“Beatings will continue until morale improves.”
That’s a cynical phrase passed around offices worldwide, and it’s one I thought about when reading Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández’s interview with the Spanish Catholic website, Religión Confidencial.
In the interview, Fernández discussed Venite ad me, the 25,000-word document issued by Fernández’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith on October 22, a week ago.
The book-sized set of “considerations” from the DDF looks at how the passing on of the Faith has changed, saying the Church is experiencing an “epochal change.”
Most of the English-language press focused on InfoVaticana’s write-up of the Spanish-language interview in Religión Confidencial.
InfoVaticana’s piece carried a headline saying Fernández “admits scant impact of Venite ad me.”
RELATED: New DDF doc highlights dangers of ‘mission creep’
Some early reporting of Fernandez’s remarks suggested the cardinal blamed conservatives, who were ignoring it because of their obsession with sex.
That was a little unfair.
He actually criticized both conservatives and progressives, saying liberals are mostly concerned with “structural change and dialogue with society” while conservatives are kept “up at night [by] the transmission of sexual morality.”
That may still be an awfully tidy take on complex situations, but it is certainly is fairer than the gloss of the remark that blames only or primarily conservatives.
In any case, the cardinal said he was not surprised the new Vatican document didn’t get much attention.
“I was realistic,” he said.
“Although many bishops’ conferences responded in the consultation before the document, to help with the analysis,” the prefect said, “a document that asks for progress in local implementation is something more demanding.”
The Synodality promoted by Pope Francis in 2013’s Evangelii Gaudium called for a “sound decentralization.” During his pontificate, he called for the Roman curia to be at the service of the bishops.
Less than a week after its release, Fernández was already lamenting the lack of interest. That was awfully early to criticize conferences for not taking it up.
Bishops’ conferences meet only a couple or a few times a year, and those in the northern hemisphere usually enter their fall meetings in November.
The cardinal told Religión Confidencial that he is “persisting” in his efforts to have his new document addressed.
“For that reason, we have sought assistance from the Secretariat of State to ask the episcopal conferences to make an effort toward receiving and implementing it,” Fernández said.
“Hopefully,” he said, “through this approach, we will achieve something. We shall see.”
This urgency wasn’t enough to have a Vatican press conference to answer any questions, though. The cardinal said such a thing would be “counterproductive” since journalists would want to ask him about “other topics.”
Yes, many bishops are holding their conference meetings in the coming month (although some had them before Venite was issued last week).
These bishops will be talking about particular issues facing their churches, from forms of persecution in various countries to founding schools and charities, and even – yes – how to better proclaim the Gospel.
Bishops are still digesting Pope Leo’s encyclical letter, Magnifica Humanitas, released on May 25, which sets out the governing principles of his pontificate, especially regarding Artificial Intelligence (AI), for the Catholic world.
However, Fernández says Venite Ad Me should be on the docket and is calling on the Secretariat of State to push the issue.
Since his appointment in 2023, the head of the doctrine dicastery has written and released a slew of documents: Fiducia Supplicans, which covered blessings and caused controversy in its advice for blessing homosexual couples; Dignitas Infinita, which was on human dignity, and caused complaints from both progressives and conservatives about its discussion of gender theory; Mater Populi Fidelis, which caused controversy over its statements on various Marian titles; Una Caro, which discusses monogamy in marriage, which caused some controversy for its emphasis on Western problems of separation and divorce, as opposed to the polygamy in the developing world which was asked for by the African bishops; and Fernández co-signed the Note about the anniversary of the Vatican II document on interreligious affairs.
That’s a long sentence.
RELATED: How do you solve a problem like Fernández?
In the age of a “decentralized” Synodal Church, the cardinal is – less than a week after its publication – calling on the Secretariat of State to ask the bishops to address a document which describes itself as a non-binding text of “Considerations” that are up for “further analysis and development.”
It really does seem he really does want the bishops to get on it (but he only says so in a small Spanish-language news organization).
“Is this Synodality?” is a fair question. “Is this a ‘healthy decentralization’?” is another.
The Synod on Synodality’s implementation phase has its next major assembly in 2028, and the Vatican has called on bishops to play a bigger role in how the Catholic Church is governed.
It is still two years away, and the Holy See is already causing document fatigue, which seems to demonstrate a top-down view of a process that it has proclaimed will be bottom-up.
Rome’s actions seem to be in competition with its words – and as long as the bishops don’t follow them, the beatings … er … documents are likely to keep coming.
Follow Charles Collins on X: @CharlesinRome
