Cardinal Radcliffe: Explaining the Synod is like ‘talking about sex’ to children
The new cardinal's comments highlight one of the chief aspects of the Synod on Synodality – its almost deliberate confusion, which is utilized by individuals to promote different agendas.
Cardinal Radcliffe,
speaking in Oxford December 2024. Jesuit
Georgetown University
Michael
Haynes,
Snr.
Vatican
Correspondent
- 12
Mon Feb 10, 2025 - 12:03 pm EST
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VATICAN CITY (LifeSiteNews) — Explaining how to understand the Synod on Synodality, Cardinal Timothy Radcliffe compared it to attempting to explain sexual intimacy to a child, saying that “these are things you only understand in living them.”
Cardinal Radcliffe, O.P., has risen to renewed prominence in recent years due to his role as spiritual advisor to those at the Synod on Synodality in Rome. The 79-year-old Dominican previously served as master of the Dominican Order from 1992 to 2001, but has garnered controversy due to his comments about Catholic teaching on sexuality.
Radcliffe has emerged as a prominent advocate for Pope Francis’ Synod on Synodality, and was recently created cardinal by Francis in the December 2024 consistory.
Delivering a keynote address in December about the synod and its import, Radcliffe opined on the actual nature of the synod and how to understand it.
Whilst preparing his talk Radcliffe said that “it struck me that the challenge of talking about the synod is rather like that of talking about sex with somebody who’s just getting to puberty.”
He recounted how when he was given instruction on sexuality as a young boy at school, it sounds “so ridiculous and absurd.” This experience, Radcliffe said, is much like explaining the synod.
“I think talking about the synod is rather like talking about sex for to a young kid. ‘Sex and the synod,’ it could be a new TV series,” he quipped.
READ: EXCLUSIVE: Cardinal Radcliffe defends controversial 2013 text on homosexual acts
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The reason for comparing the Synod on Synodality to making an explanation of sex to a pubescent child is, said Radcliffe, “because these are things you only understand in living them. It’s about how you’re alive in a new way.”
The new cardinal continued:
Jesus announced the kingdom by telling parables, performing gestures, cleansing the temple, giving us His body and blood: so what can we do, how can we live, what gestures can we make so that people can have their eyes opened to the life-giving encounters which are the very heart of synodality? How can we touch the imagination of our world?
Expanding on the theme of linguistic difficulties regarding the synod, Radcliffe stated how the “language of complementarity” was inadequate for describing the synod. “We need a new way, a new language and I think I began to see it emerging, and it was the language of reciprocity, and once you see that you find it’s everywhere in the final document.”
Radcliffe’s choice of imagery when describing how to talk about the synod has sparked renewed controversy. But at its heart it highlights one of the chief failings of the Synod, quite aside from the significant doctrinal concerns which have been raised by leading prelates.
From the very beginning, the synod has been billed as an event for the whole Church and for the involvement of all, including non-Catholics. Critics have often pointed out how participation has been far lower than the synod organizers anticipated – something perhaps impacted by the fact that having a Synod on Synodality is, as Cardinal Raymond Burke has often said, is confusing, open-ended, and dangerous for the future of the Church.
READ: Synod final text calls for continued ‘process’ with synodal ‘listening’ and dialogue
Observers have often pointed out how the synod’s self-referential style and persistent focus on “listening” and “dialogue” has led the Church to further lose sight of her timeless and unchanging teaching on a number of issues being discussed in the synod hall. Demands for LGBT “inclusion” and claims that the question of women’s ordination remains “open” have emerged from the Synod, despite Catholic against such topics being clear and firm.
If trying to explain the synod is indeed like trying to explain the intricacies of sexual intimacy to a child, then the synod has even failed to meet its own goal. Its theme was how to be “a synodal Church: communion, participation and mission” – but if only the few hundred participants who gathered in Rome are able to understand it, then it has been a multi-year waste of time and money.
Or has it?
Opening the synod in 2021, Pope Francis quoted Vatican II theologian Father Yves Congar and called for “a different Church” courtesy of the synod. “Synodality is, in fact, the long-game of Pope Francis,” Newark’s Cardinal Joseph Tobin revealed in May 2021. Indeed, Francis has previously stated in Canada in 2022 that “the Church is either synodal or it is not Church.”
The Church is without doubt in the process of being transformed in line with the agenda of the synod’s chief proponents. The synodal style of questioning everything, including unchangeable teaching, is spreading across the Church.
By questioning teaching which cannot actually be changed, the Church is thus being destabilized; those inside the Church start attacking its own foundations. With every chop to those roots the synod activists became emboldened since, as the Church appears to become weaker in her principles and teachings, she becomes weaker in her very being.
Consequently all the issues discussed at the synod are intimately linked, even if one might make more headway than another. For if the Church’s condemnation of LGBT activity can be questioned, then so can her teaching of male-only priesthood, and by extension so can her teaching of the entire ordained ministry.
Best of all for the synodal activists is that this process of undermining Church teaching is done by appealing to the Spirit; as if God is guiding His Church into a new era, a new Church with new morals and teaching.
This is indeed the true goal of the synod: “Communion, participation and mission” would enable the Church to undergo a process of “change” and “healing” and become a “different Church,” said Pope Francis in 2021.
Given this, the synod has not failed. If its processes and styles are as foreign to most as is the concept of sexual intimacy to a young child, then this confusion only helps those keen to push through their agenda.
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TAGGED AS
- Catholic Church
- Father Timothy Radcliffe
- Pope Francis
- Synod On Synodality
- Synodality
- Timothy Radcliffe
