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Synod on Synodality: Anticipation and tensions brew ahead of synthesis report release 

Jonathan Liedl By Jonathan Liedl for CNA

Synod on Synodality delegates in small groups listen on Oct. 4, 2023, to Pope Francis’ guidance for the upcoming weeks. / Credit: Daniel Ibáñez/EWTN News

Vatican City, Oct 27, 2023 / 09:50 am (CNA).

A summary report of this month’s synodal assembly in Rome is nearing finalization — with both anticipation and apprehension mounting over what the critical document might contain.

A final version of the document, which is expected to synthesize the proceedings of the synod’s nearly monthlong focus on how the Catholic Church can better include all its members, will be presented to the assembly’s 363 voting members tomorrow morning. Synod members are expected to vote on approving the document Saturday afternoon, with a final official version slated for publication in the late evening.

The summary document is expected to include points of consensus that have been reached within the assembly during its focus on themes like inclusiveness and Church governance, but also areas of disagreement. It has been described by organizers as merely “transitory,” with a “simple style” and a “relatively short” length of 40 pages.

Although the synthesis document is not a final synodal report that will be presented to the pope, it is widely seen as a critical point of inflection, setting the stage for the final step of the Synod on Synodality, a multi-year, global consultation process initiated by Pope Francis in October 2021.

The summary text will serve as a bridge between this month’s assembly and a second synodal gathering scheduled for October 2024, which in turn will offer concrete proposals to the Pope.

Therefore, “transitory” or not, the document is highly significant, as it will close the door on some topics and points of view, while ensuring that others remain a part of the synodal conversation.

Significant scrutiny

Key questions remain over how the text will accurately represent the diversity of viewpoints that have emerged during four weeks of discussion — especially with widespread reports indicating the presence of significant tension inside the room, and concerns emerging over the process for making amendments to the text’s initial draft, which synod members received Wednesday morning.

Outside of Paul VI Hall, the document’s expected contents have already become the source of significant media speculation, with some focusing on whether the document will “say anything new?” Others are more concerned about whether its description of the assembly’s views will accurately reflect what actually took place inside the synod hall — a difficult question to answer, given limited public access to the synod’s proceedings.

Synod organizers are cognizant of the fact that significant outside scrutiny awaits the synthesis of the assembly’s work.

“We are well aware that this Synod will be evaluated on the basis of the perceivable changes that will result from it,” noted Hollerich, the Synod on Synodality’s Relator General said Monday.

Draft leaked

Adding to the scrutiny surrounding the final document, a report based on an embargoed version of the initial draft was published yesterday, suggesting that several Synod members have requested significant changes to the synthesis text before finalization.

Published by The Pillar news outlet, the report indicated that an undisclosed number of bishops had planned to “push back” on controversial elements included in the 40-page draft. Among them are a proposal to establish a permanent synod to advise the Pope, a description of gauging the “consensus of the faithful” in “determining whether a particular doctrine or practice belongs to the apostolic faith,” the introduction of continental assemblies, and the document’s characterization of the assembly’s views on the ordination of women, which sources told The Pillar was a distinctly minority position.

The Pillar also reported that some delegates expressed concern that they had insufficient time to read the document before the amendment phase, which took place on Thursday.

Procedural questions

Related procedural questions remain about how the final document is being amended and will ultimately be approved.

After receiving the initial draft on Wednesday morning, the text was the subject of an afternoon general congregation, during which members could make brief speeches on its contents.

Then on Thursday, Synod members reviewed the draft text in their small groups — of which there are 37, each including about 10 voting members.

Each small group reviewed the 40-page document paragraph by paragraph and discussed desired changes before voting on amendments, called “modi.” The modi can call for “the elimination, addition, or replacement of passages” in the draft, Paolo Ruffini, the Synod’s chief communications officer, shared earlier this week.

Each paragraph amendment required a simple majority of small group members for approval.

Unlike table reports earlier in the process, a Synod member said, these amendments were directly submitted to organizers, without a presentation to the whole assembly. Debates on these amendments were described as particularly contentious, given participants’ awareness that this would be their last chance to influence the contents of the final document.

The setup raises questions about how well Synod writers will be able to incorporate assembly feedback into the final document, especially since a significant number of amendments have been submitted. According to Friday’s press briefing, 1,025 amendments were collected in the small groups, and then 126 additional amendments were submitted by individuals.

At the press briefing, it was also confirmed that members will vote on approving the text paragraph by paragraph. Each paragraph will need the approval of two-thirds of the members present for inclusion. It is unknown what would happen if a particular paragraph does not receive sufficient support from the assembly, and how that might affect the final document.

Upon the document’s approval, it will be used in some further form of consultation with the Universal Church that is expected to take place in the months between this assembly’s conclusion and the October 2024 synod assembly — the details of which Synod members discussed and voted upon earlier this morning.

Ahead of those deliberations, Hollerich said Synod participants will be expected to return to their local Churches to share “the fruits of their work” and to accompany “those local processes that will provide us with the elements to conclude our discernment next year.”

One thing is for sure: While additional stages of the Synod on Synodality remain, what’s contained in tomorrow’s summary document will play a pivotal part in shaping the process going forward.


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4 Comments

  1. At least Luther would just say what he thought. A month of Kabuki Theatre to invent a religion must be exhausting. Synodaling is silly sham. They could at least let the captives walk in the courtyard.

  2. Nice touch, the forty pages, reminiscent of forty years wandering in the desert.
    Also, a glimmer of hope in the anticipated “push back…”

    With a precedent, too, when the control-freak “moderators” at the center of the Vatican II drafting efforts experienced what’s called the “Black Week” at the end of the third session. The push-back consisted of Pope Paul VI’s (1) Preliminary Explanatory Note to Lumen Gentium (explicitly intended to appear in front of Chapter 3) on collegiality (very much buried, now, by mongrel “synodality”?), (2) his decision to delay the vote on religious liberty, (3) his last-minute action on the schema on ecumenism, and (4) his application of the term “Mother of the Church” to the Virgin Mary.

    Regarding religious liberty, it was a papal intervention (following a “massive revolt” against a ramrodded and unreviewed version of the schema (expanded length, deletions and additions, and altered structure, principles and presentation) causing a delayed date for review and final vote. Regarding ecumenism, of 421 qualifications submitted by Council Fathers, only 26 had been added by the moderators to the schema. In the end, Pope Paul VI added nineteen key interventions, thereby offending the liberals (the edits were strategically short but, for example, the final document now refers to both Scripture and Tradition–very informative for today’s so-called synod, one would think?). Regarding the title for the Virgin Mary, the pope’s action cleared up some backroom maneuvering, and opposition largely from the “German-speaking and Scandanavian countries.”

    (Source: Fr. Ralph M. Wiltgen, SVD, “The Rhine Flows into the Tiber: A History of Vatican II,” 1967, pp. 228-242; during the Council, the historian Wiltgen published a daily news service, in six languages, sent to over 3,000 subscribers in 108 countries.)

    “Push-back”? As in “walking together” back in step with the best of the Second Vatican Council…

    • More details on the “interventions,” in more than one Council document. In addition to the Prefatory Note clarifying ambiguities in Lumen Gentium, Pope Paul VI also clarified several other ambiguous and exploitable points, with strategic interventions, many consisting of only a few critical words, for example:

      WORDS MATTER and therefore, so too does push-back on likely skewed or imprecise/ambivalent summaries of the so-called “synod”:

      Ecumenism: (n. 1) Instead of “In truth, all are disciples of the Lord” with “In truth, all affirm that they are disciples of the Lord.”
      (n. 4) Replace “Recognizing…the presence of the gifts of the Spirit in the lives of others” with “…recognizing the virtuous works in the lives of others.”
      (n. 14) “not a few of these have apostolic origins” with “not a few of these glory in having been founded by the Apostles themselves.”
      (n. 16) “…the Sacred Council… declares that the Churches of the East have the right and the duty to govern themselves according to their discipline” with “they have the faculty to govern themselves according to their discipline.”
      (n. 21) “…moved by the Holy Spirit they find God in the same Holy Scripture” with “Calling upon the Holy Spirit, they seek God in the same Holy Scripture.”
      The text on religious liberty defines this as “immunity” from coercion in religious practices, and the liberty of the Church is also reiterated (n. 13).
      De Ecclesia: Mary is here proclaimed as “Mother of the Church,” but not omitted and no longer in a separate document.
      Dei Verbum: This document was modified to re-assert the value of Tradition: “the result is that the Church draws its certainty on all things revealed not from Scripture alone,” (n. 9). It also asserts the historical nature of the Gospels: “whose historical nature it (the Council) affirms without hesitation” (n. 19).

      (Source: Dossier: “The Council’s Helmsman” in “30 Days,” VII, Ignatius Press, 1992, pp. 50-60.)

  3. Among the controversial elements in the 40-page draft) is a protocol for “gauging the ‘consensus of the faithful’ in ‘determining whether a particular doctrine or practice belongs to the apostolic faith,’…”

    There we have it, faithful beloved and dearly departed, in language that is perfectly clear: “Which of the two do you want me to release for you?” And they said, “Barab′bas.” ~Matthew 27:21.

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  1. Сегодня завершает свою работу Синод о соборности в Католической Церкви — ChristRussia.ru

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