We’ve arrived at the final week of the Synod on Synodality.
Synod participants today received copies of the draft of the final document. At this afternoon’s press conference, the Vatican said that the draft would remain confidential to ensure an open debate among the synod delegates, who are tasked with editing and amending the document this week. The Vatican also said that the document reflects not only deliberations from this October’s meeting but from all stages of the three-year synodal process.
Timothy Radcliffe, O.P., one of the synod’s spiritual advisors and soon-to-be cardinal, spoke at today’s press conference about how to read the document when it is released to the public.
“I think maybe the temptation of many people, including the press, is to look for startling decisions—headlines,” he said. “But I think that is a mistake. Because I think the synod is about a deep renewal of the church in a new situation.”
As a journalist who spends a good amount of time thinking about headlines, I always find this framing frustrating. News is for information that is new. (It is not news if a dog bites a man. It is news if a man bites a dog, as the old adage goes). And if that information cannot be conveyed succinctly (say, in a headline or in an elevator pitch), then it is often the case that there is not anything new or it is too convoluted to be effectively communicated.
At the end of a multi-year process that has asked for the entire church and beyond to contribute time and resources, is it really too much to ask for a headline or two?
I’ve heard from people inside the synod hall throughout the month that there is a desire to say something strong, concrete and clear. After all, a lot of people have sacrificed much to participate in these meetings. Who wants to come away with little to show from it?
In the lead-up to last year’s meeting of the synod, I posed a question to Cardinal Robert McElroy, the bishop of San Diego and a delegate at the synod:
It’s one thing to ignore people and not ask for their opinion. It’s an entirely other thing to ask for their opinion and disregard it. So if we get to the end of all of this and there is not a lot of agreement or reconciliation on some of these things that feel like they’re irreconcilable, I worry that we’re going to lose an entire generation, my generation and beyond. Am I right to be afraid?
Reader: I am still afraid of this. We are told repeatedly that this synod is about a new way of being church. I worry that many Catholics will come away from this process disillusioned if the new way leads to the same results. They should be able to point to something new and concrete in their own experience of church in the years to come.
Father Radcliffe anticipated this looming disappointment in his address to the delegates this morning: “So even if you are disappointed by the result of the synod, God’s providence is at work in this assembly, bringing us to the Kingdom in ways that God alone knows.... This is just one synod. There will be others. We do not have to do everything, just try to take the next step.”
Taking a step is a very concrete thing. That is what the people of God hope for. I agree with Father Radcliffe that the synod doesn’t have to do everything. But it should do something; it should take a next step. If we don’t, I fear we will lose too many people who want to take the next step with us.
More news from in and around the synod hall:
- In case you missed it, Colleen Dulle reported over the weekend about a meeting between synod delegates and what was supposed to be the study group tasked with looking at the possibility of the female diaconate. Instead, there were two representatives sent from the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith. The over 100 synod delegates present reportedly expressed “palpable outrage” at the disrespect they felt over being given short shrift from a Vatican dicastery. This has led to no small degree of fallout and damage control, including clarification issued by Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, the prefect of the D.D.F., late Friday night, a promise to re-do the meeting this Thursday and an intervention about female deacons this morning at the synod.
- On Monday, Cardinal Fernández told the synod: “We know that the Holy Father has expressed that at this time the issue of the female diaconate is not mature and has asked that we not entertain this possibility for now.” However, he said, the second commission Pope Francis set up in 2020 to study women deacons “will continue to work,” and the “partial conclusions” it has reached “will be published when the time is right.” But, the cardinal said, “the Holy Father is very concerned about the role of women in the church and, even before the synod’s request” that the matter be studied, Pope Francis “asked the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith to explore the possibilities of development without focusing on holy orders,” or diaconal ordination.
- The Vatican also announced today that Pope Francis will release the fourth encyclical of his pontificate, “Dilexit Nos” (“He Loved Us”). In June, the pope said he was preparing a document on the Sacred Heart of Jesus to “illuminate the path of ecclesial renewal, but also to say something significant to a world that seems to have lost its heart.”
