Karol Wojtyla's commitment to human dignity, to the unborn and the sacredness of all life, and his theology of the body – all these things still resonate deeply with American Catholics.
How can one counter the anti-clericalism present in today's culture and in the media? What should the Church do about this? What about laymen?
The only way to counter it is by living differently; by practicing what we claim to believe. There's no quick fix. We're a family of faith, not a religious General Motors, and we need to act like it. Priests, for example, are not little godlings. They're sinners like everyone else. We're all equal – laypeople, religious and clergy – in the Sacrament of Baptism. But, as in any family, we all have different tasks. Priests have the duty to shepherd and teach, to serve the needs of their people, to lead as pastors, and most all, to celebrate the Eucharist and other sacraments. The glue that holds the whole enterprise together is love. If we don't respect and love each other, and show it by our behavior, everything falls apart.
What might the synod change in Church doctrine or in the interpretation of the doctrine?
No synod has the authority to change core Christian teachings; nor does any Pope. In matters of interpretation, the unstated struggle in the 2018 synod revolves around Catholic sexual morality. As one young female youth minister put it: Underneath all its social science data and verbiage, the instrumentum laboris is finally, very quietly, about sex. It's especially odd that the word "chastity" appears almost nowhere in the IL text. Humanae vitae and the theology of the body are completely absent.
Should the synod have been canceled?
I think the timing is inopportune. Rescheduling it for a later date probably would have been wise, but the Holy Father makes those decisions. The planning for a synod is very complicated and difficult to change.
Is it really necessary to tackle the LGBT issue at the synod and mention it in official documents?
There's nothing wrong with addressing the issue. Quite the opposite, it's a natural matter for discussion – so long as Catholic teaching on human sexuality is faithfully explained and reconfirmed without compromise or ambiguity. And that's exactly where elements of the IL are regrettably weak. "LGBT" should never be used in a Church document to describe people. The Church has never identified persons by their sexual appetites, or reduced them to their sexual inclinations. "LBGT" may be acceptable in describing issues, but not people.
The traditional understanding of the family is under heavy attack. What does the situation look like in the States? What part does the gender ideology play in this?
I'll refer back to Del Noce here: Gender ideology is simply an expression of the technological mindset and its bias toward treating all matter, including the body, as raw material for the human will. It presumes a definition of the "human person" very different from anything in Christian belief. Gender ideology treats the body as an instrument to be upgraded, or clay to be manipulated. In contrast, Christian faith sees the body, not as some kind of "wetware" or clay capsule, but as integral and essential to who we are. God became man to redeem human flesh, not to render it meaningless.
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The family, by its nature, is carnal and fertile. A man and a woman become one flesh. New life results. It's beautiful, it's mysterious, but it's not efficient. To a certain kind of modern mindset, that inefficiency is offensive.
At the heart of gender ideology is a resentment of the weakness and limitations of the body. At the heart of today's attacks on the family is a hatred of the mutual dependence that families demand and the love within a family that seals it tight as a unit. In the end, all of today's sexual aberrations and dysfunctions boil down to a rejection of creation; for the natural order as it is.
This is the terrain and the challenge Christians face today in the United States.