“There is no going back!” That is the message I am hearing from many delegates during the final week of the Synod on Synodality as they refine the proposals of the draft final document.

Recognizing the doctrinal authority of bishops’ conferences does not mean allowing them to reject the teaching authority of the pope, said the head of the Vatican Dicastery for Bishops.

In a world that was coming to understand the structural underpinnings of poverty and violence, Father Gutiérrez was a prophet who saw clearly how the Christian proclamation of salvation involved not merely the afterlife but included human liberation in this life as well.

The Synod on Synodality has raised the question of the role and authority of bishops’ conferences. In 1998, another moment when the question gained prominence, a leading authority on ecclesiology weighed in.

There has been an alarming lack of transparency around the work of the synod’s ‘Study Group 5,’ tasked with examining, among other things, the subject of women deacons.