A book bearing the title The Trojan Horse in the Catholic Church and published by the group Catholics for Catholics arrived in the mailboxes of Catholic bishops across the country this past winter, warning them of hidden forces reshaping the church from within. The book’s central claim is stark: that the synod on synodality, Pope Francis’ three-year global process of listening and discernment that concluded in October 2024, is a calculated effort to dismantle the church’s hierarchical structure and overturn its moral teaching on sexuality and the family.
The book’s author has given no name, only the pseudonym “Enoch” borrowed from an Old Testament prophet who, tradition holds, never died and will return at the end of the world to fight the Antichrist. Its foreword was written by a participant in the very synod it condemns — one voice among more than 300 in that assembly whose account of what took place is directly and specifically contested by others who were present in the same room.
The famous Trojan horse from Greek mythology succeeded because no one looked inside of it. I am one of the bishops who received the book. Unlike in the story of the Trojan horse, I opened it. And as I read, I found myself thinking of the two disciples walking away from Jerusalem.
Two disciples, trying to make sense of a catastrophe they could not yet name. And a stranger joined them on the road. He did not announce himself. He asked, “What are you discussing?” He listened before he spoke. Only when they had been fully heard did their hearts begin to burn, and only then did they recognize him in the breaking of the bread.
That sequence — walking alongside, asking, listening, opening the word — is what the church calls synodality. It is as old as Emmaus, as old as the Council of Jerusalem, where the apostles and the whole community gathered to discern together and wrote: “It has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us” (Acts 15:28). Synodality is not a novelty but an inheritance.
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With thanks to National Catholic Reporter and Peter Dai Bui & Charles Kieffer, where this article originally appeared.
