Cardinal Zen, Synodality, and the Constitutional Crisis of the Church
The intervention of Cardinal Joseph Zen during the Extraordinary Consistory of January 2026 may ultimately be remembered not merely as a forceful criticism of the Synod on Synodality, but as the moment in which the unresolved tensions of the postconciliar era erupted openly within the highest levels of the Church herself.
Zen’s remarks were extraordinary not only for their severity but for what they revealed: namely, that the debate surrounding synodality has moved far beyond questions of pastoral methodology and entered the realm of ecclesial constitution itself. The issue is no longer simply how the Church consults, listens, or accompanies. The issue is what the Church fundamentally understands herself to be.
This is why Zen’s critique matters so profoundly.
He is not a marginal commentator operating on the periphery of ecclesiastical life. He is a confessor cardinal forged in the crucible of Communist persecution, a bishop whose public witness has long centred upon fidelity under ideological pressure. When such a man speaks of “ironclad manipulation,” warns that invocations of the Holy Spirit have become “ridiculous and almost blasphemous,” and compares the trajectory of synodality to the fragmentation of the Anglican Communion, the Church cannot honestly dismiss his words as reactionary agitation.
Indeed, subsequent developments have only intensified the significance of his intervention.
Reports emerging after the January consistory indicate that Zen’s criticisms resonated far more widely within the College of Cardinals than many initially assumed.¹ Far from being treated as an isolated outburst, his intervention increasingly appears to have articulated concerns privately shared by numerous prelates uneasy with the present trajectory of “Bergoglian synodality.”
That phrase itself is revealing.
The fact that critics now increasingly distinguish between “synodality” in principle and “Bergoglian synodality” in practice indicates that the debate has shifted decisively. The question is no longer whether the Church possesses synodal dimensions — she always has — but whether the current synodal paradigm remains compatible with historic Catholic ecclesiology.
Zen’s own later reflections on the consistory deepen the gravity of the matter considerably. According to his account, interventions were tightly limited, open disputation was constrained, and the structure of discussion itself mirrored the same facilitation methodologies employed during the Synod on Synodality.²
This point is crucial.
Historically, episcopal collegiality involved theological disputation, judgment, and the direct exchange of arguments among bishops charged with guarding apostolic doctrine. Yet Zen suggests that the modern synodal method increasingly replaces disputation with managed facilitation and doctrinal judgment with process-oriented consensus-building.
The Apostles were not sent into the world to facilitate moderated listening sessions. They were sent to preach revelation.
Zen’s most explosive statement therefore acquires even greater force:
“The ironclad manipulation of the process is an insult to the dignity of the Bishops.”
This sentence identifies the central paradox of the synodal project. While speaking constantly of participation, communion, and listening, the process itself increasingly appears tightly structured by permanent bureaucratic mechanisms operating through the Synod Secretariat and sections of the Roman Curia.
Thus emerges one of the great ironies of the present pontificate: synodality repeatedly speaks the language of decentralisation while simultaneously expanding managerial centralisation.
The bishops are invited to “walk together,” yet the path itself increasingly appears predetermined.
This is why Zen’s critique strikes at something far deeper than procedural dissatisfaction. He is warning that the Church risks replacing apostolic authority with bureaucratic process.
The Synod on Synodality consistently presents itself as the flowering of the vision of the Second Vatican Council. Pope Francis repeatedly described synodality as “the path God expects of the Church in the third millennium.”³ Yet Cardinal Zen’s intervention reveals the widening tension between the authentic teaching of Vatican II and the expansive interpretation now being imposed under its name.
This distinction is decisive.
Vatican II unquestionably encouraged greater consultation and emphasised the dignity and apostolate of the laity. But the Council never transformed the Church into a participatory democracy. Lumen Gentium explicitly reaffirmed that bishops govern by divine institution as successors of the Apostles.⁴ The Church remains, according to Catholic doctrine, a hierarchical and sacramental society established by Christ Himself.⁵
Indeed, the Council Fathers themselves feared precisely the type of interpretive drift now visible within synodality. The Nota Praevia Explicativa attached by Pope Paul VI to Lumen Gentium was intended specifically to prevent collegiality from being interpreted as parliamentary redistribution of authority.⁶
That warning now appears prophetic.
Zen’s critique exposes the growing tendency to treat participation itself as a source of legitimacy. Yet the sensus fidelium in Catholic theology does not mean democratic consensus, sociological polling, or activist mobilisation. It refers to the supernatural instinct for revealed truth possessed by the faithful insofar as they remain united to apostolic doctrine and Tradition.⁷
The distinction is enormous.
A Church governed by revelation differs fundamentally from a Church governed by process.
Zen therefore asks with devastating simplicity:
“Do the lay people present represent the People of God?”
The issue is not hostility toward the laity but scepticism toward the assumption that carefully selected synodal delegates can plausibly claim to embody the voice of the universal Church. This concern becomes still more serious in light of the remarkably low participation rates reported during synodal consultations across much of the Catholic world.⁸
Yet from these highly limited consultations emerged proposals concerning “new forms of ministeriality,” decentralised doctrinal application, and local pastoral experimentation.
Here the deeper theological danger emerges.
Zen warns:
“The continual reference to the Holy Spirit is ridiculous and almost blasphemous.”
He continues:
“They expect surprises from the Holy Spirit; what surprises? That He should repudiate what He inspired in the Church’s two-thousand-year Tradition?”
This strikes directly at one of the most troubling features of contemporary ecclesial rhetoric: the increasingly common implication that novelty itself constitutes evidence of divine action.
Authentic Catholic theology has never understood doctrinal development in this manner.
St Vincent of Lérins insisted that true development occurs “according to the same doctrine, the same meaning, and the same judgment.”⁹ St John Henry Newman likewise taught that authentic development preserves continuity of principle and identity.¹⁰ The Holy Spirit deepens the Church’s understanding of revelation; He does not contradict what He previously inspired.
Yet synodal language increasingly sacralises ambiguity itself. Terms such as “new paradigms,” “creative activation,” “new forms of ministeriality,” and “pastoral adaptation” often function as euphemisms for institutional and doctrinal fluidity.
This explains why Zen’s critique intersects so powerfully with long-standing traditional concerns regarding Vatican II.
Unlike outright rejectionists of the Council, Zen does not deny Vatican II as a legitimate ecumenical council. Yet he implicitly acknowledges a central traditionalist argument: namely, that ambiguities within the pastoral language of the Council created openings for later theological exploitation.
The Council deliberately adopted a more pastoral and less scholastic style than previous councils. Terms such as “People of God,” “dialogue,” “collegiality,” and “pastoral adaptation” often lacked the precision characteristic of earlier magisterial formulations.
Traditional critics such as Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre warned decades ago that these ambiguities would eventually permit radically divergent interpretations.
Zen’s intervention increasingly appears to vindicate those fears.
When he warns of “ambiguous and tendentious expressions,” he is describing the very postconciliar phenomenon long identified by critics of the Council’s implementation.
This becomes especially evident in his analysis of the Final Synod Document itself. Zen notes the extraordinary contradiction whereby the document is simultaneously described as magisterial while also said to be “not strictly normative” and open to differing local applications.
His question is devastating:
“Does the Holy Spirit guarantee that contradictory interpretations will not arise?”
This strikes directly at the emerging reality of doctrinal decentralisation.
If local episcopal conferences and regional churches are encouraged to pursue culturally adapted solutions regarding ministry, sacramental discipline, or moral theology, then the danger arises of de facto national churches developing divergent theological realities beneath a thin veneer of institutional unity.
It is precisely here that Zen invokes the Anglican Communion.
The comparison is devastating because Anglicanism represents the clearest modern example of decentralised ecclesiology collapsing into fragmentation. Provinces now openly contradict one another concerning sexual ethics, sacramental theology, ecclesial authority, and anthropology itself.¹¹
Zen therefore asks:
“Do the differing interpretations and choices not lead our Church to the same division (fracture) found in the Anglican Communion?”
His ecumenical observations push the critique even further.
Zen notes the catastrophic fragmentation within global Anglicanism and asks whether Rome intends to align itself with the increasingly weakened structures represented by the Archbishop of Canterbury or with the more doctrinally conservative Global Anglican Future Conference movement.
Still more importantly, he observes:
“The Orthodox Bishops will never accept Bergoglian synodality.”
This point carries immense significance. Orthodoxy possesses a deeply synodal structure, yet Orthodox synodality remains firmly episcopal, sacramental, and doctrinally bounded. It is not participatory managerialism.
Thus emerges one of the great ironies of the synodal project: a process repeatedly justified in the name of communion may actually be widening ecclesiological distance from both historic Catholicism and Orthodoxy alike.
Meanwhile, developments under Pope Leo XIV have complicated the situation further.
Leo XIV has reaffirmed synodality repeatedly and confirmed that the synodal structures, study groups, and planned ecclesial assemblies will continue.¹² Yet he has also restored annual consistories and appears to be reviving more traditional forms of cardinalitial consultation after years in which many cardinals felt sidelined.¹³
This creates a growing tension at the heart of the new pontificate:
- synodality continues institutionally,
- yet traditional structures of episcopal consultation are simultaneously being strengthened.
Whether this represents recalibration, containment, or simple coexistence remains unclear.
But the ambiguity itself now defines the crisis.
The Church has confronted similar dangers before. Conciliarism attempted to subordinate papal authority to representative councils. Gallicanism and Febronianism decentralised ecclesiastical authority into national structures. The Synod of Pistoia justified doctrinal and disciplinary innovation through the language of pastoral renewal. All were ultimately condemned because they destabilised the Church’s divinely constituted constitution.¹⁴
What makes the present crisis especially dangerous is that it advances not primarily through explicit doctrinal contradiction but through ambiguity, process, and managed adaptation.
This is why Pope Benedict XVI’s warning about the “hermeneutic of discontinuity and rupture” now appears increasingly prophetic.¹⁵ Benedict recognised that Vatican II could remain authentically Catholic only if interpreted entirely within continuity with the Church’s previous magisterium and perennial constitution.
Zen’s intervention suggests that this hermeneutical struggle has now entered its decisive stage.
The issue is no longer merely how Vatican II should be interpreted. The issue is whether synodality has become the mechanism through which the unresolved ambiguities of the postconciliar era are being institutionalised into a new ecclesial constitution.
At stake is nothing less than the Catholic understanding of revelation, authority, doctrine, and the nature of the Church herself.
A Church uncertain of what she teaches will eventually become uncertain of why she exists.
The Church does not require perpetual reinvention. She requires fidelity.
The Holy Ghost was not sent to erase Tradition but to preserve the truth Christ entrusted to His Church.
- Zenit – Reports on the January 2026 Consistory and Cardinal Zen’s intervention
- Ibid.
- Vatican.va – Address for the 50th Anniversary of the Synod of Bishops (2015)
- Lumen Gentium, §§18–27.
- Catechism of the Catholic Church (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1993), §§874–896.
- Second Vatican Council, Nota Praevia Explicativa appended to Lumen Gentium (1964).
- International Theological Commission, Sensus Fidei in the Life of the Church (2014), §§74–80.
- See reporting by Catholic News Agency and The Pillar on diocesan participation levels during synodal consultations.
- St Vincent of Lérins, Commonitorium, chap. 23.
- St John Henry Newman, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1878).
- Global Anglican Future Conference emerged in response to doctrinal fragmentation within the Anglican Communion.
- Vatican.va – Pope Leo XIV, Closing Address to the Extraordinary Consistory (2026)
- Associated Press – Reports on Pope Leo XIV’s restoration of annual consistories
- Pope Pius VI, Auctorem Fidei (1794).
- Pope Benedict XVI, Address to the Roman Curia, 22 December 2005.
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