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A Mass at Westminster Cathedral in London, England, marking the opening of the synod on synodality on Oct. 16, 2021. Mazur/cbcew.org.uk.

The Vatican on Friday will unveil plans for the second phase of the Churchs discernment process, leading to the 2023 synod on synodality in Rome.

The details will be presented at a press conference by Cardinal Mario Grech, Secretary General of the Synod of Bishops, and Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich, general rapporteur of next years gathering of the worlds bishops on the theme For a Synodal Church: Communion, Participation, Mission.

The two-year initiative is entering what the Vatican calls the continental phase. In the first stage - the diocesan phase - organizers were given the task of consulting as many Catholics as possible in a brief period at the tail end of a pandemic.

The second stage will present a different challenge: identifying concerns that are shared by Catholics living in vastly different national settings.

Synod organizers on the seven inhabited continents - North America, Latin America, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and Oceania - may struggle to pick out themes that unite Catholics separated by borders, cultures, and vast distances.

In Europe, some observers believe that Church leaders overseeing the continental phase will find it hard to reconcile the contrasting priorities of Catholics living in the East and West of the continent.

How difficult will it be? The Pillar takes a look.

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Most people accept that Europes 44 countries can be divided into two broad categories: East and West.

That division is rooted in recent political history as much as it is in geography. Eastern countries are generally defined as those that belonged to the Communist Bloc. So someone living in Prague, capital of the former Czechoslovakia, might be called Eastern European, even though they live further west than a Western European resident of the Austrian capital Vienna.

The division of Europe into East and West is crude, but it is also useful because it highlights important differences between countries that experienced decades of communism and those where capitalism has held sway.

European Catholic communities that suffered under communism have evolved in different ways to those that passed through the 20th century without long-lasting state-sponsored persecution.

The divide between Catholics in Eastern and Western Europe can arguably be seen in responses to the German synodal way. The controversial initiative is expected to close next year with a call for radical changes to Church teaching, practice, and structures.

The Bosnian Cardinal Vinko Pulji said last year that the synodal ways proposals were alien to Catholics who had survived communism.

A Church that has weathered the challenge of communism does not have such exotic ideas. Indeed, such attitudes offend and astonish our believers, he commented. We cannot understand a Church in which sacrifice is a foreign word and there is a Jesus without a cross.

In former communist Poland, the bishops conference president issued a strongly worded 3,000-word critique of the synodal ways trajectory.

Let us avoid the repetition of worn-out slogans, and standard demands such as the abolition of celibacy, the priesthood of women, Communion for the divorced, and the blessing of same-sex unions, Archbishop Stanisaw Gdecki wrote in February.

The Nordic bishops - representing Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, and Iceland - have also voiced concern about the German process. But Church leaders in more populous Western European countries, such as the U.K., France, Italy, and Spain, have not made comparable official statements.

The Vatican asked the worlds bishops conferences to submit a document summarizing local synod discussions by Aug. 15. Several national episcopal conferences have missed that deadline.

Many Western European bishops conferences filed their submissions in time, including those in Belgium, England and Wales, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Scotland, and Switzerland. But several of Eastern European countries seem to have either overshot the deadline or submitted their reports to Rome without publicity.

At the time of writing, at least two former communist territories have published national synod syntheses - the Czech Republic and Lithuania - while many Polish dioceses have also issued reports.

Although there is a limited amount of material with which to make comparisons, the available texts do have a different feel to those of Western European countries.

Lithuanias national synthesis, for example, begins with a reflection on faith. While considering the various details of our Church life, we often forget the main condition - the need to constantly nurture our communio, our relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ, it says.

It voices concern about a lack of true community in the Church and calls for priests to make greater efforts to work with lay people, while sympathizing with the clergys struggles with loneliness and high expectations.

It concludes by identifying five priorities: to foster relations between clergy and laity; to build an open and responsible community; to help people to grow and develop in the Church; to not alienate people; and to be fully committed to being a synodal Church.

Compare this with the Irish Churchs synthesis, which begins by describing the impact of clerical abuse. It then sets out the case for co-responsible leadership, saying: Many people feel that decision-making and authority are exercised solely by priests and bishops. This power structure provokes discontent in them, frustration and anger with the processes of decision-making and exercise of authority at all levels in the Church.

The Irish report notes that there were calls from both young and older participants for optional celibacy, married priests, female priests, and the return of those who had left the priesthood to marry.

It also emphasizes that there was a clear, overwhelming call for the full inclusion of LGBTQI+ people in the Church.

Its tempting to conclude from this brief comparison that Eastern European submissions are concerned with matters of faith and community, while Western European ones are focused more on power structures and sexuality. But we would need to compare more documents to be able to assert this confidently.

Besides, concerns about the treatment of LGBT+ Catholics are not absent from diocesan stage reports in ex-communist countries.

The Polish Archdiocese of Pozna noted in its synthesis that according to a significant group of synod participants, the Churchs attitude toward LGBT+ people is inadequate: There is a lack of love of neighbor.

It observed that young people expressed their pain at the tough and sometimes even aggressive language of some clergy and laity toward LGBT+ people, although a very small group of participants expressed hope for a change in Church teaching.

It concluded: The majority of synod participants who spoke out made it clear that a change in language and attitudes toward these people is needed: We expect them to be treated with respect, compassion, and gentleness, just as the Catechism speaks of.

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Europes diocesan synod reports suggest that its helpful to make other distinctions, too beyond East and West.

There is also arguably a division between Catholics in northern and southern Europe. The German national synthesis report, for instance, has strikingly different concerns than that of Italy.

The German report concludes with this quotation:

If they wish to restore trust in the Church, the bishops need to take up a clear position on the pressing issues of our time, such as equal access for all baptized people to church offices, a reassessment of sexual morality, and a non-discriminatory approach to homosexual and queer people.

Taking up a clear position also means speaking a language that people can understand and that does not hide behind convoluted wording. As regards the abuse scandals, there needs to be an unambiguous acceptance of responsibility; power needs to be taken under control, and an attempt made to make amends to the victims of sexual and spiritual abuse.

The Italian report, meanwhile, makes only a glancing reference to LGBT+ people with their parents in a list of groups that are seeking greater inclusion in the Church.

It says that the local Church is too priest-centric and calls for a greater sharing of responsibilities between clergy and lay people. But it also notes that laity are not exempt from the risk of developing forms of clericalism in the management of the small spaces of power entrusted to them.

Moving beyond broad geographical distinctions, there are also cultural and linguistic divisions in the European Church.

The Swiss bishops conference noted in May that there were glaring differences within the Church in Switzerland itself. It contrasted the concerns of the countrys French and Italian speakers (sometimes called Latins) with those of German speakers.

In the reflection on the quality of synodical work, the spiritual concerns of Latin Switzerland, focused more on attitude, were supplemented with the observations and advice of German-speaking Switzerland, which are more structure-oriented, it said.

So we could compare the reports of Latin and Germanic countries, highlighting the spiritual concerns of the former and the latters emphasis on structural changes.

This might be a useful way of exploring the divisions within the European Church, but it also has its limitations. The national synthesis documents of France and Germany actually overlap at many points. Both are centered on the abuse crisis, governance issues, married priests, the role of women, divorce and remarriage, and homosexuality.

The various synod reports could also be sorted into those of core and periphery countries, with rich nations like France, Germany, and Austria on one side and poor ones such as Albania, Belarus, and Bosnia-Herzegovina on the other.

There are countless other ways to frame the divisions between European Catholics - which is not surprising when you consider that the continent has around 750 million inhabitants, about 200 languages, and some 160 distinct cultural groups.

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Fortunately, the participants in Europes continental phase will not be asked to draw common themes out of the national synthesis documents.

They will focus instead on the first edition of the synod on synodalitys instrumentum laboris, or working document, which will be produced by the General Secretariat of the Synod of Bishops and based on all the whole worlds national synthesis documents.

According to the Vaticans official handbook, each continent will produce a final document, inspired by the first instrumentum laboris, which will be used to draft a second working document for use at the bishops assembly in October 2023.

But as Europes Church leaders draft the final text, contrasting priorities will inevitably emerge. Will the document be able to reflect the desires of Western European Catholics without downplaying those of Eastern Europeans? Will it have a Latin or Germanic flavor? Will it lean towards the concerns of the core or the periphery?

According to the synod handbook, the group responsible for the continent-wide meeting will be the Council of European Bishops Conferences (CCEE). Thats a good sign because the CCEE is a truly representative organization. It has 39 members, including not only national bishops conferences but also lesser-known bodies such as the Eparchy of Mukachevo (in western Ukraine) and the Diocese of Chiinu (based in Moldova).

The CCEEs president is the (U.S.-born) Lithuanian Archbishop Gintaras Gruas. Its vice presidents are the Serbian Bishop Ladislav Nemet and Luxembourgs Cardinal Hollerich, who is also a pivotal figure in the synod on synodalitys third and final stage. So the CCEEs leadership has a good balance between different geographical regions.

Will the continental phase result in a final document that equally delights French traditionalists, German synodal way participants, and Ukrainian Catholics living in bomb shelters?

That is probably impossible.

But it will be worth watching how the documents drafters navigate the many fault lines of European Catholicism, and what viewpoints on the continent take centerstage.

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Can the synodal process overcome Europe's East-West divide? - The Pillar

This article is an opinion piece from Bill Lockwood. Catch American Liberty with Bill Lockwood weekly at 11 a.m. Saturdays on NewsTalk 1290.

The "bare bones" definition of socialism is normally thought to be a broad category of economic or political theories advocating collective control over ownership of means of production. The Soviet Union confiscated all factories, farms, and the machinery of production. This general concept, however, falls far short of what socialism has come to encompass.

Friedrich Hayek (1899-1992), the Austrian-British economist explains that "socialism has evolved in the twentiethcentury to mean income redistribution in pursuit of 'equality,' not through government ownership of means of production but through institutions of the welfare state and the 'progressive' income tax. The means may have changed, but the ostensible end equality remained the same."

For example, if socialist Bernie Sanders wanted to be entirely truthful about healthcare, he would not say that government can offer citizens anything for free, but that he wants health care to become a government-run monopoly financed entirely by taxes.

Max Eastman

Max Eastman (1883-1969) was a prominent editor, political activist and "prominent radical" who, like many in President Woodrow Wilson's "progressive" America, became infatuated with Marxism. Eastman traveled to the Soviet Union to learn firsthand how to be a good socialist and became friends with Leon Trotsky.

Years later, when Eastman became convinced that socialism is void of validity, he reflected upon his time as a Marxist in his book "Reflections on the Failure of Socialism."

I sadly regret the precious twenty years I spent muddling and messing around with this idea," Eastman wrote," which with enough mental clarity and moral force I might have seen through when I went to Russia in 1922."

Would that more progressives could open their minds to come to that obvious conclusion. Eastman reflected in his book "Marxism Is It Science?"

"Marxists profess to reject religion in favor of science, but they cherish a belief that the external universe is evolving with reliable, if not divine, necessity in exactly the direction in which they want it to go," Eastman wrote. "They do not conceive themselves as struggling to build the communist society in a world which is of its own nature indifferent to them. They conceive themselves as traveling toward that society in a world which is like a moving-stairway, but walking in the wrong direction. This is not a scientific, but in the most technical sense, a religious conception of the world."

Eastman knew whereof he spoke.

When its doctrines are examined, socialism more closely resembles a religious concept than anything else. The only difference between socialism and Christianity is that the latter is grounded upon historical fact while socialistic faith is founded upon unproven assumptions. Communism particularly is a philosophy of faith in the dialectic the zig-zagging of history onward and upward to a more perfect society.

Dr. James D. Bales was an authority on communism/socialism who taught at Harding University in Arkansas. He authored more than seventy scholarly works, including dozens on socialism, and lectured both in America and foreign countries on the dangers of communism.

Communists represent the antithesis which the dialectic has decreed will destroy us, the thesis. It is this faith, Bales said, which helps keep the rank and file members at their tasks when the going is difficult.

This is also, we might add, why myriads of collegiate students, trained by their Neo-Marxist professors, continue to march fanatically to the drumbeat of socialism.

Norman Thomas

Because of the religious nature of socialism, it was a simple matter for Norman Thomas (1884-1968), to trade his ministerial garbs and Presbyterian beliefs for a heaven-on-earth utopia strategy of socialism. He became known as "Mr. Socialist" in America.

Thomas, in turn, was heavily influenced by the nineteenth-century social gospel theology developed by Walter Rauschenbusch. Rauschenbusch was himself a Baptist preacher of the nineteenthcentury who mixed a version of modernistic "Christianity" together with Marxism to craft what became known as the "social gospel."

The key to Rauschenbuschs theology was his concept of the Kingdom of God. To him, this Kingdom was not located in another place called heaven or in a future millennium, but could best be described in modern terms as a level of consciousness in which one recognized the immanence of God in human life and the interconnected, interacting, interdependent nature of the entire human species.

So writes Dr. Elizabeth Balanoff, professor of history at Roosevelt University in Chicago, Illinois, in her paper, "Norman Thomas: Socialism and the Social Gospel."

"Walter Rauschenbusch was convinced that this was the original Christian vision which had been distorted and lost with time," Balanoff wrote, "and that it was possible to regain it."

Because of the religious nature of socialism, H.G. Wells stated: "Socialism is to me a very great thing indeed, the form and substance of my ideal life and all the religion I possess." Mr. Edmund Optiz, writing in "Foundation for Economic Education, published in 1969, observed that, "as a religion, socialism promised a terrestrial paradise, a heaven on earth." This is why Optiz called socialism "a fanatic faith."

For this reason the devotees of socialism in America, whose number continues to grow through colleges and universities, continue to trumpet what the glories of socialism will do in America but this is blind faith.

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Outlining the Dawn of Socialism 'Religion' - Newstalk1290

In January last year, a Chinese construction porter in Hubei called Jiang Tianlu was taking his seven-year-old daughter to school when police appeared, seized him and locked him up in a local psychiatric hospital. For Mr Jiang, the ordeal was terrifying, but it wasnt new. It was his fifth or sixth time he has lost count. This had become the authorities way of dealing with his efforts to get justice for his father, who was beaten to death by a well-connected local official in 2004. Mr Jiangs repeated letters and visits to petition the government in Beijing had annoyed the wrong people.

In a report released this week by the NGO Safeguard Defenders, Mr Jiang recounts his treatment during previous hospital stays: he was tied to a bed, beaten around the head, forced to take drugs, subjected to electroshock therapy and humiliated by guards. All of this took place in the name of treatment for his mental health illness. His true illness, of course, is not psychological. The real sickness is the Chinese Communist Party and the regime it runs.

Mr Jiangs case is just one of 99 examined by Safeguard Defenders these are the only ones they could find public information on but the cases span the length and breadth of China, suggesting the practice is widespread. All of them involve innocent citizens thrown into psychiatric wards against their will and detained for anything from a few days to more than 15 years. Most recounted being tied down to their bed for hours, some left to lie in their own faeces for so long that their skin ulcerated, many were beaten, given forcible injections or drugs or electroshock treatment with no anaesthetic.

What were their crimes? Some were democracy protesters or dissidents, like Dong Yaoqiong or Ink Girl, as shes known, a real estate agent who was locked up in a hospital after streaming footage of herself throwing ink on a picture of Xi Jinping. She came out suffering from a dementia-like condition (in her 30s), incontinence and night terrors.

For the most part, though, the criminally insane locked up in this way are not even politically active dissidents, as such. They are petitioners like Mr Jiang, often among Chinas poorest and least educated citizens, who have attracted punishment simply for trying to get restitution for specific grievances.

The petitioning system has a very long history in China. For centuries, it was one of the few ways ordinary people had of circumventing pernicious local officials and appealing to an imperial authority for justice when it worked, that is. It continued under communism, when people began writing letters to Chairman Mao instead. But petitioners have always run a risk by taking on local vested interests and challenging corrupt officials. They have little protection when the police come to take revenge.

Officially, using psychiatric wards as detention and torture centres is against Chinese law, let alone a myriad of international rules and norms, but the law is a fickle thing in China. Aside from the policy aim of stability maintenance, a priority that is thought to cost the government $217billion per year more than the military budget the practice can be a money-spinner for the hospitals or doctors who collude in it. Occasionally, its even used by families who want to disappear an inconvenient member.

Getting someone sectioned is, of course, just one way of making them go away in China. There are other extra-judicial regimes, documented by Safeguard Defenders among others, like the liuzhi prison system run directly by the CCP or the residential surveillance at a designated location (secret jail) system. These are in addition to the regular justice system, where conviction rates recently reached 99.97 per cent, the highest since public records began in 1980. But of course, as Xi expands his campaign for total control of Chinas 1.4 billion people, public records of such policies are getting harder to find. Which is why we ought to bear witness while we can.

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China's real sickness isn't its dissidents, but the Chinese Communist Party - The Telegraph

Theres just no upside to communism. Even when they can force an entire country to bend to their will and mass any and all resources at their disposal, they all still come up short. Not just a little short, either. Way short.

From the end of World War II through the end of the Cold War, communism was always trying to keep up with the capitalist western countries. In order to stay even slightly competitive, the Soviet Union had to steal the best technology, it couldnt develop any of it on their own.

The Soviets stole nuclear weapons and advanced jet engines from the West, giving the communists a chance against the United States, NATO, and other western armies for centuries to come. With all that in mind, one might be tempted to think that the worst among the stolen technologies would be nuclear weapons. But that person would be wrong.

Arguably the biggest disaster for American and western military secrets didnt come in the form of information from a spy, electronic eavesdropping, or even the outright theft of the tech. In some ways, one could say the United States just gave it away.

Americas greatest Cold War intelligence loss was the Sidewinder air-to-air missile and the communists got it because of one faulty missile.

On September 28, 1958, the Chinese Nationalist Kuomintang was fighting for its life against a Chinese invasion. The communists in mainland China were enjoying supremacy in the air, as the advanced, Soviet-built MiG-17 made its first combat appearance.

The Chinese communist MiG-17 was so far advanced over the F-86 Sabres flown by the nationalist Taiwanese, the communists were able to essentially choose when and where they would engage and for how long. Taiwans air forces were taking a beating. Then, Taiwan invoked its defense treaty with the United States.

President Eisenhower not only ordered the U.S. Navy to protect the islands supply lines, he authorized Operation Black Magic, the strategic retrofitting of Taiwans fighter aircraft. They were going to be specially-modified to carry the United States small but mighty new weapon: the AIM-9 Sidewinder missile.

The Sidewinder was (and is) one of the most stunningly capable missiles ever built by anyone anywhere. Since the Navy introduced the weapon in 1956, it has been adopted by the Air Force, then much of the rest of the modern world. Even today, variants of the AIM-9 are still in use all over the world.

So are rip-offs of the same future technology.

Sidewinders are cheap, effective, and are also the most successful missile ever developed with more than 270 air-to-air kills in its operational history. One of those kills should have been a Chinese Peoples Liberation Army Air Force MIG-17 in the skies over the Strait of Taiwan on September 28, 1958, but it wasnt to be.

One nationalist Sidewinder missile hit a Chinese communist MiG-17 over the strait, but the missile didnt explode on impact. Instead it embedded itself into the aircraft, which limped home with a missile in its belly.

Eventually, the communists reverse-engineered the brilliant, easily produced weapon, creating the Soviet K-13 weapon. Everything about the original K-13 missiles were stolen and within three years, the Soviets were using NATOs own new missile against them.

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The best Cold War communist military technology was all stolen from the West - We Are The Mighty

Political deadlock is not confined to the election of the President, Prime Minister and Speaker of Parliament and the formation of the government. It is also expressed in the manifestations of the deep crisis of the political process that is based on this system, which is breeding failure and corruption.

The statement added that "the ongoing struggle for power, among the ruling forces, does not represent a struggle over projects for state-building, but rather an extension of the fighting over sharing wealth and influence."

It continued: "In this sense, any new government formed according to the power-sharing quota approach will be doomed to failure, whoever is assigned to head it. Such a government will not differ, in essence, from any governments formed on the basis of ethno-sectarian power-sharing in the past years."

It warned that the insistence on continuing this approach will only deepen the crisis and open the way to dangerous paths that threaten the constitutional and democratic construction of the state and civil peace.

The partys statement also said: Based on our concern for consolidating peaceful, democratic political action, we call for the organisation of fair and honest early elections that express the true will of the Iraqis, to be organised by a truly independent interim government that enjoys national acceptance."

It added, "At this sensitive juncture, we reaffirm our democratic, patriotic, political project, which calls for Comprehensive Change to build a democratic civil state on the basis of citizenship and social justice.. a change to achieve the aspirations of our people for a free and dignified life."

"Therefore, all democratic civil forces and personalities, and the patriotic forces of change, who have not been involved in the crises, are called upon to unify efforts and organize their ranks to create a national balance of forces that provides a political alternative to the ethno-sectarian power-sharing system. This alternative has a real vision and opens up prospects towards building a state of citizenship and social justice.

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Iraq Crisis: Communist Party calls for early elections organised by an independent interim government - In Defense of Communism