Rome Newsroom, Dec 12, 2023 / 12:45 pm (CNA).
Pope Francis will provide input on the “big questions” to focus on at the next session of the Synod on Synodality next October, the Vatican revealed in a new document Tuesday.
Examples include questions related to the ordination of women to the diaconate, revisions to canon law pertaining to the Oriental Churches, and a review of the Vatican document Ratio Fundamentalis, which serves as the basis for the formation of priests and deacons.
Those were among the topics deemed “matters of great relevance” that came up during the synod’s first session in October and require consideration “at the level of the whole Church and in collaboration with the dicasteries of the Roman Curia,” according to the new document.
A list of these topics will be sent to Pope Francis for review, and the pope will indicate sometime in January which topics require further study. The new document does not detail who the experts are or how they will be selected.
Released on Dec. 12 by the General Secretariat of the Synod, the Vatican office coordinating the ongoing synodal consultative process, the four-page document, titled “Towards October 2024,” details “the steps to be taken in the months between now and the Second Session of the Synodal Assembly.”
The first monthlong session of the Synod on Synodality, a multiyear process initiated by Pope Francis to enhance the communion, participation, and mission of the Church, concluded on Oct. 29 with the finalization of a 42-page synthesis report. The October 2024 session is expected to produce a final report, which will be presented to Pope Francis for his consideration in issuing any related teaching.
The new document calls for feedback on the synthesis document from local and national levels. Emphasizing that this is not to be construed as a “a question of starting the synodal process from scratch or repeating the process of listening and consultation undertaken during the first stage,” it notes that “each local Church is invited to focus on those aspects that enable it to make a contribution in the light of its own situation, character, and experience, sharing good practices that represent visible and concrete signs of synodality.”
According to the document, this process will be a moment for dioceses to reflect on the “fundamental questions” that are to be guided by the central aim of the synod’s central question: “How can we be a synodal Church in mission?”
“The local Churches are also invited to go through the entire Synthesis Report and collect the requests that are most consonant with their situation,” the document states. “On this basis, they will be able to promote the most appropriate initiatives to involve the whole people of God.”
Once this process is complete, these various reports submitted by the dioceses will be compiled into an eight-page document and sent to the General Secretariat of the Synod by May 15, 2024, forming the basis of the Instrumentum Laboris (or working document) that will be used by assembly members of the synod’s second session in October 2024.
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Those of us keeping watch on the Synod on Synodality, some more closely than others who find reason for good outcome, one that the dreaded LGBT acronym was rejected, others cynical, expecting it and other defamations of godliness to return, others taking refuge in God’s management of everything, all are now given high expectation. Big questions to be introduced for likely, further consternation, female ordinations and whatever else.
Whatever else stands out is the LGBT question, which every indicator, pro LGBT assignments to manage the Synod, previous references within Dicasteries that address science, the family – points to. Change of wording, omitting the acronym is easily managed in context of presumed favorable data and, as Synod Relator Card Hollerich has urged, to change the Catechism [with that Canon Law must also be altered]. This monumental moral issue affecting what the Church is in its embodiment of Christ, the structure of the family is at stake.
Of the “matters of great relevance’ (like the navel-gazing ordination of women to the diaconate???), might the laity still “make a mess” by tossing out the “expert” word salad?
And by demanding some outside-the-bubble consultation—as with C.S. Lewis? What Lewis already (!) termed the “relevant questions” (as far back as 1942!)? How about his “Screwtape Letters:”
Like THIS: “But the greatest triumph of all is to elevate this horror of the Same Old Thing into a philosophy so that nonsense in the intellect may reinforce corruption in the will. It is here that the general Evolutionary or Historical character of modern European thought comes in so useful. The Enemy [God] loves platitudes. Of a proposed course of action He wants men, so far as I can see, to ask very simple questions; is it righteous? is it prudent? is it possible? Now if we can keep men asking ‘Is it in accordance with the general movement or our time? Is it progressive or reactionary? Is it the way that History is going?’ they will neglect the RELEVANT QUESTIONS” (XXV, caps added).
OR, this about sabotaged evangelization (especially in the decades following Vatican II): “The real fun is working up hatred between those who say ‘mass’ and those who say ‘holy communion’ when neither party could possibly state the difference between, say, Hooker’s doctrine and Thomas Aquinas’, in any form which would hold water for five minutes” (XVII).
OR, this (especially about serial bigamy with access to the Eucharist, and blessing the homosexual lifestyle): “For humans must not be allowed to notice that all great moralists are sent to remind them, to restate the primeval moral platitudes against which our continual concealment of them” (XXIII).
MY GOD (or whatever?), what if the questions of “great relevance” have to do with the uncertain trumpet of the Church within the secularist collapse of the West?
OR, yet more, with widespread theological obtuseness rivaling the earlier/unformed clerics who helped precipitate the first so-called Reformation?
OR, looking to 2025, whether even long-ago Nicaea (A.D. 325) was only synodally “inclusive,” instead of a remembering and deliberated “exclusion” (!) of Arianism? (Arianism, as the opening wedge for inserting polytheism, e.g., Pachamama (?), alongside the singular event of the divine Incarnation within human history?
OR, whether the crisis today is not so much a “pluralist” redefinition of the Triune One, but rather the redefinition of Man himself as also a sociological non-unity?
What if the really Big “matters of great relevance”—are bigger than today’s Big Lie? Quick, summon the EXPERTS!
Its apparently escaped his notice that the “big questions” have already been answered. Multiple times. But I guess secular society will keep asking the same questions until they get the answer they really want on women deacons and priests, homosexuality, divorce and remarriage, confession without remorse, etc. By all means, lets insert uninformed lay people every place possible to make decisions. Lets be fearful of a supposedly masculine church and insert women in every possible place. We appear to have a Pope who shifts with the wind. The Pope of course, can decide whatever he wants. But he cant force the faithful to stay and pay for it.The fact that the church is barely surviving in much of the West appears to have escaped his notice. He seems intent on making it worse.
We can only pray that there will be a conclave between now and next October.
Synod on Synodality has been a momentous step forward. Keeping up the good work with renewed zeal, fervor, dedication, and fresh input is vital – say several voices of concern here, there, and everywhere.