Vatican City, Oct 4, 2023 / 17:03 pm (CNA).
On the opening day of the Synod on Synodality, a leading official of the process urged participants to read “the signs of the times” in order to “discover a grammar of synodality for our time.”
“Just like the grammar of our languages changes as they develop, so does the grammar of synodality: it changes with time,” said Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich, the relator general of the 16th Ordinary Assembly of the Synod of Bishops said in prepared remarks at the start of the afternoon session.
Discovering a new grammar of synodality, a term that means “journeying together,” may be the stated goal of the Synod, which will continue throughout the month and conclude with a final assembly in October 2024. But on its opening day, Synod leaders also highlighted the many ways in which the current gathering breaks the mold of past Synods of Bishops.
Cardinal Mario Grech noted that, for “the first time,” the inclusion of non-bishops in the Synod, including “laymen and laywomen, religious men and women, deacons, and presbyters, who are no longer ‘exceptions to the norm,’ but full members of the Assembly.”
Twenty-seven percent of the assembly’s 365 voting members are non-bishops, including 54 women. Eighty or so non-voting members, including experts and facilitators, are also participating in the process.
“No delegation could ever adequately represent the totality of the People of God, the subject of the sensus fidei,” or sense of the faithful, said Grech, who heads the Vatican office that organizes the Synod of Bishops. He also added that the Synod could not be considered a “full re-presentation” of the Church, because it did not include the full participation of the College of Bishops, like in an ecumenical council.
“But these sisters and brothers remind us by their very presence of the unity of the synodal process,” said the Maltese prelate.
The unique setting and layout of the Synod of Synodality — which is being held not in the Synod Hall, but in the larger Paul VI Audience Hall — was also a focus of opening remarks.
Cardinal Hollerich said that the decision to have participants seated “not in hierarchical order,” but at round tables to facilitate small group discussion, was not a decision made from the top down, but “mirrors the experience of the People of God” who participated in previous stages of the Synod on Synodality. That process began in 2021 and has included diocesan, national, and continental phases.
Even Pope Francis was seated at a round table, albeit at the head of the room and slightly elevated. The Pope was joined at his table by key Synod organizers, including Hollerich, Grech, Synod undersecretary Sister Nathalie Becquart, and Patriarch Ibrahim Isaac Sidrak, the head of the Coptic Catholic Church and the president-delegate for the opening day.
Those who delivered opening remarks, including Pope Francis, did so while seated. Cameras at each table captured the image of those speaking, displaying them not only on a large screen at the front of the room but also on the four displays at each roundtable.
Hollerich added that “round tables also remind us that none of us is the star in this Synod,” stating that the event’s “protagonist is the Holy Spirit.” The cardinal also suggested that bishops who “were not very active” in the preceding stages of the Synod “may face challenges” with the layout, while many of the non-bishop members, in contrast, actively participated in the Synod’s continental stage.
Synod organizers acknowledged that the process that had led to the present Synod on Synodality had not been without challenges.
Sidrak said that “at the beginning, it was not easy,” as many felt “a little disoriented” by the novelties of a multi-year synodal process that aimed for global participation. Grech also added that some whom he had encountered during earlier stages were “wary” of the process, and even said that his mother had recently asked him “why I ‘waste’ so much [time] in the Secretariat offices if it doesn’t help me preach the Gospel.”
“She was right! And I don’t want to forget this question of hers even now that we are called to pause dynamically in prayer and listening for an entire month.”
However, Synod leaders also said the proceeding stages of the Synod legitimized the current assembly. Grech said that “the whole Church and everyone in the Church had the opportunity to participate in the synodal process,” while Sidrak added the Synod assembly “was prepared by a consultation of the people of God, of each and every baptized person, each according to his or her own charism, in an even more vivid, real and concrete way.”
Cardinal Hollerich said that the assembly’s task of discovering a contemporary grammar of synodality would “not start from scratch,” but would be built upon the Church’s “rich theological tradition on synodality,” as well as the magisterium of the popes, especially Pope Francis.
The Synod’s relator general also added that the process would be guided by “basic rules which never change”: baptismal dignity, the Petrine ministry, episcopal collegiality, ordained ministry, the common priesthood of the faithful, and “their interrelation.”
Hollerich also said that the Synod’s “work of common discernment” should not be a parliamentary debate — “a battle between position A and B” and between so-called conservatives and so-called progressives — but “walking with Christ within his Church.”
With the opening day of the Synod on Synodality now complete, participants enter into a series of discussions and votes — with limited press access or media availability. Four “modules” will be devoted to the issues included in the Instrumentum laboris, the document crafted based on the results of the previous synod stages, with a final session devoted to discussing and approving a final “synthesis report.”
Hollerich said his “heartfelt hope” is that the October 2023 assembly will develop a “road map” for the following year.
“Ideally this road map should indicate where we feel consensus has been reached among us and above all within the People of God, laying down the possible steps to undertake as a response to the voice of the Spirit,” he said. “But it should also say where deeper reflection is needed and what could help that process of reflection.”
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Matthew 7:13 The Narrow Gate.
“Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the road broad that leads to destruction, and those who enter through it are many. How narrow the gate and constricted the road that leads to life. And those who find it are few.
“Discovering a new grammar of synodality, a term that means “journeying together,”
What will Catholics who want to enter through Jesus’ ‘narrow gate’ to heaven do? Those Catholics who do not want to follow the Synodal herd of people’s (Synod is not all Catholics) opinions on their way to ‘destruction’?
Might we hope for a comparison between Cardinal Hollerich’s “grammar of synodality” and Cardinal Newman’s “Grammar of Assent,” as to what actually merits belief and what does not?
In Chapter X, for example, Newman writes: “…no religion is from God which contradicts our sense of right and wrong [….] we cannot determine the character of particular actions, till we have the whole case before us out of which they arise, unless, indeed, they are in themselves [!] distinctively vicious.”
But next this, too: “We all feel the force of the maxim, “Audi alteram partem [listen to the other side].” But NOT as gratuitously (such generosity of spirit!) dismissing the above as “backwardist,” and NOT as a source of deliberate, constantly provoked, and exploited ambiguity…
One such ambiguity being the presumption—by theologians!—that theology and doctrine so overlap as to be interchangeable. Another being the presumption—by “facilitators” and “experts”—that greater degrees of egalitarianism so overlap with the institutional meaning of “hierarchical communion,” as to be interchangeable.
Newman notes somewhere the self-evident, that if parties disagree on first principles such as these, they cannot agree on conclusions. So, there’s the central ambiguity that the synodal process is not only interchangeable with content, butt IS content!
I look forward to a lot of new entries in my dictionary for the New Catholicism I’ve been working on. A simplified version might have just two entries. Welcoming: a complete repudiation of Catholicism where Catholics are unwelcome. Backwardism: Faith.
Good. True. Beautiful. But why do I cry?
Oh yeah. This is fabulous.
The synod is following the same strategy that the left has been using for the past hundred years.
They isolate and freeze their opposition with misleading epithets (“backwardists” rather than faithful Catholics) and then they redefine the terms of the debate (“love is love” rather than intestinal insemination, “relational blessings” rather than marriages).
With the FBI targeting traditional Catholics and characterizing us as domestic terrorists, while refusing to investigate church vandalism and crisis pregnancy center arson attacks, can the gulags be far behind?
Hey, you Catholics. Will you still vote for Democrats when they toss your absentee ballot over the electrified fence?
“Hey, you Catholics. Will you still vote for Democrats when they toss your absentee ballot over the electrified fence?”
The sad and scary truth is that many would. The party is always right, as they say.
If we’re speaking a new language we’re inventing a new paradigm, a change of meaning and priority. Synodality then is not indebted to historicity, revelation, and Apostolic tradition.
Synod strong men Cardinals Hollerich and Grech’s conceptual linguistics, Voice of the Spirit; Deeper reflection; Where we feel consensus has been reached; are nothing new. Rather formerly stated codes for inclusion absent of conversion to the true faith.
The use of “grammar” to refer to “Synodality” is a good way to understand this maturing growth of receiving, understanding, and implementing Vatican II’s view of the Church as the “People of God” as outlined in Lumen Gentium. This declaration was a reaction to the pre-conciliar view of the Church as a “Monarchy” which translated into papalism, hierachicalism and clericalism in the 1% ordained reducing the 99% non-ordained faithful into simply doing the bidding of the ordained: pray, pray, and obey. For twenty years of the post-conciliar period the “People of God” ecclesiology led to the retrieval of the biblical and ancient gift of the laity’s place of co-responsibility in the Church. The 1985 Synod of Bishops was a pushback by the hierachy on this development who longed to restore the “Monarchical” model of the Church by a slight of hand in the introduction of the grammar of “Communion.” This reactionary grammar of “Communion” was a veiled reintroduction of the “Monarchical” arrangement as it restored the pyramidal model of the Church underlining the spiritual and sacramental bond that unites the faithful with the Triune God at the top, the Pope immediately below, then the bishops, then the rest of the ordained, then the consecrated religious, and the laity at the bottom last. Consequently this setup preserved in the Church the marginalization and even exclusion of the laity, especially women and other minorities. “Communion” ecclesiology was widely used until the start of the reign of Pope Francis. Early in his papacy, Francis started to emphasize and teach “Synodality” as the view of the nature and mission of the Church to receive and implement Vatican II’s ecclesiology of the “People of God.” In “synodality,” the Pope emphasizes “radical inclusivity” to reverse and correct the inherent exclusion and alienation inflicted by the “Communion” model on the 99% by the 1% of the faithful. The 2023-2024 Synod on Synodality corrects the 1985 Synod of Bishops to faithfully implement Vatican II’s “People of God” ecclesiology by emphasizing the grammar and praxis of “Synodality” which aims at recovering the biblical and ancient Church dynamics in which the full 100% of the baptized are truly aware of and active in their co-responsibility in the life and mission of the Church.
Deacon, with all due respect, your view of “pre-conciliar” Catholicism is pretty much a cartoon.
“Communion” is hardly a code word for hierarchy.
And women were not excluded or ostracized from the Church. Did you never hear of the Blessed Virgin Mary?
Tell me this. If Gods love is radically inclusive — which it most certainly is — then how could God possibly condemn His beloved creatures to lives of sin and destruction by consecrating lifeless, disordered, tragic gay “relationships”?
Also, viewing God as our King is not “monarchical.” It’s actual.
This is Pelagian -:
‘ The 2023-2024 Synod on Synodality corrects the 1985 Synod of Bishops to faithfully implement Vatican II’s “People of God” ecclesiology by emphasizing the grammar and praxis of “Synodality” which aims at recovering the biblical and ancient Church dynamics in which the full 100% of the baptized are truly aware of and active in their co-responsibility in the life and mission of the Church. ‘
When you point out the fault according to the faith you are not “hiding behind barricades” or “putting up barricades” or “strategizing” or “making limits” or “being closed from dialogue” or “being contentious” or “being divisive” or “being backward” or “excluding others” or “refusing to progress” or “saddening the Holy Spirit” or “lacking glad heart” or “killing joy”.
https://cruxnow.com/2023-consistory-and-synod-for-synodality/2023/10/pope-urges-synod-of-bishops-not-to-barricade-itself-behind-preconceived-notions
https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2023/10/04/pope-francis-to-synod-on-synodality-do-not-sadden-the-holy-spirit/
I have no idea what this means.
It’s Pelagian.
It seems though that most of the 99% of Catholics not in the hierarchy were excluded from this Synod! The process of selecting representatives (both hierarchical and non-hierarchical) was shrouded in secrecy, even at the parish level! There can be only one answer as to why this was: that Francis wanted certain outcomes from the synod and handpicked those who would participate only if they towed the progressive party line of what he was trying to accomplish with this meeting. Oh, he’s thrown in a few faithful bishops and cardinals to give the impression that all points of view were represented to give the synod the veneer of egalitarianism. However, he made sure that they were the minority. Also, why the cloud of secrecy over the synod’s proceedings? We will never know how the synod actually voted, only what Francis tells us it said. In the end he will do what he wants to do, and will use the synod as a prop and evidence that he “listened” to the people. If that isn’t hierarchical and papalistic, I don’t know what is. If the synod undoes what the 1985 synod of bishops set forth, then it is clear that we are abrogating the Church’s magisterium and throwing out the teaching authority of the bishops handed down from the earliest days of the Church. So, in the spirit of your comment, as one of those faithful Catholics NOT in the hierarchy, if this synod produces outcomes that run contrary to our faith, such as blessing same-sex unions, or welcoming sin (as contrasted to sinners, which we all are) into the Church, we should be free to reject it!
The fact that participants were not seated in hierarchical order and that everyone sat at round tables suggests that the Synod presupposes that the Church no longer needs a shepherd to pastor the flock. And, of course, if a shepherd is no longer needed, neither is the Good Sheppard needed.
I agree with deacon dom…however the hierarchy and the people of God go Hand in hand….we need the magisterium.. and the teaching authority of the church as gifts to the church…why? for the perfecting of the saints for the work of the ministry….ephesians 4…that’s us we are the evangelists all in unity….synod comes down to participation but with clear guidelines wherein we all perform our given callings thru a sense of equality of us all as the people of God…clergy,religous,laity….
I was trying to crack a joke. Not very good at it either. And I could be worse than that besides.
But do take heart.