Waiting For The Hearse?

Francis has already chosen his own hearse….

The Italian Bishops have just announced that their synod will go on … until 2025.

There will be a “listening” phase, finally ending the deafness the Bishops are experiencing, until 2023. After that, there will be the synod proper, which will go on another two years. At the end of this phase, there will be “actions” distributed to the parishes. One never knows, the parishes might need a phase of reflection and listening after receiving the actions, followed by a phase of ear checking so they are sure their own deafness has also finally ended. At some point, perhaps, something will happen. Or not.

Call me the usual optimist, but I am really, really missing the urgency here. It is as if the Italian Bishops, aware of the potential for conflicts that awaits (with all their shortcomings, Italians tend to be different from the Germans) but forced by the Evil Clown to go through the process anyway, had decided to draw the process for as long as possible, hoping to see, at some point, that particular coffin receiving the corpse appointed for it.

This has tradition not only in Government and in big companies, but actually everywhere where there is a need to stall without the conflict that comes with it. The process of “discernment “ and “listening” appears, to me, a very elegant way to drag things out waiting for the Requiem Mass; which, if you ask me, should be substituted for a thanksgiving one.

I might be wrong. But I think I have seen this very mechanism at work more than once in my professional life. This is not what “reformist zeal” look like.

This look, to me, like waiting for the hearse.