaspora parishes that carried the tradition across the sea, the parish is divided into neighborhood sections called khu. This is the local expression of what the Vietnamese Catholic tradition formally calls the họ đạo, or the subparish community. Each bears the name of a patron saint. The khu is not an administrative unit. It is a living community. "
",,,No one in my world used the word synodality. But every structure of that world — the khu, the prayer evening, the shared feast day, the dinner table, the pastor listening to the khu leaders, the khu leaders listening to the families — was synodal to its core. It is worth pausing to reflect: The họ đạo, the subparish community, did not emerge from a Vatican document or a pastoral planning process. It was forged across four centuries of intermittent persecution of Vietnamese Catholics, when priests were scarce or imprisoned and communities had to pass the faith from household to household. The faith was kept alive through lay leadership, communal prayer and shared responsibility. It survived because it was built on listening. It was a church that listened before it spoke, that walked alongside before it judged, that served before it governed. "
"...What the final document of the XVI General Assembly has done is give that ancient, living practice a more careful theological name: synodality. It has not invented something new. It has recognized something the people of God have always known."
"...The two disciples walking away from Jerusalem did not know that the stranger who joined them was the risen Christ. They knew only that their hearts burned within them when he opened the Scriptures and that they recognized him, finally and unmistakably, in the breaking of the bread. The church has been making that same journey ever since, walking together, sometimes in confusion, sometimes in grief, but always with the risen one alongside us even when we do not yet recognize him."
"To priests and faithful across the country who have received alarming materials about the synod on synodality, your love for the church is not in question. Bring your questions to your bishop and pastor. Read the final document in its own words rather than in the words of its critics. Trust the Holy Spirit who has guided the church through 20 centuries of controversy, council and renewal. The same Holy Spirit who has led the church through the Council of Jerusalem, through Nicaea, through Trent, through Vatican II, and now through this present moment of discernment."
"...And remember, the tradition has never been preserved by those who walked away from Jerusalem. It has been preserved by those who, despite their fear and confusion, stayed on the road — walking together, listening, waiting for the moment when the stranger beside them would finally be recognized."
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