Permanent conversation and change. . .

Rome has a monolithic government, at least from the outside looking in.  However, Pope Francis is changing this.  He has decided that the next Synod of Bishops (episcopal convention) will not be as those in the past but will evolve over two years in a series of meetings.  Again, to an outsider, these appear to introduce a more collegial style of governance -- one that some insist was conceived of and introduced at the Second Vatican Council now 60 years ago.  Instead of thinking of another Vatican Council, the idea was a church in a permanent synodal state with regular, collegial, and authoritative exchanges among the bishops on the key issues facing the Roman Catholic Church.

Such a populist church would not only hear from the hierarchy but also from the folks in the pews and would, they claim, be more responsive to changes and to changing because of this more collegial process.  One cardinal put it this way:  "we must listen to the People of God, and this means going out to the local Churches.”  I have no idea what Francis has in mind (who does?) but my own experience with a listening church, one that listens to the people, is a church that equates the where the wind is blowing at the moment with the voice of God in His Word.  And that kind of church is really no church at all.

Churches are under manifest pressure to change both what they believe and how they work -- this change is coming from the woke culture around them and from the woke people within them.  It is not just in Rome that these voices for a church willing to listen and a diversity of opinions are speaking.  Lutherans have the same thing.  I suspect all churches have them.  But as appealing as the idea may be, it is a sure way to depart from the Biblical and traditional dogmas of the faithful and to substitute the whims and feelings of the moment.  Lutherans have confessions and catechisms and Rome has catechisms and the Pope but none of us seems to be immune from the pressure to change up what we believe and how we live out that faith in response to the direction and challenges from the world around us.

Popes were supposed to be guarantors of the unchanging faith and councils were supposed to address challenges to that unchanging faith but now popes and councils are vehicles of the very change that will both undermine the faith and empty the churches even more.  Lutherans are not in much better shape.  Even though we have confessions which are supposed to define us, Lutherans have lived in the jungle of personal preference and taste for too long.  No Lutherans know how to address the pressure to change or how to stand up against the voices demanding all things new.  In the end, all orthodox Christians need to stand up to the idea of a church permanently in a state of change, moving further and further away from the Biblical truth to the cultural preference of the moment.  Once we put the drumbeat of the world and our own sinful selves on par with the unchanging and infallible truth of God's Word, there are no boundaries to prevent the corruption of the faith and the deception of the faithful.