Last week I found myself growing increasingly irritated with the Synod going on in Rome and the various reports coming out of it.

While I understand that the family is the core of the Church and by strengthening the family you strengthen the Church, and while I appreciate the fact that it is important for the Magisterium to look at the family in the 21st century, reading all the reports coming out of Vatican City, I became acutely aware of the fact that, what seemed to be the main points of discussion in the morass that, from all external appearances, was that Synod, are all issues rooted in excess.

What was being discussed at the Synod: divorce, remarriage, homosexuality, are all symptoms of a culture that is living beyond its means, beyond its capacity to control itself, and is bemoaning its own self-inflicted injurious acts, with the Synod acting as a Band-Aid–letting enough air pass through to allow a scab to form over a wound, but not doing anything to address the scar that will be left behind in the aftermath.

While the Magisterium was treating these issues of excess with kid gloves, while there were Princes of the Church giving rise to scandal instead of defending the teachings of our faith, while the Vatican Communications Office was releasing documents that read as if they were translated by Google Translate, and media gleefully reporting on all of it as if it were a trashy reality show, Christians around the globe continued being slaughtered by hate-filled zealots simply because they exist.

While the topics of discussion at the Synod are, indeed, important and deserve inspection and discussion, our gluttonous, Western ways and the repercussions they produce are, perhaps, not deserving of a Synod at the moment.  Perhaps the persecution, rape, crucifixion, beheading, and martyrdom of the followers of Christ might, instead, be more deserving an issue, especially by those who are in charge of the Church He left behind.