The Sat Report: Synodality, the Conversion of Relationships
Analysis of Part II of the Final Document of the Synod on Synodality
Continuing our analysis of the Final Document of the Synod of Synodality, we now move on to the section on ‘Relationships’, which became the named objective of the Synod from the organisers themselves, after they dampened the expectations they themselves inflated, down from ‘the most important ecclesial event since Vatican II’ to something along the lines that the Synod is ‘friends we made along the way.’ I’ve attached a copy of the official working English translation of the Final Document.
Listen to Peter’s Call
This section, as all the sections of the document, begins with a meditation in voice of Cardinal-designate Radcliffe, on the Resurrection account of the disciples going out to fish. It does so to illustrate that just as the disciples heard and accepted Peter’s invitation to go fish, the Synodal process is Pope Francis’ instruction, and we must hear the call and accept it.
The text tells us that apparently many people were “surprised” and the “delighted” to be asked to join the Synodal journey. That is news me. This sentiment is immediately juxtaposed by those who “feel” excluded or judged. It is not that they are actually excluded or judged. They merely feel this, which obvious puts the Church in a particular bind considering those that the document then lists as feeling excluded are because of “their marital situation, identity or sexuality”, all three thing which the Church cannot change it’s teaching on.
The document emphatically states; “when we listen to our sisters and brothers, we are participants in the way that God in Jesus Christ comes to meet each of us.” This is I think the main modus operandi and the motive that the Holy Father has, for instance, his regular meetings with homosexual activists or transgenders. Church teaching on these issues are not going to change, and for what it is worth, the Pope’s mind on these things hasn’t changed either and nor will it. Despite the Holy Father having had more meetings with these groups than any Pope in history, he still reserves his most harsh language for gender ideology, and his most vulgar and derogatory when speaking of homosexuals. These meetings to do I think give credibility to the Church when she publishes documents like Dignitas infinita, as no one can say that Pope Francis hasn’t listened to the ‘lived experiences’ of transgenders, for instance, when clearly reiterating Church teaching.
The Document makes a great emphasis on women, the shadow Synod of this Synod what was on Synodality, stating; “the need for conversion definitely concerns the relations between men and women.” It continues, “we bear witness to the Gospel when we seek to live in relationships that respect the equal dignity and reciprocity between men and women. The widely expressed pain and suffering on the part of many women from every region and continent, both lay and consecrated, during the synodal process, reveal how often we fail to live up to this vision.”
Synodality and Clerical Sexual Abuse
After listing the various conflicts in the world today, to say that are a direct result of “relational failures” that have become “structures of sin”, the document makes its first and only detailed reference to the clerical abuse crisis (the other mentions are in passing or as part of list). “Many of the evils that afflict our world are also visible in the Church. The abuse crisis, in its various and tragic manifestations, has brought untold and often ongoing suffering to victims and survivors, and to their communities. The Church must listen with particular attention and sensitivity to the voice of victims and survivors of abuse. This includes sexual, spiritual, economic and institutional abuse, as well as the abuse of power and conscience by members of the clergy or those holding ecclesial roles. Listening is a fundamental aspect of the journey towards healing, repentance, justice and reconciliation. At a time characterised by a global crisis of trust, which encourages people to live in distrust and suspicion, the Church must acknowledge its own shortcomings. It must humbly ask for forgiveness, must care for victims, provide for preventative measures, and strive in the Lord to rebuild mutual trust.”
These are good and comforting words, but all Catholics, especially the victims of this grotesque evil, want actions, zero-tolerance, and full transparency. The cases of Zanchetta, Rupnik and Príncipi, show that the Church, and the Vatican in particular, have a very long way to go.
Moving from the abuse crisis, the final document pivots to the Church being open to the world. “History leaves us with a legacy of conflicts motivated at times in the name of religion, undermining the credibility of religions themselves.” Okay, this is then immediately followed by “much suffering has been caused by the scandal of division between Christian communions and the hostility between sisters and brothers who have received the same Baptism. The renewed experience of ecumenical momentum that marks the synod's journey opens the way towards hope.” The Vatican has often stated that ‘ecumenical momentum’ is a fruit of this Synodal process without actually giving any concrete examples, to use a buzzword often repeated at the Synod, and repeating something often enough doesn’t make it come into being. ‘The most important ecclesial event since Vatican II’, I’m looking at you.
Ministry in Synodality
The text then moves onto charisms, vocation and ministries for mission, stating that each and every baptised person has a responsibility in the mission of the Church, and has been endowed with gifts by the Holy Spirit to complete this mission. The document proposes that “in a missionary synodal Church, under the leadership of their pastors, communities will be able to send people out in mission and support those they have sent.” This is a noble idea, but the practicalities of this haven’t been thought out. Then again I don’t think practicalities is the point of this document, which I only came to realisation of when I read the section on the ‘ministry of listening’, more on that later. Bear with me or scroll down to the penultimate paragraph.
What follows is a list of how women already dominate Church life the world over; “active in the life of small Christian communities and parishes. They run schools, hospitals and shelters. They lead initiatives for reconciliation and promoting human dignity and social justice. Women contribute to theological research and are present in positions of responsibility in Church institutions, in diocesan curias and the Roman Curia. There are women who hold positions of authority and are leaders of their communities.” This paragraph 60 received the least amount of yes votes at the Synod, primarily due to the divisive line; “Additionally, the question of women's access to diaconal ministry remains open. This discernment needs to continue.” This I think has been carefully worded to placate the pantsuit nuns, and get enough votes from the non-ideologues, to pass. It makes no mention of ordination of women to the diaconate, speaking only of “diaconal ministry”, and given the context of what Tucho Fernández said at the meeting of Synod participants with the him on this topic, two days before the vote, all this means is more of what lay women already do in the Church. We’ll have a deep dive on that meeting, where Pope Francis stands on the issue and a broader look at it the socio-historic context of the deaconesses, in future a Sat Report, probably early next year.
As to what I want to say right now, can be taken from paragraph 66 of the document which I think is the key to putting this issue to bed. “The synodal process urged local Churches to respond with creativity and courage to the needs of the mission. This response should involve a form of discernment among the various charisms in order to identify which of these should take a ministerial form and thus be equipped with adequate criteria, tools and procedures, … a missionary synodal Church would encourage more forms of lay ministries, that is, ministries that do not require the sacrament of Holy Orders, and this not only within the liturgical sphere. They can be instituted or not instituted.” The way the Vatican squares the deaconess circle is all here, in plain sight. I wonder if the radical feminist ideologues with accept this, probably not, because they don’t actually want women deacons as the female equivalent of the permeant diaconate. They want women priests.
The document then speaks of children and young people, rehashing much of what was said and published at the 2018 Synod on Young People, before moving on to the what I am dubbing the J.D. Flynn paragraph, because I’m certain if Flynn had not asked the question on at one of the Synod Press Briefings about people with disabilities and learning impairments, this paragraph would not have been added, because as sad as this is to say, the Synod and the entire Synodal Process had a massive lacuna when it came to people with disabilities. The paragraph reads as follows; “n promoting co-responsibility for the mission of all the baptised, we recognise the apostolic capacities of people with disabilities who feel called and sent out as active agents of evangelisation. We appreciate the contribution that comes from the immense wealth of humanity they bring with them. We acknowledge their experiences of suffering, marginalisation, and discrimination, sometimes suffered even within the Christian community itself due to attempts at showing compassion that can be paternalistic. In order to encourage their participation in the life and mission of the Church, we propose the establishment of a Church-based research centre on disability.” Again, with a number of the proposals of this Synod and this document, they raise more questions that the answers, is the research centre local, is it under the supervision of a dicastery in the Roman Curia? Who knows? Will it ever come into fruition probably not. The only guarantee of nothing being done is if Pope Francis founded a commission to study the topic.
On ordained ministry, the document states that “the Synodal Assembly desires that the People of God have a greater voice in choosing bishops.” In theory, this will make the episcopacy more conservative, reflecting where practicing Catholics, on a global scale, sit. Of course that is a sweeping generality, and it all depends on how this process works, whose input is sort, what kind of people want to get involved in the process, and whether ordinary lay people will show the same levels of apathy for this as they had for the Synodal process thus far.
What I find more interesting is the what the document says about titular bishops; “in the case of titular bishops today, the constitutive relationship between the bishop and the local Church does not appear with sufficient clarity, for example, in the case of papal representatives and those who serve in the Roman Curia. It would be opportune to continue to reflect upon this matter.” The one big hope I had for Pope Francis’ reform of the Roman Curia, would be that he would have abolished the practice of automatically raising dicasterial under-secretaries to the episcopacy. Sadly this didn’t happen with Praedicate evangelium. My hope is that this Synodality brings to an end this completely unnecessary practice.
Questions about the role of bishops were raised in the Synodal process and were addressed in this document. “The need also surfaced to clarify the role of auxiliary bishops and to expand the tasks that bishops can delegate. The experience of bishops emeriti in their new way of being at the service of the People of God should also be taken into consideration.” If I were in charge, I would abolish bishop emeriti, an unnecessary novelty, that causes bishopflation, especially in places like Europe, were the number of practicing Catholics continues to fall, but the numbers of bishops continues to rise. The solution to elderly bishops, who are incapacitated or unable to perform their sacramental functions, is to have coadjutor bishops. Simple.
The document then moves on to priests, the forgotten of the Synodal process, acknowledging that “Priests also need to be accompanied and supported, especially in the early stages of their ministry as well as at times of weakness and fragility.” The document in a later paragraph speaks of the concern of “a sense of isolation and loneliness, as well as the feeling of being overwhelmed by the expectation that they were required to fulfil every need”, proposing a co-responsibility in mission with the bishops and permanent deacons as way to combat this, stating that this “will surely have an impact on decision-making processes, enabling them to have a more clearly synodal character.” Fine but then apparently this “will also help to overcome clericalism”, without any justification for this confident assertion.
The Synod laments that “many Christians continue to be uninformed of the ministry of deacon, in part because, although it was restored by Vatican II in the Latin Church as a distinct and permanent order (cf. LG 29), it has not been welcomed in every part of the world.” This betrays a clericalist attitude from the Vatican, perhaps the reason the permanent diaconate hasn’t taken hold is because ordinary lay people don’t see a need for it, many don’t feel a vocation to it and it is seen as a the sort of clericalism that Vatican II was supposed to have consigned to history. This is same with the deaconess issue, what is the issue that it resolves? It all feels like the antiquarianism and ‘backwardism’ that Pope Francis often laments and rails against. Perhaps there is a pressing need then make the argument for it, don’t do the Democrat thing and blame the voters.
On to actual proposal for greater participation of the laity in a Synodal Church, the document lays out the following:
i) increased participation of laymen and laywomen in Church discernment processes and all phases of decision-making processes (drafting, making and confirming decisions)
ii) greater access of laymen and laywomen to positions of responsibility in dioceses and ecclesiastical institutions, including seminaries, institutes and theological faculties; more fully enacting existing provisions
iii) greater recognition and support for the lives and charisms of consecrated men and women and their employment in positions of ecclesial responsibility
iv) a greater number of qualified lay people serving as judges in all canonical processes
v) effective recognition of the dignity and respect for the rights of those who are employed in the Church and its institutions
This section of the Synod document concludes with a paragraph on the proposal of institution and establishment of a “ministry of listening.” This was first muted at a Synod Press Briefing as role that would be the purview solely of women, which then was widely ridiculed on the internet. The original proposal that was mentioned was entrusting women with this ministry of ‘listening’, complementing the parish priest, the deacon, and the catechist. An actual quote from the Synod floor was "women know how to listen, and they listen in a different way, and they could do it as a service, as something totally different to Confession (the sacrament).” As mentioned in a previous post on this, someone had the idea of making those agony aunt newspaper columns from the last century, as an instituted ministry in the Church solely for women.
The proposal, as laid out in the final document, removes all mention of women, stating; “the Assembly also focused on the proposal to establish a ministry of listening and accompaniment, showing a variety of perspectives. Some were in favour of this proposal, because this ministry would represent a prophetic way of emphasising the importance of listening and accompaniment in the community”, whilst also underlining “the need for further study, for example, of the relationship between this ministry of listening and accompaniment and spiritual accompaniment, pastoral counselling, and the celebration of the Sacrament of Reconciliation.” The paragraph also stressed the disagreements on this idea, which my hunch tells me that the proposal itself must have come from important people in the Vatican, maybe even the Pope himself, because why keep trying to keep an idea alive that the document also says that Synodal delegates felt that “listening and accompaniment are the task of all the baptised, without there being the need for a specific ministry.”
That brings to an end Part II of the final document of the Synod on Synodality. The next section focuses on structural and bureaucratic changes to the Church to make it more Synodal, probably the most consequential part of the document. See you then.