Catholic News Agency reports that Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-kiun condemned the Synod on Synodality as an “ironclad manipulation” and “insult to the dignity of the bishops” during Pope Leo XIV’s January 2026 consistory. The 93-year-old prelate criticized the process for bypassing the college of bishops while paradoxically claiming to “understand hierarchical ministry,” denounced the “ridiculous and almost blasphemous” invocation of the Holy Spirit to justify innovations, and warned that regional doctrinal adaptations would fracture the Church like the Anglican Communion. The article frames Zen’s intervention as a courageous critique while omitting the fundamental incompatibility of “Bergoglian synodality” with Catholic ecclesiology.
Subversion of Hierarchical Authority
Zen correctly identifies the systematic dismantling of episcopal authority through synodal structures that reduce bishops to rubber-stamp functionaries. As Pius IX condemned in the Syllabus of Errors (1864): “The Church ought to be separated from the State, and the State from the Church” (Error 55), so this neo-synodality separates bishops from their divinely instituted governance. The cardinal’s observation that Francis “exploited the word synod” to destroy Paul VI’s Synod of Bishops reveals the modernist playbook: corruptio optimi pessima (the corruption of the best becomes the worst). Yet Zen fails to recognize that true apostolic succession ceased when bishops accepted the Novus Ordo sacramental rites, making his own sacramental authority questionable at best.
Theological Contradictions in Synodal Methodology
The cardinal’s denunciation of the “continual reference to the Holy Spirit” as blasphemous aligns with St. Pius X’s condemnation in Lamentabili Sane (1907): “Revelation could not be other than the consciousness acquired by man of his relation to God” (Proposition 20). When Zen questions whether the Holy Spirit would “repudiate two-thousand-year tradition,” he inadvertently echoes the Vincentian Canon: “Quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus creditum est” (What has been believed everywhere, always, and by all). However, his critique remains dangerously incomplete by not identifying the synod’s naturalistic foundations – the replacement of divine revelation with democratic consensus, condemned by Pius IX as making “human reason…the sole arbiter of truth” (Syllabus, Error 3).
Ecclesiological Heresy of Regional Doctrinal Adaptation
Zen’s warning about Anglican-style fractures through “different contexts” applications exposes the Protestant DNA of synodality. As Pius XI declared in Quas Primas (1925): “The Church, constituted by Christ as a perfect society, has a natural and inalienable right to perfect freedom and immunity from the power of the state” – a principle obliterated by synodal calls for cultural adaptation. The cardinal rightly identifies the contradiction in declaring the synod document “part of the magisterium” while denying it establishes norms – a textbook example of Modernist obfuscation condemned in St. Pius X’s Pascendi Dominici Gregis (1907). Yet his critique remains fatally compromised by recognizing the legitimacy of the antipope who promulgated these errors.
The Unspoken Apostasy: Recognition of False Authority
The article’s silence on Zen’s recognition of Leo XIV’s pretended authority constitutes grave theological negligence. By participating in the consistory of an antipope – one who publicly rejects extra Ecclesiam nulla salus and promotes idolatrous worship – Zen becomes complicit in the very ecclesial subversion he condemns. As the 1917 Code of Canon Law states: “Those who adhere to a schismatic sect… incur ipso facto excommunication” (Canon 2314). The cardinal’s partial critique exemplifies the fatal inconsistency of those who denounce modernist symptoms while accepting their root cause: the occupation of Peter’s See by manifest heretics. True Catholic resistance requires complete separation from the conciliar sect, not selective criticism of its errors while acknowledging its illegitimate leaders.
Source:
At consistory, Cardinal Zen slams synodality as ‘ironclad manipulation’ and ‘insult’ to bishops (catholicnewsagency.com)
Date: 10.01.2026