Courageous Priest |
Breaking News: A Catholic Church Without Babies
The Synod of Silence is Deafening
Fr. Paul Nicholson
I’d heard anecdotally how Italians
are instinctively drawn to babies. I think it must be one of the
reasons why religious goods stores here in Rome always have a sizeable
inventory of images of the baby Jesus. Italians love babies. In days
gone by the Italian world was coloured by its love of babies. Today,
however, the love for the baby is something poetic. Italians, like
almost all European cultures, are having less and less babies. The
tragedy that befalls Europe is that its birthrate is well below
replacement level.
On Saturday evening I made my holy
hour in the church close to my apartment in the Prati section of Rome.
The venerable church of Our Lady of the Rosary is a real jewel. My holy
hour coincided with the Sunday Mass of anticipation. Granted most
Saturday evening Masses are populated by an older crowd, but I was
shocked at just how old everybody was. In twenty years, not one single
person at that Mass will be alive.
Multiply the number out to places
you know and you will agree, I am not exaggerating. The demographic
winter is upon us. The white we see is not snow flakes, but the aging
of the Church to a point that in twenty years She will be unrecognizable
from Her present appearance.
Pope Francis surprised the Synod
Fathers on Saturday by giving a strong address on the emerging synodal
process. One has to carefully read the statement in its entirety.
There is nothing in it that suggests a revolution of decentralization.
Unfortunately, it is and was accompanied by calls from some cardinals
and some bishops the ‘decentralization of Church teaching’. Whatever
happens on this Saturday at the end of the Synod, there is a great
question that looms larger than the Synod, even larger than the populist
pontificate of Pope Francis — how can the Church survive when people do
not want to give life?
Because without babies, Europe has
no future. America has no future. Canada has no future. Australia and
New Zealand have no future. And the Church in the West will disappear.
That is the reality. And denying it seems to be the effort of public
relations.
The Holy Father acknowledged the
need for the Church to be a ‘listening Church’, knowing that listening
“is more than feeling.” But this listening Church will need hearing
aids in 10 years, if it doesn’t already. The spring has passed and
winter envelops us because of the cataclysm of contraception. We need
only listen to the lack of crying babies to know that we are headed to
extinction in the West.
Listen to the silence of churches. That is the synod of silence … and it is deafening.
That is why one can only grieve at
the words emanating from the press conference today where all the
enthusiasm was around how to change the wording of ‘intrinsically
disordered’ or ‘indissolubility’. How utterly deaf we have become,
that we should find these topics of greater concern, of more theological
import than the sterility of the nations.
I don’t mean to be cheeky in poking
fun at the inconsequential presentations of some. I only tell it to you
to assure you that there is more to this story than what is being said,
and not said, in the press office.
There is a silent synod going on, a stumbling together of old Western ideas. If you listen closely enough, you will hear it.
