Synod.va asked for people to compose poetry inspired by the synodal process. The following, with apologies to and admiration for T.S. Eliot, was submitted by James Baresel, author of many excellent articles on the traditional Mass. -- PAK
We are the hollow synod
We are the bloated synod
Walking together
Heads filled with straw.
Our monotonous talk, when
We gather together
Is loud and meaningless
Like Bernard Häring
Or when women are wearing
Priestly vestments.
Religion without morals, without divine judgement,
An almost spent force, Modernism in motion.
Saints of past ages
Who crossed into heaven
Think of us as lost
Cruel souls and as
The hollow synod
The shallow synod.
This is the dying Church
This is the synodal Church
Here graven images
Are raised, here they receive
Idolatrous worship and supplications
In the Vatican.
Orthodoxy is not here
There is no faithfulness here
In this valley of aging Modernists
In this ecclesial Death Valley
This attempt to break Christ’s kingdom.
In this meeting place
We avoid rational thought
And grope together
For warm fuzzy buzz words.
Faithless, useless
Modernists reappear
Like a repetitive nightmare
Multitudinous errors
Of the devil’s dark kingdom
The fondest hope
Of the empty synod.
Between the conception
And a new church’s creation
Based on sheer emotion
Will come God’s response
Synods overshadowed by Tradition.
This is the way synodality ends
This is the way synodality ends
This is the way synodality ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.