Cardinal Joseph Zen, 93, accuses Synod on Synodality of diluting doctrine and warns the Church is risking self-destruction by mimicking the fractured Anglican Communion.
Newsroom (21/11/2025 Gaudium Press) In a searing new reflection, Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-kiun, the 93-year-old bishop emeritus of Hong Kong, has accused the ongoing Synod on Synodality of steering the Catholic Church toward doctrinal confusion and potential “suicide” by transforming it into something resembling the Anglican Communion.
Drawing a parallel to the Old Testament martyr Eleazar, who chose death over scandalizing the young, Cardinal Zen writes: “I, a ninety-three-year-old man, especially admire Eleazar. Can someone who has dedicated his life to teaching young people, at the end of his life, set a bad example for them?”
The cardinal insists that truth is not subjective. “There is no ‘your truth’ and ‘my truth’,” he declares, urging the Church to remain a faithful servant of the apostolic deposit rather than a “monopolizer” of negotiable opinions.
Recalling the feasts of the Dedication of the Basilicas of Sts Peter and Paul, Zen reaffirms the Church’s visible, hierarchical structure founded on the apostles with Peter as head. He notes that Vatican II completed Vatican I’s ecclesiology and that Paul VI established the Synod of Bishops as an advisory body to the Pope—not a parliamentary assembly.
Yet the current Synod on Synodality, in Zen’s view, has abandoned that model. “The recent Synod on Synodality is no longer a synod,” he writes, “but uses the name of synod to develop a ‘mixed consultative assembly of the baptized.’” He criticizes opaque methodologies, controlled facilitation, and the removal of controversial topics—women’s leadership, clerical reform, sexual ethics, and decentralized doctrine—to closed study groups.
The publication of Fiducia Supplicans, which permits blessings for same-sex couples under certain conditions, is singled out as a prime example of confusion sown between synodal sessions, deepening global division.
Zen warns that the final document, hastily drafted and now elevated to papal magisterium for “testing” until 2028, risks becoming an elastic text open to contradictory interpretations. “My God! A document that everyone can understand differently… after three years of testing in 2028, will it be possible to reverse course?” he asks.
“Has our Church not already become something like the Anglican Church?” the cardinal writes. “Is this not suicide for the Catholic Church by wanting to assimilate itself to the world?”
Despite his sharp critique, Cardinal Zen stresses filial loyalty: “I am a Salesian; we belong to the royalist party. I criticize certain actions of the Pope precisely because I love the Pope.” He closes with a plea for prayer that the successor to St Peter—pointedly referring to the next pope as “Pope Leo”—will reunite the Church in truth and refocus it on evangelization.
Cardinal Zen’s intervention adds a prominent voice to growing unease among some bishops and theologians who fear the synodal process is eroding the Church’s apostolic identity.
The full refection can be read here
- Raju Hasmukh with files from Infocatholica
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