When Everything Is “Listening,” Nothing Is Taught (and damn you James Martin)

Catholic Reflector Chronicle/Vol. 5, Issue 10/May 6, 2026

Like many of you, I came across today’s article by Diane Montagna concerning a study conducted by the Synod on Synodality’s (my spell check flags this word because it is fake and made up) study group on “controversial doctrinal, pastoral and ethical questions.” You can read it here. I was disgusted and furious at the same time. This was a VATICAN REPORT! If you wanted a concise, methodological proof text as to why a large percentage of Catholic clergy should be shown the door, this is it. And yet, it will be celebrated and heralded. Jimmy Martin and his ilk are prancing these disordered couples and their “relationships” straight to hell.

St. Basil the Great: “The dogmas of the Fathers are despised; apostolic traditions are set at naught; the devices of innovators are in vogue in the churches.”
AD 375

This sounds like it could have been written yesterday.

Faithful Catholics are exhausted, and pretending otherwise is dishonest. Ordinary Catholics are watching the world collapse into confusion, degeneracy, broken families, doctrinal illiteracy, hostility toward Christianity, and moral chaos, while enormous portions of the Church hierarchy respond with another symposium on “listening.” Who exactly is being shepherded here?

It increasingly feels like many bishops have abandoned the role of apostles and recast themselves as facilitators, moderators, consultants, and therapists. It’s like “Office Space” for Rome. Every issue becomes a “dialogue.” Every doctrinal conflict becomes a “journey.” Every crisis becomes a “process of discernment.” The language is perpetually soft, endlessly unfinished, and almost allergic to clarity. And that is precisely the problem. They’ve traded Scripture for TPS Reports.

“Synodality” has become one of the most elastic terms in modern Catholicism. It seems to mean everything and therefore means nothing. Ask ten Catholics to define it and you will get ten different answers wrapped in phrases like “walking together,” “encounter,” “accompaniment,” and “shared listening.” None of those words are evil in themselves. But together they form a kind of ecclesiastical fog machine that obscures rather than clarifies. It’s all done on purpose!

The Church once spoke with precision because souls mattered. Now far too many churchmen speak in managed ambiguity because institutional preservation matters more than truth. This may sound harsh, because it is. Ambiguity has consequences.

When bishops refuse to speak clearly about sin, or worse, celebrate it, (CELEBRATE IT!!!), souls remain trapped in it. When clergy refuse to defend Catholic teaching plainly, the faithful become confused. When shepherds spend more time listening to rebellion than correcting it, error metastasizes. It’s a cancer on our Church. WE are the Body of Christ, not these homo sapiens! And when leadership treats doctrine like an ongoing discussion rather than a divine deposit entrusted to the Church, Catholicism slowly dissolves into spiritual bureaucracy.

The Apostles did not evangelize the world through facilitated dialogue sessions. Peter did not stand before the crowds at Pentecost and announce a process of mutual listening. Paul did not enter pagan cities asking people to share their lived experiences so the Church could better understand “their truth.” Athanasius did not defeat Arianism through strategic ambiguity. The saints were not vague men. The martyrs did not die for “accompaniment.” They preached, they taught, and when sin and error were revealed, they corrected. These men converted nations and suffered and died for TRUTH. Not “walking together in dialogue.” Blech. Where are the real men in the Vatican?

This so called synodal language sounds less like Christianity and more like a nonprofit leadership retreat run by middle management. Endless references to “spaces for dialogue,” “journeying together,” and “shared discernment” have produced an entire generation of clergy who speak fluently without actually saying anything. Catholics know it too. That is why so many faithful Catholics feel spiritually homeless inside their own parishes despite remaining loyal to the Church herself. They are starving for clarity while leadership keeps offering process. They want fathers and receive facilitators. They want shepherds and receive administrators. They want men willing to teach with courage and instead receive carefully calibrated ambiguity designed not to offend anyone powerful. Faithful clergy are running scared, and live in hushed tones and careful declarations. They don’t want to say anything out of line to the wrong person, lest they be cast to the Capuchins in Kansas.

Meanwhile, heretical clergy openly undermine the Faith with near impunity. James Martin gets bolder and bolder. In a different time, he would be roasting on a spit. Bishops publicly flirt with doctrinal rebellion on sexuality, marriage, the priesthood, the Eucharist, and moral theology while hiding behind the language of “dialogue.” Priests openly mock traditional Catholic belief while remaining in good standing. Catechesis collapsed a long time ago. Reverence? What reverence? Liturgical abuse spreads like the common cold. Confession has all but disappeared, and Eucharistic belief? Hah! When these concerns are brought forth, still the response is often: “We need to listen more.” Bullshit.

The Church does not have a listening crisis. The Church has a truth crisis.

Faithful Catholics are tired of watching weak leadership disguise itself as pastoral sensitivity. They are tired of bishops who seem more afraid of headlines than judgment before God. They are tired of clergy who speak endlessly about “inclusion” but almost never about repentance. They are tired of hearing crystal-clear moral language reserved only for fashionable political causes while eternal truths become wrapped in endless nuance. Most of all, they are tired of watching Church leaders behave as though certainty itself were somehow uncharitable.

Catholicism is not a group project. The Faith was not crowdsourced into existence. Christ did not establish a spiritual democracy governed by perpetual consultation. He founded a Church with doctrine, sacraments, authority, discipline, and shepherds charged with guarding souls. Good fathers listen to their children, yes. But fathers who never lead eventually cease functioning as fathers altogether. And that is what so much of modern synodality feels like: leadership terrified of leading. Or worse, leading the flock astray ON PURPOSE.

Of course the Church should hear from the faithful. Of course bishops should understand the struggles of their people. Of course pastors should possess compassion and prudence. But listening only has value if it ultimately serves truth. Otherwise the Church becomes trapped in endless internal conversation while the world burns outside.

The great irony is that this entire project is marketed as renewal while many faithful Catholics experience it as institutional decay. Faithgul Catholics are not begging for more ambiguity. They are begging for reverence, orthodoxy, beauty, discipline, clarity, strong preaching, serious catechesis, and clergy who actually appear convinced that Catholicism is true. Instead, they are too often handed another diocesan document written in the tone of a human resources seminar.

The modern world already despises authority, hierarchy, permanence, obligation, and truth claims. The tragedy is that large portions of the Church now seem embarrassed by the very things that once made Catholicism strong. Cowards! Weaklings!

And a Church that refuses to teach will not remain a Church for long. That is the path we are on. Yes, the gates of hell will not prevail against Christ’s Church, I believe that. But that doesn’t mean hell won’t get its foot in door or beat the Church within an inch of it’s life.

You see folks, Catholics are not going to reverse this drift through outrage, factionalism, or by pretending the hierarchy no longer matters. The answer is not rebellion. The answer is becoming unmistakably Catholic again. Faithful Catholics must stop apologizing for wanting reverence, clarity, orthodoxy, beauty, strong preaching, serious catechesis, and clergy who actually teach the Faith without embarrassment. Weak leadership survives on passive exhaustion, always has, always will. That all changes when ordinary Catholics respectfully but firmly demand shepherds instead of facilitators, doctrine instead of ambiguity, and courage instead of carefully managed “process.”

The Church does not need another decade of therapeutic jargon and endless discernment sessions while the faithful starve for truth. She needs bishops willing to govern, priests willing to preach repentance, and Catholics willing to support clergy who actually defend the Faith. Christianity did not conquer the world through perpetual dialogue. The Apostles preached Christ with clarity, authority, and conviction. And if the Church is going to recover her strength, she will do it the same way she always has: through truth plainly taught, reverence boldly defended, and Catholics no longer afraid to sound Catholic. The hired hands in the Vatican need to be fired, lest they run away. (read the Scripture below).

God Bless.

Scripture to read and consider:

2 Timothy 4:2–4: ² proclaim the message; be persistent whether the time is favorable or unfavorable; convince, rebuke, and encourage, with the utmost patience in teaching. ³ For the time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires, ⁴ and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander away to myths.

Ezekiel 34:2–6: ² Mortal, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel: prophesy, and say to them—to the shepherds: Thus says the Lord God: Ah, you shepherds of Israel who have been feeding yourselves! Should not shepherds feed the sheep? ³ You eat the fat, you clothe yourselves with the wool, you slaughter the fatlings; but you do not feed the sheep. ⁴ You have not strengthened the weak, you have not healed the sick, you have not bound up the injured, you have not brought back the strayed, you have not sought the lost, but with force and harshness you have ruled them. ⁵ So they were scattered, because there was no shepherd; and scattered, they became food for all the wild animals. ⁶ My sheep were scattered, they wandered over all the mountains and on every high hill; my sheep were scattered over all the face of the earth, with no one to search or seek for them.

Titus 1:9–11: ⁹ He must have a firm grasp of the word that is trustworthy in accordance with the teaching, so that he may be able both to preach with sound doctrine and to refute those who contradict it.

¹⁰ There are also many rebellious people, idle talkers and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision; ¹¹ they must be silenced, since they are upsetting whole families by teaching for sordid gain what it is not right to teach.

Isaiah 56:10–11: ¹⁰ Israel’s sentinels are blind,
they are all without knowledge;
they are all silent dogs
that cannot bark;
dreaming, lying down,
loving to slumber.
¹¹ The dogs have a mighty appetite;
they never have enough.
The shepherds also have no understanding;
they have all turned to their own way,
to their own gain, one and all.

John 10:11–13: ¹¹ “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. ¹² The hired hand, who is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away, and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. ¹³ The hired hand runs away because a hired hand does not care for the sheep.

Issue Quote(s):

St. Gregory the Great AD 590:

“The pastor should be discreet in keeping silence, profitable in speech, lest either he say what ought not to be said, or leave unsaid what ought to be said.”

St. Augustine of Hippo AD 410-412:

“For what is the ease of the shepherd but the destruction of the flock?”

and

“You see the wolf coming and flee.”

St. Cyprian of Carthage AD 251:

“The episcopate is one, each part of which is held by each one for the whole.

Upcoming Topic: Jesus wasn’t just Jewish.

Disclaimer from the Editor: I have done just about everything wrong that a Catholic can do. I was born a Catholic, and by the Grace of God, managed to remain one. I hope these writings educate and edify you. I will make mistakes, and I am likely to offend a few folks along the way. That is not my intention. If you wish to discuss anything written or expressed in this newsletter, please reach out to the email address below. Questions, comments and rude remarks are welcome, one and all. And remember, if you are a practicing Catholic, practice harder!

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