Stop asking questions; start answering!

By Phil Lawler ( bio - articles - email ) | Apr 09, 2026

Writing in the June/July issue of First Things about his experience as a participant in the Synod on Synodality, Bishop Robert Barron reported:

I also came, I must admit, to appreciate the language of synodality. Though every dialogue was lively and informative, very few of them moved toward decision, judgment, or resolution… So respectful were we of the ‘process’ of conversation that we had almost a phobia of coming to decision.

”This,” Bishop Barron goes on to say, “is a fatal problem for Christians entrusted with the evangelical command to announce Christ to the world.” Although his recollections of the Synod are expressed in generally positive terms, that assessment of the language of “synodality” is decidedly negative; it is a “fatal problem,” he says. Patterns of speech reflect habits of thought, and the habits of thought encouraged by the Synod of Synodality make it practically impossible for Catholic prelates to do the work of evangelization—the work that (as the bishop notes) Pope Francis had so frequently insisted is the primary work of the Church.

Synodality, as it is commonly understood (insofar as the expression is understood at all) consists mainly in asking questions, in expanding dialogue, in broadening conversations. That process is unusually popular in the world today, the post-modern world in which so many people are calling out for answers to their questions about the meaning of life, the causes of suffering, the ultimate nature of reality. But the Church exists not to continue asking those questions, but to guide us toward answers.

No doubt Christians can, and should, indeed must, continue to ask ourselves questions about how best we can address those questions, and how best we can apply the principles that we have learned to the knotty questions of the day. We do not have all the answers. But we do have some of the answers—including the one overarching answer to all the questions that plague mankind, the answer that is found in Jesus Christ. If the process of synodality inhibits us from answering men’s questions and leading them to faith in Christ (as I believe it does), then that process should be abandoned.

The habitual tendency to favor “dialogue,” as if it were an end in itself, has cropped up again recently, in debates about the wars in Ukraine and in Iran. Again and again, Church leaders have called for negotiations to end the fighting and prevent further bloodshed. Of course it is always preferable to resolve conflicts by talking rather than fighting—if the talks can settle the contentious issues. But there are times when peace talks collapse, when opposing views and competing claims prove irreconcilable. Moral authorities should have something more to say to world leaders at those times when negotiations fail and “dialogue” seems a dead end.

And the Catholic tradition does have more to say. The just-war tradition provides practical guidance on how to weigh competing claims, how to judge whether military action is the only realistic option for ending an intolerable situation, and how—if war is necessary—that war can be fought without further violation of moral norms. In the past few weeks, intelligent Catholics who hold strongly contrasting opinions on the morality of the war in Iran have shared their frustration with the statements from prelates who constant but vague pleas for more “dialogue” add little to the debate, and convey the inaccurate impression that the Catholic Church endorses pacifism.

If we Catholics could agree to argue about these wars within the framework of just-war thinking—even including principled pacifists in the conversation—we would still find many faithful Catholics disagreeing with each other. But at least we would clarify our thinking, sharpening our understanding of the key questions that must be raised and answered. In the process we would offer the world an example of how faithful people reason through a difficult problem.

The world of the 21st century lacks—it cries out for—a rational way to answer all its questions. Our society is plagued by the temptation to believe that there are no answers: a formula for despair. The great challenge for the Church is to point toward answers, not to encourage the endless search for further questions.