The Modernist Pedigree of Francis’s Synod on Synodality, and Its Implications

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The Modernist Pedigree of Francis’s Synod on Synodality, and Its Implications

Robert Morrison - Remnant Columnist | August 28, 2024

“The Holy People of God has been set in motion for mission thanks to the synodal experience. . . The seeds of the Synodal Church are already sprouting!” (Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich, June 14, 2024)

Fr. Dominique Bourmaud went to his eternal reward on September 4, 2021, a month before Francis announced his intention to “create a different church” with the Synod on Synodality. Remarkably, though, Fr. Bourmaud was able to describe the essence of the Synodal Church in his 2003 book, One Hundred Years of Modernism:

“The Tyrrellian Church is as elastic as its dogma. ‘The notion of a complete ecclesiastical organism produced directly by a divine fiat the day of Pentecost’ is pure fantasy. The Church is not an institution like the ecclesiastical empire of the Vatican; she is the life of a people in progress. The inspiration of Christ first set the Church in motion; it is sufficient that she maintain that movement until the end of time. The monarchical, Roman Church must be clearly distinguished from the collective consciousness of the People of God, which is always healthy and robust, and which truly possesses authority and infallibility.”

As discussed below, the architects of the Synodal on Synodality could produce an accurate and succinct description of their fiendish project by simply replacing “Tyrrellian” with “Synodal” in Fr. Bourmaud’s description of the Tyrellian Church. How did Fr. Bourmaud accurately forecast the Synodal Church over twenty years ago? To understand that, we should briefly consider Fr. George Tyrrell.

Charles Coulombe’s 2019 article from the Catholic Herald — “Heretic of the week: George Tyrrell” — offered the following details:

“George Tyrrell (1861-1909) was the posthumous son of an Anglican journalist in Dublin. Raised in poverty, he converted in 1879 and joined the Jesuits the following year. . . At that time, the philosophy dominant in Jesuit institutions was a kind of Thomism peculiar to themselves, being mediated through the 16th-century Jesuit philosopher Francisco Suárez. Disagreeing with this stance, Fr Tyrrell came into conflict with other faculty members, and in 1896 was transferred to Farm Street, the celebrated church of his order in London. There he discovered the work of the French philosopher Maurice Blondel, which heavily influenced him. Fr Tyrrell published a book attacking scholasticism in general in 1899. He maintained that the truths of the Faith must be re-expressed in every age – even if that meant contradicting earlier expressions of the Faith. . . His views – similar to those held by a number of Jesuits and Dominicans in particular – were seen as eroding the immutable nature of Catholicism. Fr Tyrrell was asked to recant them in 1906; refusing to do so, he was expelled from the Society of Jesus. The following year, Pope St Pius X in the decree Lamentabili and the encyclical Pascendi condemned these ideas, dubbed ‘Modernism,’ as the 'synthesis of all heresies.’ Fr Tyrrell attacked these documents in the London Times, was excommunicated in 1908, and died in 1909.”

So Tyrrell was an excommunicated Jesuit Modernist who “maintained that the truths of the Faith must be re-expressed in every age – even if that meant contradicting earlier expressions of the Faith.” He was, in this respect, just like today’s Jesuit Modernists except for the fact that he was excommunicated. If Francis and his fellow Modernist Jesuits were promoting their heresies during the time of St. Pius X, they too would have been excommunicated.

So the “Tyrrellian Church,” as Fr. Bourmaud expressed it, is Tyrrell’s heretical vision of what the Catholic Church should be. Stunningly, the documents from Francis’s Synod on Synodality have described the Synodal Church in essentially the same terms as Fr. Bourmaud used to describe the Tyrrellian Church: it is elastic, developing, in motion, and based on a collective consciousness of the People of God.

Here, for instance, is a passage from the Synod’s 2023 Instrumentum Laboris, which St. Pius X would have condemned for the same reasons he condemned Tyrrell’s heresies:

“A term as abstract or theoretical as synodality has thus begun to be embodied in a concrete experience. From listening to the People of God a progressive appropriation and understanding of synodality ‘from within’ emerges, which does not derive from the enunciation of a principle, a theory or a formula, but develops from a readiness to enter into a dynamic of constructive, respectful and prayerful speaking, listening and dialogue. At the root of this process is the acceptance, both personal and communal, of something that is both a gift and a challenge: to be a Church of sisters and brothers in Christ who listen to one another and who, in so doing, are gradually transformed by the Spirit.”

Everything in the Synodal Church is dynamic and ready to burst forth from previously accepted boundaries. The only real certainty is that the “Spirit” will never guide the Synodal Church to go back to what St. Pius X would have recognized as Catholic.

Despite its clearly heretical nature, only a handful of bishops publicly suggested that there was anything problematic about the Synod’s 2023 Instrumentum Laboris, so we naturally see more of the same in the 2024 Instrumentum Laboris:

“Thanks to the guidance of the Spirit, the People of God, as sharers in the prophetic function of Christ (cf. LG 12), ‘discern the true signs of God's presence and purpose in the events, needs and desires which it shares with the rest of modern humanity’ (GS 11). For this ecclesial task of discernment, the Holy Spirit bestows the sensus fidei, which can be described as ‘the instinctive capacity to discern the new ways that the Lord is revealing to the Church’(Francis, Address for the 50th Anniversary of the Institution of the Synod of Bishops, 17 October 2015). Discernment commits those who participate in it at a personal level and all participating together at a community level to cultivate dispositions of inner freedom, being open to newness and trusting surrender to God’s will in order to listen to one another so as to hear ‘what the Spirit is saying to the Churches’ (Rev. 2:7)."

Thus, in the Synodal Church, the “Spirit” guides the People of God — which includes all baptized people, not merely Catholics — to find “new ways.” Accordingly, we must “cultivate dispositions of inner freedom, being open to newness.” By “newness,” the Synodal architects generally mean “heresy.”

This is all alarming but, to a large extent, most of us understandably have ignored the intentionally ridiculous Synod on Synodality, with all its cartoonish heterodoxy. Those of us safely ensconced in our Traditional Catholic communities have little to worry about from the Synod: they are not listening to us, and so why should we listen to them?

At the same time, it is worth recalling that St. Pius X condemned essentially the same Modernist ideas when they had far less visibility than they do now with the Synod. God gave His Church St. Pius X’s vigilant opposition to Modernism not only for the benefit of those alive in the early 1900s but for all of us. Yet, as Bishop Athanasius Schneider explained in a recent interview, those Modernist ideas are rampant in Rome today:

“Philosophical and theological modernism, which Pope Pius X condemned more than a hundred years ago, has been realized in all its devastating consequences in the life of the Church of our day. What’s more, even high-ranking ecclesiastical authorities in our day are promoting this modernism by various statements and official acts.”

This constitutes both an insult to God and a profound danger to souls. As Bishop Schneider went on to explain, though, the existence of these Modernist ideas (which we see so prominently championed in the Synod on Synodality) allows those of us with the Faith to serve God by combatting the heresies:

“St. Augustine says that God is so good that He would not permit evil in any way unless He were powerful enough that from each evil He could draw some good (see Enchiridion, 11). Through heresies those who are good and firm Christians are also made manifest, and their faith stands out all the more. . . . And St. Augustine further explained: ‘While the hot restlessness of heretics stirs questions about many articles of the Catholic faith, the necessity of defending them forces us both to investigate them more accurately, to understand them more clearly, and to proclaim them more earnestly; and the question mooted by an adversary becomes the occasion of instruction’  (The City of God, 16:2). The evil ones exist in the Church, says St. Augustine, either so that the faithful may exercise themselves in patience or advance in wisdom (see ibid.).”

In this light, the existence of the Synod on Synodality is not merely a pathetic sign that Francis and his followers have gone astray. It also calls for us to oppose the Synod’s errors, consistent with our duty of state. The Synod is the golden opportunity for every cleric and theologian to serve God by charitably but unambiguously condemning the Synodal Church’s errors and affirming the contrary Catholic truths:

• Whereas the Synod asserts that the truths of the Faith can evolve to mean something different from what they have always meant, we affirm that the truths of the Faith are immutable.
  
• Whereas the Synod asserts that the truths of the Faith are known through a process of communal discernment of the People of God, we affirm that the truths of the Faith were given to the Church by God.
  
• Whereas the Synod asserts that “all the baptized” are members of the Synodal Church, we affirm Pope Pius XII’s teaching in Mystici Corporis that “only those are to be included as members of the Church who have been baptized and profess the true faith.”
  
• Whereas the Synod promotes the false ecumenism that proliferated after Vatican II, we affirm that the Catholic Church remains the sole ark of salvation.
  
• Whereas the Synod encourages Catholics to “accompany” sinners and their sins, we affirm that true charity consists of teaching souls that we must all strive to overcome our sins if we wish to serve God and save our souls.
  

For decades, Traditional Catholics have debated whether the “conciliar church” is something distinct from the “Catholic Church,” with some Catholics declining to see true separation. But Francis and his collaborators have gone out of their way to make it clear that the Synodal Church is a “different church,” so any hesitation we might have had about denouncing the errors of the “conciliar church” are now alleviated to a large extent with the Synodal Church. Traditional Catholics may legitimately disagree about what this means in the context of whether adherents to the Synodal Church (such as Francis) are in schism with the Catholic Church, but we should all be able to agree that God is not honored by our silence as Francis and the Synodal Church’s architects openly mock God and the Catholic Church with their fiendish spectacle. If we love God and His Catholic Church, we have to fight Satan’s Synodal Church. 

Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us!