The Synod on Synodality at the halfway point      

Some important questions have been raised, and some serious concerns surfaced, during the first half of this synodal double-header.

Synod on Synodality delegates seated at discussion tables inside Paul VI Hall at the Vatican in October 2023. / Credit: Daniel Ibáñez | CNA

The Synod on Synodality meeting this month is the first of a two-part synodal assembly; the second session is scheduled to meet a year from now, in October 2024. No one is sure what will happen between now and then in terms of agenda-setting and process, but some important questions have been raised, and some serious concerns surfaced, during the first half of this synodal double-header.

What is this? The Synod’s Instrumentum Laboris [Working Document] referred to “the Synod…in which the XVI Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops will take place.” Is this a synodal sandwich, in which what was once known as the Synod of Bishops happens within “the Synod”? What kind of authority does a synodal sandwich have? What, exactly, is “the Synod,” and the role and authority of bishops within it?

Recovery of what? Invention of what? Since its inception in 2021, it has been said, not least by the Pope, that this “synodal process” is recovering an ancient Christian practice that was never lost in the Christian East, but which had lain fallow in the Christian West for centuries. It is worth noting, however, that not a single churchman from the Christian East, Catholic or Orthodox, recognizes in Synod-2023 what is meant in their Churches by a “Synod.”

Nothing has been recovered in this process; but something is being invented. What is it?

Theology, please. The conversations “in the Spirit” during the closely-controlled small-group discussions at Synod-2023 have too often been dominated by sociological clichés, not serious theology.

This is particularly true of the discussion of Holy Orders and who the Church can ordain, in which theological considerations – Christ’s spousal relationship to the Church, for example – were rarely encountered.  Yet it was precisely secularized cliché-mongering that led to the implosion in the 1980s of the once-promising Anglican-Roman Catholic dialogue, as the Archbishop of Canterbury explained to John Paul II that the Church of England’s decision to ordain women to its priesthood was heavily influenced by social change (e.g., if Margaret Thatcher can be prime minister of the U.K., why shouldn’t the Church of England ordain women?). Similarly lame thinking, devoid of serious theology, has been evident in the small groups’ discussions of evangelization, often framed by secular notions of inclusivity that have little to do with conversion to Christ.

And where, over the past two millennia, has the Catholic Church described and categorized people by their sexual desires (i.e., as “LGBTQ+ Catholics”)? Isn’t there a serious theological problem here?

Broadening the bandwidth. It seems likely that the dramatis personae at Synod-2024 will be the same cast of characters gathered in Rome this month. However, this would raise serious questions about an assembly that claims to be representative of the universal Church.

Over the past three weeks, it has become obvious that Synod-2023 (not unlike the German “Synodal Way”) is largely an assembly of Church professionals, and a narrow band of Church professionals at that. There seems not to be a single parish priest at Synod-2023. Religious sisters from growing institutes of consecrated life are notably absent, while religious sisters from dying communities are present and prominent. Leaders from lay-led evangelization ministries like FOCUS [the Fellowship of Catholic University Students] are absent, while other lay Catholics are here because they tick certain boxes in the game of identity politics.

What’s Wrong with Real Debate? The “Conversation in the Spirit” methodology of Synod-2023’s small groups not only discourages engaging differences; it virtually bans discussing them, because the participants are supposed to be “listening,” not debating. Which of course means dodging issues. The method also suggests that all opinions are equal (because they must be assumed to be Spirit-inspired), which is both nonsense and an insult to the Holy Spirit.

The same lack of true tolerance – the engagement of differences within a bond of charity and civility – has marred the Synod’s general congregations, where those allowed to speak are carefully chosen by the Synod managers and then confined to very brief statements, with no follow-up questioning.

Neo-Colonialism Lives. The Synod’s focus on certain “hot-button” issues – the ordination of women, the alphabet anthropology of the LGBTQ+ activists present – seems to many African and Asian bishops another exercise in the neo-colonialism against which the Pope has warned.

This must be addressed before Synod-2024, and the living parts of the world Church, especially those in Africa, afforded more respect for their experience and their concerns than they have received this month.


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About George Weigel 521 Articles
George Weigel is Distinguished Senior Fellow of Washington's Ethics and Public Policy Center, where he holds the William E. Simon Chair in Catholic Studies. He is the author of over twenty books, including Witness to Hope: The Biography of Pope John Paul II (1999), The End and the Beginning: Pope John Paul II—The Victory of Freedom, the Last Years, the Legacy (2010), and The Irony of Modern Catholic History: How the Church Rediscovered Itself and Challenged the Modern World to Reform. His most recent books are The Next Pope: The Office of Peter and a Church in Mission (2020), Not Forgotten: Elegies for, and Reminiscences of, a Diverse Cast of Characters, Most of Them Admirable (Ignatius, 2021), and To Sanctify the World: The Vital Legacy of Vatican II (Basic Books, 2022).

16 Comments

  1. Unfortunately, this is no Synod at all.

    You just don’t get to redefine truth. You just don’t get to redefine reality. Just as a man is a man and you don’t get to call him a woman, simply by calling a week-long meeting of people (some of whom are not even Catholic, most of whom are not bishops, and some of whom are heterodox even if they are nominally Catholic) a Synod just because you use the word.

  2. Who is denied Communion in practice? What these “marginalized” folks want is to be told by a the Pope and Synodaling that what they are doing is OK, despite the teaching of God.

    All of this Synodaling effort and expense is a sham process that provides the Pope an excuse to encourage and enable some people to stay in sin by offering Communion, fake “blessings,” and power sharing.

    • I don’t believe Francis has much human empathy. He is using gays for egomaniacal reasons, to prove he dares to be more “compassionate, benign, and caring” than any pope in history. He abuses Catholic words like discern and pastoral in ways that make a mockery of authentic faith. It is not as though he ever meditated on “God will not be mocked” from scripture. Every scriptural commentary I ever heard him make demonstrated a corruption of its meaning, like he was hearing it for the first time and was getting it wrong yet correcting everyone else’s misconstruing. When I first heard him describe concern for abortion as an “obsession”, I knew his foolishness and vanity were capable of crimes against humanity.

  3. If more of the so-called “backwardists” were not excluded, then instead of numbering 400, the Synod would number 600; no longer limited to “forwardists”…And yet the similarity to Tennyson’s forwardist “Charge of the Light Brigade” would remain complete!

    “Forward [forwardist!] the Light Brigade![…] Theirs not to reason […] Into the valley of Death [!] rode the six hundred […] Cannon [or canon?] to the right of them […] Into the mouth of Hell rode the six hundred […] O the wild charge they made! All the world wondered.”

    The outside “world wondered…” Today, and less regimented or scripted than the forwardist (!) Light Brigade–may the Synod-Outside-the-Walls now begin…Even Carl von Clausewitz (a German!) would agree…

  4. The Synod’s focus on certain “hot-button” issues – the ordination of women, the alphabet anthropology of the LGBTQ+ activists present – seems to many African and Asian bishops another exercise in the neo-colonialism against which the Pope has warned.

    Geoge, George, George, when will you learn about the two-faced nature of Francis, a manipulative technique to which he has openly admitted? You affirm what you deny, and deny what you affirm. How can any sane Catholic not know that these “hot button issues” are not at the forefront of the Synod at the very behest of Francis?

  5. Again, the question of the knowledgeable, ‘What is this’? Weigel’s article in its summation correctly suggests the African Church is the equivalent of an orthodox buttress contra the neocolonialism of the West.
    Apparently, the battle for the future of our Church rests with the far more Apostolic traditional Africans, especially Nigeria, the Church of martyrs which has by infinite measure the greatest attendance of the Sunday Eucharist, and contribution of priests to the world Church. “The Synod’s focus on certain “hot-button” issues – the ordination of women, the alphabet anthropology of the LGBTQ+ activists present – seems to many African and Asian bishops another exercise in the neo-colonialism” that Pope Francis has warned. Although, if I may, the neo-colonialism Francis had in mind was more directed toward the traditional missionaries who established the African Church. I sense George Weigel is aware of this, and in his diplomatic style warns that this must be addressed on behalf of the continuously ignored Africans.

  6. The synod is an open conference for promoting apostasy.

    The apostate Bishops, Cardinals and priest-theologians and celebrity-outlaws, all selected by and for the Pontiff Francis, have now publicly stated that they are “inspired” to set aside the commands of Jesus and the revelation to his apostles, which, it is worth noting, was given by the Holy Spirit.

    These men, including the Pontiff Francis and his selected Cardinal and Bishop agents, like Hollerich and Schonborn and Tobin, declare that they are inspired by “the spirit.”

    Well, let’s all stipulate that they are, indeed, inspired by a spirit.

    And let’s all note that this spirit that “they say” is inspiring them is publicly declaring they do now themselves reject, and will formally resolve in this their apostate conference, that they will over-rule Jesus himself, snd the revelation given his apostles by the Holy Spirit.

    Thus, owing to their manifest self-confidence in declaring their aims to depose Christ and the revelation of the Holy Spirit, we have only one task left:

    To ask an exorcist: “What is the name of the anti-Christ spirit animating the Pontiff Francis and his self-selected-apostate Cardinals and Bishops?

  7. When the conservative, orthodox prelates of the Church put the brakes on all the “progress” of the other hierarchs in the Church they’re called heretics, schismatics, divisive, rigid, etc., etc., etc., – “judge not lest ye be judged” comes to mind. Nonetheless, what are the orthodox Catholic clergy and prelates to do when the “progressives” so quickly and easily sacrifice truth for their nuanced agenda, there is little to no recourse offered to the reasonable. Thus, Our Lady of LaSalette lamented that “Rome would lose the faith”. I wager that a Rome that has lost the faith would look and act exactly like the church being proposed by this “sin-nod”. So, what is left to those for whom the truth matters? Do they matter? Sadly, one is left to wonder.

  8. The Pope has used an old trick of Marxist-Communists. To give a semblance of democratic process, they split the assembly in small groups, they provide several questions on how to improve the system and allow only few minutes for expressing opinions on the questions provided. It is called “CENTRALIZED DEMOCRACY GROUPING”. And also the use of party jargon and buzzwords is highly encouraged. There you have it folks, the hierarchy is taking a page from Karl Marx.

    • He hails from the same region of the world whose prelates eagerly ascribed, with complete conviction, the “Pact of the Catacombs”. Notice how he acts as one who holds to those evil and contemptuous communist principles: don’t call him the Vicar of Christ, he’ll correct you. Don’t kiss his ring, he’ll back-hand you. He has never escaped his communist roots, even after our Lady of Fatima called communism the seed demon of Satan. These principles are now, like seedlings, being brought into the daylight and there are very misguided prelates who are now at the helm and who will ensure they are well disseminated and flourish – to the demise of the Church and to the disgrace of all involved. I was convinced during Covid the man wasn’t up for the task and, since then, have become even more convinced he has his own agenda, his own immanentism and his own temporality he adores. Pray for him? I pray he fails.

  9. lets imagine the church synodal parish with the gay homilist espousing how all love is love and no lifestyle is excluded in the church of nice. The priest presiding over the gifts is none other than rev . Roxanne Payne newly ordained and her husband is the choir director who has gathered all the marginalized victims of sexuality and their expression for the soul purpose of providing music of diversity in our sexuality of community sharing. with the collection plates the gifts of money can flow through the money changers of inclusive politicians and socialites who agree that anything anyone does is ok with God. what a celebration!!

  10. Pope francis courts new ways ministry, grammick, j.martin since day one, states he has no problem with sex, etc. we know it all. what they mean here at the synod is not welcome and open to all because as george has pointed out , they are not. The synod is clearly to bring in the gay agenda. nothing more. Think also of p. francis’ may gay and pro gay bishop and cardinal appointments. and his utter insenitivity to the abused. AS one sexually abused man , by a priest, said to me:”do you know how we feel every time P.francis appoints another gay bishop or cardinal?:”/. That says it all, unfortunatley. This synod is merely gay/lgbt promotion. Even the synod itself has heard lgbt pleas, and nothing from many excluded groups. this is a sinful travesty for the Church. History will not be kind to P. Francis.

  11. Pope Francis has already put a squash on women deacons and women being ordained to the priesthood, so why are these topics even being discussed?

  12. You sum up the navel gazing as follows.
    “What’s Wrong with Real Debate? The ‘Conversation in the Spirit’ methodology of Synod-2023’s small groups not only discourages engaging differences; it virtually bans discussing them… The method also suggests that all opinions are equal (because they must be assumed to be Spirit-inspired), which is both nonsense and an insult to the Holy Spirit.”
    I am an RCIA catechist (+30 yrs.). The message this synod sends is the clear message that ‘opinions’ are valid. The problem is that they are valid as opinions not valid as truth. I have stopped 2 candidates this year from receiving Holy Communion until they are Confirmed and receive their First Holy Communion. One said sure no problem, no big deal. The other said he has been receiving for about 45 years. He felt I was being unfair and legalistic. I have a problem with both answers. Both are valid opinions, neither has a hint of truth. I pray that our catechesis will make the truth plain.

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