Rome Newsroom, Oct 26, 2024 / 16:48 pm (CNA).
In a significant departure from previous synods, Pope Francis adopted the final document of the Synod on Synodality on Saturday, foregoing the traditional apostolic exhortation in favor of direct implementation of the assembly’s conclusions.
The 52-page document, approved by 355 synod members in attendance, outlines substantial proposals for Church renewal.
The proposals include expanded women’s leadership roles, greater lay participation in decision-making, and significant structural reforms.
Key Developments
The document emerges from a two-year consultative process that began in 2021, incorporating 1,135 amendments from both collective and individual submissions.
Compared to its 2023 predecessor, the text presents more concrete recommendations and clearer structural guidelines.
The final document is organized into five main sections and calls for five forms of conversion: spiritual, relational, procedural, institutional, and missionary.
Structural Reforms
Among the most significant proposals is a call for strengthening pastoral councils at parish and diocesan levels.
The document advocates for regular ecclesiastical assemblies across all Church levels — including continental —and heightened ecumenical dialogue.
The text introduces the concept of synodal authority while acknowledging that in “a synodal Church, the authority of the Bishop, of the Episcopal College and of the Bishop of Rome in regard to decision-taking is inviolable.”
“Such an exercise of authority, however, is not without limits,” the document adds.
On this view, the text calls for a revision in canon law, “clarifying the distinction and relation between consultation and deliberation and shedding light on the responsibilities of those who play different roles in the decision-making process.”
Women’s Leadership
In a notable development, the document explicitly states there is “no reason or impediment” to prevent women from assuming leadership roles in the Church.
Furthermore, “the question of women’s access to diaconal ministry remains open,” and that discernment should continue.
The text advocates for increased female participation in clergy formation and broader involvement in Church decision-making processes.
Lay Participation
The document significantly expands the role of lay faithful in Church governance. It calls for their increased presence in synodal assemblies and all phases of ecclesiastical decision-making.
New procedures for selecting and evaluating bishops and expanded lay participation in diocesan leadership and canonical processes are proposed.
Implementation Phase
While Pope Francis has declared the synodal path “completed,” the document emphasizes that a crucial implementation phase lies ahead. This next stage will focus on integrating synodality as a “constitutive dimension of the Church.”
The text also addresses accountability measures, calling for enhanced financial transparency and protocols for abuse prevention, declaring: “The need within the Church for healing, reconciliation and the rebuilding of trust has resounded at every stage of the synodal process.”
Background
The document represents the culmination of one of the most extensive consultative processes in Church history, building on both the 2023 assembly’s work and the broader synodal journey initiated by Pope Francis in 2021.
The exercise aimed to balance traditional Church teaching with contemporary pastoral needs while promoting greater inclusivity and transparency in Church governance.
This article was originally published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner, and has been translated and adapted for CNA.
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The document is currently available only in Italian – if there is an English translation already please share the link, I am very eager to read it.
Various summaries on the Catholic websites give an impression of something “inconsequential” yet I sense that the purpose of the Synod was not to mandate anything but to ratify itself as an entity within the Church. Perhaps “an entity” is a wrong word – to ratify itself as a process.
Have you seen the trees which are not big but have a very wide root system so the new trees sprout ten and more meters from the mother-tree? – They quickly overtake the whole space. I think something like this will begin sprouting in the parishes. I do not expect a proclamation of open heresies but some kind of an insidious process of disintegration via atomization – after all, “the process is the most important”.
PS The photo is quite symbolic. The artwork always stunned me not as ‘Resurrection’ but as ‘Petrification’, with the bright figure above being not Christ. The people in the photo merge with that petrified forest of humanity. They look like mere tools of an invisible force.
Such decentralisation facilitates Freemasonic influence and renders the job of priests impossible… one priest has multiple parishes today. This is a made for rich protestant Germany text.
Synodal Superlodge is launched, designed to further destroy the occupied Catholic Church and render it easily subsumed into the World and the coming one world religious council.
I located the English translation. I have a strange impression: they try to re-interpret the life of the Church, using what has been known for all Church’s life in accordance with “synodality”. They begin from a discourse on how St Mary Magdalen, St Peter and St John were “different” yet they ran to the tomb thus different charisms. It is a kind of new, synodal Gospel.
Next:
(Quote) “Synodal assemblies are events that celebrate the union of Christ with His Church through the action of the Spirit. It is the Spirit who ensures the unity of the ecclesial body of Christ in the Eucharistic assembly as well as in the synodal assembly. The liturgy is a listening to the Word of God and a response to His covenantal initiative. Similarly, the synodal assembly is a listening to this same Word, which resounds as much in the signs of the times as in the hearts of the faithful. The liturgy is also a response of the assembly that is discerning God’s will in order to put it into practice. Deepening the link between liturgy and synodality will help all Christian communities, in the diversity of their cultures and traditions, to adopt celebratory styles that make visible the face of a synodal Church. To this end, we call for the establishment of a specific Study Group to which would be entrusted reflection on how to make liturgical celebrations more an expression of synodality.”
This is just one example but you can see that “synodality” is the primary purpose to which even the Liturgy = Mass = worship must serve. Paradoxically, they propose a change of the Liturgy for the sake of “synodality” while the Liturgy is a fruit of a common worship (!) i.e. all people worshiping. They propose to change the most “inclusive” phenomenon of the Church’s life, a communal worship, for the sake of an artificial communal principle created by a tiny group of people.
Then:
(Quote) “Synodality is the walking together of Christians with Christ and towards God’s Kingdom, in union with all humanity.”
One cannot walk in union with those who do not believe in Jesus Christ. It is sheer nonsense.
I skimmed the rest. It is so empty that it pains me to read. As I wrote in my previous comment, the purpose seems to be “to canonize” synodality so anything could be done (modified, cancelled, etc.) under its umbrella.
https://associationofcatholicpriests.ie/synod-final-document-published/
Very welcome and needed as overall context, we read: “The text introduces the concept of synodal authority while acknowledging that in “a synodal Church, the authority of the Bishop, of the Episcopal College and of the Bishop of Rome in regard to decision-taking is inviolable.” And since the synod on synodality is “closed”, now comes the intricate work of the ten ongoing study groups on the extracted “hot-button themes.”
To recall, now, ten earlier questions, from the back bleachers…
About “the East,” how to restore credibility with large chunks of the Latin Church, and with the Eastern Orthodox Churches estranged by Fiducia Supplicans?
About the “cry of the poor,” in missionary work how to not exclude those impoverished spiritually and culturally (Centesimus Annus, n. 57)? “…the right of the faithful [italics] to receive Catholic doctrine in its purity and integrity must always be respected” (Veritatis Splendor, n. 113).
About the “digital environment,” how to preserve analogue reality (!) and the gifted Logos vs a nominalist digital cosmos and word processors?
About a “missionary perspective,” how to assure faithful guardianship of a missionary Deposit of Faith without divorcing pastoral orthopraxy from doctrinal orthodoxy?
About “ministerial forms,” how to clearly respect all of the “hierarchical communion” (bishops/priests/deacons; Lumen Gentium)? Would possibly non-ordained deaconesses end up as a gradualist stepping stone toward a unisex priesthood, with intermediate non-ordinations too much in step with the half-blessing of “irregular couples”?
About “ecclesial organizations,” in the regional and continental assemblies and in ecumenical details, how to not obscure the institutional/personal accountability of each Successor of the Apostles (Lumen Gentium, 1964, Apostolos Suos,1998, Dominos Iuses,2000)?
About the selection, judicial role and meaning of “ad limina visits for bishops,” how to transcend contextual zeitgeist intrusions into the perennial context of particular/local Churches?
About conforming a missionary style of “listening” to the universal and inborn natural law and moral absolutes, about which the Church is neither the “author” nor the “arbiter,” (Veritatis Splendor, n. 95)?
About “theological criteria” (etc.), how to restrain the criterion of theology itself from eclipsing or abrogating the existing and higher Magisterium?
ABOUT the “ecumenical journey/ecclesial practices,” how to not obscure the Church as sacramental Mystical Body of Christ, say, especially through intercommunion with ecclesial communities lacking valid sacraments?
SUMMARY: Yes to a more synodal “style” (but now “authority”?); the angels and the devil, both, are in the details.