Vatican City, Oct 28, 2023 / 15:28 pm (CNA).
The Vatican released the Synod on Synodality’s “synthesis report” on Saturday night outlining key proposals discussed during the nearly monthlong assembly’s confidential conversations.
The highly anticipated text was approved paragraph by paragraph on Oct. 28 by a vote of 344 Synod delegates, which for the first time included women and other non-bishops as voting members.
The document, the synthesis of the assembly’s work from Oct. 4-29, proposes a “Synodal Church” that implements synodality throughout Church governance, theology, mission, and discernment of doctrine and pastoral issues.
The 42-page text, released by the Vatican in Italian, covers 20 topics from “the Dignity of Women” to “the Bishop of Rome in the College of Bishops.” For each topic, “convergences,” “matters for consideration,” and “proposals” are outlined.
More than 80 proposals were approved in the Synod vote, including establishing a new “baptismal ministry of listening and accompaniment,” initiating discernment processes regarding the decentralization of the Church, and strengthening the Council of Cardinals into a “synodal council at the service of the Petrine ministry.”
Other proposals include giving lectors a preaching ministry “in appropriate contexts,” implementing structures and processes to increase the accountability of bishops in matters of economic administration, supporting “digital missionaries,” and promoting “initiatives that enable shared discernment of controversial, doctrinal, pastoral, and ethical issues in the light of the Word of God, Church teaching, theological reflection, and valuing synodal experience.”
The document also encourages churches to experiment with “conversation in the spirit”— the listening-and-reflection method the Synod’s delegates have used in their deliberations this month — and forms of discernment in the life of the Church. It calls for the implementation of “the exercise of synodality at regional, national, and continental levels.”
Absent from the summary report are definitive conclusions on same-sex blessings, women’s ordination, and a handful of other hot-button topics that have drawn the lion’s share of media attention during this year’s assembly.
Throughout the document, areas of disagreement among the Synod participants are listed as “matters of consideration.” Among them are women’s access to diaconal ministry, priestly celibacy, “Eucharistic hospitality” for interfaith couples, and assigning the handling of abuse cases to another body instead of the bishops.
Written by “experts” invited to attend the Synod and overseen by a commission of 13 Synod delegates, the text says it aims to be “a tool at the service of ongoing discernment.” It is divided into three main sections on the elements of a synodal Church, participation in mission, and processes that enable dialogue with the world.
Vatican spokesman Paolo Ruffini said that more than 1,000 amendments were submitted by Synod delegates to the original draft of the report after it was presented to the assembly on Wednesday.
Voting on the text took place on Saturday night with each paragraph requiring the approval of two-thirds of the members present for inclusion in the final report.
Every paragraph was approved in the voting process. A paragraph describing “uncertainties surrounding the theology of the diaconal ministry” and calling for more reflection on women’s access to the diaconate received the most negative votes.
“Rather than saying that the Church has a mission, we affirm that the Church is mission,” the document says.
“The exercise of co-responsibility is essential for synodality and is necessary at all levels of the Church,” it adds.
The text is the culmination of days of discussion by 365 Synod delegates during the 16th Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops after years of consultation at local, national, and regional levels since the global Synod process was launched in 2021. It lays the foundation for the second Synod on Synodality assembly that will take place in October 2024.
The 2023 Synod assembly will come to its formal conclusion on Oct. 29 when Pope Francis offers the closing Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica.
If you value the news and views Catholic World Report provides, please consider donating to support our efforts. Your contribution will help us continue to make CWR available to all readers worldwide for free, without a subscription. Thank you for your generosity!
Click here for more information on donating to CWR. Click here to sign up for our newsletter.
Well, sounds like so much more meaningless jibber-jabber, filled with meaningless words like “Synodality” and even worse than Vatican II if such is possible. General appeals to the secular, “women’s issues”, and tossing out communion like a party favor to placate interfaith couples. Mark me down as a “no thanks”. And why were women and non-Bishops on this panel anyway? What theological background do such folks have to make suggestions about ANY changes in the church at all? This is like asking your local grocery store cashier what changes THEY would like. More modern and “hip” stuff is bound to damage the church even more. This sounds like a bad, bad idea. The Eastern orthodox church is looking better and better. There is an old saying” if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Suppose the Bishops just get down to brass tacks for a change and follow Church law and tradition as written???? Now, THAT would be a refreshing change.
Synod 2023 is a total failure. Cancel Synod 2024. Call for conclave.
From Cardinal Hollerich, in another article, we read: “there are points in which we agree and points in which there is still a way to go.” And here we read about “initiatives that enable shared discernment of controversial, doctrinal, pastoral, and ethical issues in the light of the Word of God, Church teaching, theological reflection, and valuing synodal experience.”
So, let us continue not as “backwardists,” but as “forwardists”? On the floated idea that synods might determine what is Tradition/tradition and what is not, how about this:
FIRST, as included in the Magisterium by the encyclical, Veritatis Splendor, the universal natural law is now left to a synodal vote. Is Veritatis Splendor obsolesced as a period piece (respectively, n. 115; and n. 95 which reads: “The Church is no way [!] the author or the arbiter of this [‘moral’] norm.””?
SECOND, building on #1, Descartes and Kant are popularly declared saints, because as we move forward it is necessary to replace “being” with “concepts,” such that nothing is real until first it is an idea. Theologically and philosophically: “essence precedes existence”—we confer reality on being by our ideas.
Even Pope Francis’ possibly fluid “principle” that “realities are more important than ideas” (Evangelii Gaudium) is vulnerable. Likewise, Lautato Si is also invalidated for questioning the dire long-term consequences of our underlying Cartesian, quantitative, mechanistic, and utilitarian ideas and worldview. If the sacral nature of “creation” is not declared “backwardist,” is there a provisional agreement?
THIRD, building on #2, the synod declares Humanae Vitae also a period piece, now to be folded into a more inclusive spectrum. As for the long-term consequences, it is a quaintly residual squint to still connect the dots between, first, the separation of sexuality from babies, then co-habitation, then the porn culture and sex trafficking, then homosexuality spawned in part by fatherless families, then the LGBTQ agenda, and then the fluidity of gender theory…
FOURTH, as recognized in Ordinatio Sacerdotalis (OS, 1994), the affirmation of only male ordinations now is reversed by roundtable circularity! Only a period piece, this: “Wherefore, in order that all doubt may be removed regarding a matter of great importance, a matter which pertains to the Church’s divine constitution itself, in virtue of my ministry of confirming the brethren (cf. Lk 22:32) I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church’s faithful” (OS, n.4).
FIFTH, so what too about even the future selection of popes? Why not a synod rebranded as a conclave? Back in the 12th Century, the papacy was vacant for two years and ten months, during which time palace intrigues and a few murders took place, and rumors sufficient to divide England from France. “Even the stubborn cardinals faced the fact that if they didn’t agree on a pope soon, they eventually could well elect a man who had no Church to rule.” The compromise pope, Gregory X, established for the cardinals the now familiar election procedures and rules of secrecy (Glenn D. Kittler, “The Papal Princes: A History of the College of Cardinals,” 1961).
Fantasizing, now, what might the rules look like for a polyhedral or fully “inverted-pyramid” Church? Continental delegations? A routinized agenda item for a Germanized and permanent synod? Surely a discussion topic for 2024 and the “endless journey” of a “synod [of bishops?]” wherein there “is still a long way to go.”
Meanwhile, what of the EUCHARISTIC CHURCH and a sacral universe and elementary clarity on Tradition/tradition, as dissolved by Descartes and then Protestantism (now inside the walls)… Which replaced the Catholic doctrine on the reality and BEING of Transubstantiation with the cerebral idea (!) that the consecrated host only MEANS Jesus Christ, but no longer IS his very Body and Blood?
Councils and synods are what the Church DOES, not what the Church IS (“The Ratzinger Report,” 1985).
A humble principle, refused by genius Rene Descartes in search of the indubitable, exploited by Protestant Scotsman David Hume to validate opposition to Catholic Philosophical, theological reasoning, that rational arguments cannot lead us to a deity. He developed standard objections to the analogical design argument by insisting the analogy is drawn only from limited experience, resolved by the idealistic thought of Emmanuel Kant that truth, after all, is in the mind.
Difference is vital here, that truth begins with our simple sensible perception of the external world, apodictically external, and that which we reflect upon [initially what Aquinas says is a quasi reflection] what we perceive, the phantasm, which is not an image, rather the transfer [conveyance] of external knowledge to the mind. There is no sequence in time, rather in operation since the intellect is always the faculty of knowing. All argument to the contrary is simply after the fact conjecture. That we of all creatures reflect on what we perceive, we are aware of ourselves as independent from what we perceive. As such, we know that truth is the objective rule. Not the product of idealist reasoning. Reason is the measure.
That said, I wonder about the apparent exception of cats. Clever creatures. They’re capable of seducing us to love and feed them. Never control. Try herding cats into a safe enclosure if threatened by Coyotes [Charles Krauthammer believed the rumor that cats held a world conference in Paris, agreeing never to surrender their independence as dogs do to man].
Peter Beaulieu was wise to bring philosophy into this business of Synodality. Cardinals Hollerich, Grech, a multitude of Bergoglians remind this writer of cats. More intelligent of course, although elusive, permissive, men [and women] who warm up to the unwary [usually traditional Catholics] with soothing proposals to elicit that happy smile of concordance with a Synodal Church rather than a Catholic Church.
The “happy smile” and thoughts of cats, as with Alice in Wonderland:
“Well, I’ve often seen a cat without a grin, but a grin without a cat! It’s the most curious thing I ever saw in my life.” About as curious as a grinning consensus on the “hot-button issues” in a Summary Paper from a “synod” that’s not a synod!
Maybe we should VOTE on it! Is the inflated “synod [of bishops?]” the grin of an invisible Calico Cat as seen by Alice; or is the inflated “synod” the expert wizard behind the secretive curtain in the Wizard of Oz?
An exercise in madness with the mask of Roman Catholicism. This circus is a sacrilege.
Added to, “Reason is the measure”. Right reason is logical inference from indisputable, objectively apprehended first principles. All truths that transcend the physical world, including the existence of God are acquired by inference from these first principles. Whereas it should be said that for man, the efficacious belief that Jesus is the Son of God is an act of faith. Efficacious in that mere belief as a proposition is deficient. That is why it’s said that even the devils believed that Jesus was the Son of God, based on their superior form of knowledge which is primarily immediate rather than discursive.
Synod has been a wonderful process aided by the Holy Spirit. Long live the spirit of the Synod in thought, word, and action.