REPRESSED TRUTH turns poisonous,” warned Cardinal Maximos IV Saïgh, one of the fathers of the Second Vatican Council. It’s an insight that could be applied to the debate over synodality, according to Fr Gerry O’Hanlon. “If you rely on control and force to inculcate what’s true, and don’t, as the Vatican decree Dei Verbum says, turn to persuasion, then you are really going down a rabbit hole.”