Xavier Rynne II

Oct 28, 2024 | firstthings.com | George Weigel |Xavier Rynne II

Overhyped, Overmanaged, Underwhelming—and Providentially Heartening by George Weigel In a 1989 article, future cardinal Avery Dulles, S.J., agreed with Protestant historian Otto Dibelius that the twentieth century was the century of ecclesiology—the century of the theology of the Church.

Oct 24, 2024 | firstthings.com | George Weigel |Stephen White |Xavier Rynne II

As Synod-2024 limps toward the finish line, with everyone experiencing Synod Exhaustion Syndrome—the exceptions being the indefatigable activists who came here to transform this month into the “Vatican III” of progressive Catholicism’s dreams, and their media allies—conversations are turning to the questions that surfaced during the Synod’s discussions: questions whose resolution in the next years and decades will shape the Catholicism of the twenty-first century, especially among the...

Oct 22, 2024 | firstthings.com | George Weigel |Xavier Rynne II

Today, the Latin Rite Catholic Church celebrates the liturgical feast of Pope St. John Paul II. One of the many striking features of Synod-2024, as also of Synod-2023, is the virtual absence of the magisterium of an exceptionally consequential teaching pontificate from the materials prepared for synodal discussion by the Synod General Secretariat and its theological advisors.

Oct 19, 2024 | firstthings.com | George Weigel |Xavier Rynne II

The Synod and the War Against Veritatis Splendor by George Weigel Although the progressive theologians’ guild imagines itself to be the cutting edge of Catholic thought, the guild actually displays a certain atavistic character reminiscent of the Bourbons, as the French dynasty-in-exile was famously described by that slippery character, Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord: “They have learned nothing and forgotten nothing.” In the former category of ignorance is the guild’s refusal to...

Oct 17, 2024 | firstthings.com | George Weigel |Xavier Rynne II

Is “Shared Responsibility” the Answer? It Depends. by George Weigel Parish priests were in very short supply at Synod-2023; if memory serves, there was one present. Questions were raised about this, some of them acerbic; the Synod General Secretariat was evidently irked; and so an “International Meeting of Parish Priests for the Synod” was hastily summoned and met in Rome last spring.