Last month, some four hundred and fifty Catholic leaders from around the world – cardinals, archbishops, bishops, priests and nuns, professors and students, lay people and women – gathered in Rome for four weeks of structured conversations. This is one phase of an effort that began with national surveys of Catholics in 2021 and will conclude in Rome next fall. The whole thing is known as the Synod on Synodality, after a Greek term for gathering. Pope Francis, who convened the synod, opened and closed the proceedings with masses at St. Peter’s Basilica and, on several days, participated in the conversations that took place in the Vatican audience hall.
The daily sessions were closed to the media, but during the last week of discussions I spoke with participants in nearby cafes and pilgrim houses. At this point, even though the conversations had been going on for three weeks, it seemed that no one was yet sure what exactly the Synod on synodality should be about. Was it a formal synod of bishops, as defined in the early 1960s during the Second Vatican Council, or an informal assembly? Was it about the state of the Church, or the governance of the Church, or a renewal in the daily lives of Catholics – which in the United States involves issues such as marriage, sexuality, gender and economic inequalities, as well as the climate emergency? And could this have any real effect, given that a synod is convened not to set policy but to make recommendations to the Pope? None of this was clear. One participant noted that it was difficult to know whether the synod was over-managed or under-managed.
What was clear from the start was that this synod could have been the cornerstone of a Francis’ first decade as pope. More than his recent predecessors, Francis has used interviews and individual meetings to communicate his prerogatives. Shortly after his election, in March 2013, he adopted an attitude of progressive reform, asking, in reference to Vatican II: “Have we done everything that the Holy Spirit asked us to do during the Council?” He said no and warned: “We don’t want to change and, what’s more, there are those who want to go back. » A few months later, in discussion with the Jesuit Antonio Spadaro, the pope outlined his vision of synodality. Formally, it is a third element of the Church’s authority structure, along with primacy (papal authority) and collegiality (the obligation of the pope, as bishop of Rome, to work with other bishops). Informally, that’s one way to do it. “It seems to me that the current method is not dynamic,” Francis said. “We must walk united with our differences: there is no other way to become “one”. »
Other synods during his tenure – on the family, in 2014 and 2015, and on the Pan-Amazon region, in 2019 – failed due to resistance from traditionalists. The cardinals who organized this one – Mario Grech, of Malta, and Jean-Claude Hollerich, of Luxembourg – ensured that the more than two hundred voting delegates appointed at the regional level were joined by approximately one hundred and twenty others chosen by Francis , a move that some saw as a papal effort to outwit his traditionalist adversaries. Notably, nearly a fifth of voting delegates were women, an unprecedented proportion. In an interview with the Argentine news agency Télam (given in late September and published during the synod), Francis outlined his hopes for the work, saying: “John XXIII had a very clear perception: the Church must change. Paul VI agreed, as did the popes who succeeded him. It’s not just about changing the way we do things, it’s about changing growth, in favor of people’s dignity.” It was therefore widely expected that this synod would address issues that had been brewing for a decade, such as LGBTQ rights and the role of women in the Church, and that tensions between traditionalists and progressives could finally rise open the confrontation.
They did not do it. The gathering turned out to be a meta affair, more about process than substance. For several hours most mornings, participants sat in groups of a dozen or so around round tables and discussed topics derived from the preparatory sessions, organized by themes such as communion, participation and mission. The sessions followed a process intended to foster discernment, through listening and “talking in the Spirit,” which typically included brief remarks from participants; answers; and several rounds of silent prayer. The groups produced a series of statements, which were consolidated into a summary report which was then presented to the assembly for amendments (over twelve hundred in total) and approval. The process was circular: through listening, participants strove to make Catholicism a “listening” Church rather than an authoritarian and demanding Church; through the synod, they would learn how to proceed in a more synodal way.
What did they talk about? Only the participants know. At the beginning, Francis enjoined them to undertake a “public speaking fast,” that is, to maintain confidentiality. However, some details have leaked out. One participant spoke of a young LGBTQ person who felt unwelcome by church leaders and committed suicide. Cardinal Gerhard Müller, a German traditionalist who has always opposed Francis, broke the fast by giving an interview in which he claimed the synod had been rigged. “Everything is changing and we must now be open to homosexuality and the ordination of women,” he said. A traditionalist cleric left a session for fear of being photographed sitting next to James Martin, an American Jesuit who advocates for LGBTQ Catholics. In the second week, a briefing indicated that the synod had affirmed its opposition to homophobia, but one participant told me that the sessions on the subject had been “brutal.” (After the synod, Archbishop Andrew Nkea Fuanya of Cameroon said: “In Africa, we understand marriage as the union between a man and a woman, and anything short of that is witchcraft “, adding: “This is something we have said very clearly. strongly.”)
One of the justifications put forward for the “what happens in the Vatican stays in the Vatican” approach was that details shared by individual participants would undermine the clarity of the synod’s summary report. “It’s going to be flat, which is a shame, because the conversations haven’t happened,” one of the report’s editors, Bishop Shane Mainlay of Sandhurst, Australia, told me near the end of the synod, adding that he wished he and my colleagues could devote an extra week to it. The report, released on the last day, is opaque and sketchy, but it doesn’t appear that more time would have helped. The real flaw is that it generally only records issues on which there has been majority agreement, omitting any real note of conflict. Although the report rightly touts the presence of women at the synod – calling on the Church to “adopt a more decisive commitment to understanding and accompanying women from a pastoral and sacramental perspective” – there is no a word on the prospect of ordaining women. women to the priesthood (only a question about how the Church can “include more women in existing roles and ministries”), and the question of ordaining women as deacons (a role involving both a presence at the altar and leadership in the community) is responded with a gesture toward “further study.” The word “divorce” never appears (only “complicated marital situations”), nor do the terms “homosexual”, “gay” or “LGBTQ” (just questions of “identity and sexuality”), with the ‘explanation that “sometimes the anthropological categories that we have developed are not capable of capturing the complexity of the elements emerging from experience or scientific knowledge and require greater precision and more in-depth study.
