Synod Of The Church Of Nice

Today's Catholic Standard carried a full-blown report of the First Synod of the Archdiocese of Washington that concluded on Pentecost Sunday.  The formal proceeds were in there (and I assume that publication in the Standard would constitute official promulgation of those proceeds) as well as all sorts of ancillary anecdotes pertaining to the synod.   The archdiocesan website carries those stories and the official proceeds.  Read them and notice what's missing.

I read and I noticed.  Color me unimpressed.  Oh, I suppose it's a nice little document - if one is merely taking a view of the Church that's centered on human needs and not the purposes for which Jesus Christ established His Roman Catholic Church.  So what was His purpose?  One need look no further than Question 120 of the Baltimore Catechism.  Q: Why did Christ found the Church?  A: Christ founded the Church to teach, govern, sanctify and save all men.  Here are more questions and answers from the Catechism pertaining to the Church.  To my readers from the Archdiocese of Washington and the USCCB: please study these.  You are in desperate need of remedial Catholic education.

Go to the pdfs on the Archdiocesan site.  Try some word searches.  Look up "eternity", "heaven", "hell", "salvation", "soul".  I'd suggest you might be amazed at how few of these words you'll find, but I regret I know the chancery too well to be surprised by the complete lack of attention there is to eternal matters.  But the Church is supposed to be all about preparing people for eternity.  While the earthly matters have importance, that importance is dwarfed by that of the Last Four Things.  It appears that the Archdiocese has these priorities exactly ass-backwards.  It seems like a lot of pomp and circumstance happened for priorities gone askew.  That's par for the course around here.