A Rocky Start for the Synod?
Sidelined Issues Come to the Fore
One of the concerns expressed by many commentators in the weeks leading up to the second session of the Synod on Synodality, which began last week, was that some of the issues raised by the faithful during the long synodal process that began in 2021 regarding making the Catholic Church more inclusive, particularly the place of LGBTQ persons in the Church and women’s leadership in the Church (including the ordination of women to the diaconate), had been removed from the second session’s agenda. This despite the fact that these had been important topics of conversation at the Synod’s first session in October of last year.
This past February, Pope Francis established ten working groups composed of theological experts, bishops, and others that would tackle several of the issues that had emerged from the synodal process and that had been discussed at the Synod’s first session. His goal, as I explained at the time, was to focus the second session’s agenda on key organizational issues like fostering a greater sense of responsibility for the Church’s mission among the laity and governance and decision-making in the Church in light of the concept of synodality. Still, the decision to create the study groups seemed to some like it took the wind out of the sails of the Synod. Zac Davis, an associate editor of America magazine, expressed one version of this concern on a recent episode of the Jesuitical podcast:
The thing I find . . . and I keep coming back to this, and this is where I just struggle with understanding the Synod, is it feels like as soon as someone maybe offers a suggestion on ways that the Church could better do that [i.e., connect with people who have not been fully included in the Church], we hear, “Oh, that’s a particular issue. That’s a pet issue. That’s a ‘hot button’ issue.” Like, “We don’t have time to discuss that.” We’re talking about how we might become more inclusive and reach out to more people, and someone says, “Well, maybe this is a way we could do that.” And they say, “Oh, that’s . . . We’re going to have to send that . . . to study that canonically.”
Without at all downplaying the importance of some of the questions reserved for the study groups, I’ve tried to make the case that the topics that are on the agenda of the Synod’s second session are highly significant and potentially transformative for the Church, even if they are not the issues that have generated headlines. If the Synod participants can focus on the questions laid out for them in the Instrumentum Laboris (the working document that provides the organizing structure for the gathering) and develop concrete proposals on consultative decision-making, transparency, and other issues, then the synodal process will have left a lasting mark on the Church. Events during the opening days of the Synod, however, conspired to place front and center the issues that had supposedly been taken off the agenda of the Synod.
Most importantly, representatives of the ten study groups gave presentations to the Synod delegates on their work so far. The presentation that garnered by far the most attention was that of Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernández, the Prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF), who presented on behalf of the group studying the question of the ordination of women to the diaconate, among other issues.
In his remarks, Fernández stated: “[T]here is still no room for a positive decision by the Magisterium regarding the access of women to the diaconate, understood as a degree of the Sacrament of Holy Orders.” Although seeming to close the door on the issue, Fernández’s comments are ambiguous enough that questions remain: Could there be room for a positive decision in the future? Can there be a form of the diaconate not understood as a degree of the Sacrament of Holy Orders?
Fernández’s presentation also offered reminders of some of the irregularities concerning the Vatican’s recent deliberations on women deacons. As Colleen Dulle notes at America, Pope Francis has already established two commissions to study the issue; in both cases, the participants were reportedly unable to reach a consensus, but neither group’s final report has been made public by the Vatican. Last year, the Synod delegates requested that they be provided with the two reports at this year’s gathering, but this has not yet happened, according to Dulle. She adds that, according to Cardinal Fernández, the reports may not be made public at all, but rather their results will be summarized in the study group’s final report to Pope Francis.
In another unusual lack of transparency, when the members of the study groups were announced back in March, the names of the group considering the ordination of women to the diaconate, called Group 5, were withheld. Likewise, as Dulle reports:
[V]ideos before each [study] group’s presentation identified the group members with individual photos and names, while Group 5’s members were only shown in two group photos that flashed on the screen briefly.
This is very strange, particularly as the Synod itself is attempting to promote transparency and accountability in the Church.
As Crux reports, at least some of the delegates at the Synod expressed discontent with Fernández’s remarks when the discussion groups later convened. Outside the Synod, the Catholic Women’s Council, a network of progressive Catholic groups, has planned protests of the Vatican’s treatment of the issue of women’s ordination.
At the Synod’s daily press briefing on October 4, the third day of the gathering, Bishop Anthony Randazzo of Broken Bay, Australia described the question of ordaining women to the diaconate a “niche issue” with which only a few in the Global North are “obsessed,” a topic that takes attention away from the plight of the poor, particularly poor women. Randazzo’s comments not only perfectly embodied Davis’s criticism mentioned earlier, they also ironically served to keep the focus on the question of women deacons. As to the substance of Randazzo’s remarks, Sebastian Gomes points out at America, interest in ordaining women to the diaconate is not limited to the Global North; during the synodal process, the question has been raised throughout the Global South, as well.
Comments made by the participants in the October 7 press briefing, however, suggest that many of the Synod delegates may be converging around the view that promoting co-responsibility in the Church, that is, encouraging the laity to take on a greater role in leading ministries and actively participating in the mission of the Church, along with opening more opportunities for non-ordained leadership for women, may diminish the urgency of the question of women’s ordination. This was a trend I noted last year, as well. Cardinal Fernández suggested his study group will support this conclusion, stating that the group’s final document will consider the nature of ministry, forms of ministry that can be carried out without Holy Orders, and examples of women leaders from the Church’s history.
On the first day of the Synod, when the ten study groups gave their presentations, Cardinal Fridolin Ambongo, O.F.M. Cap., the Archbishop of Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, also gave a report announcing that the Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar (SECAM), the network of regional episcopal conferences in Africa of which Ambongo is currently the president, is working on a document on the pastoral care of people in polygamous relationships.
Polygamy is a difficult pastoral issue in parts of Africa. As Ambongo noted in his presentation, in regions where polygamy is practiced, some practicing Catholics participate in polygamous relationships despite the Church’s insistence on monogamy as essential for marriage. In other cases, individuals may be involved in a polygamous relationship and then seek baptism in the Church. In both cases, the challenge is how to encourage people to conform themselves to the Church’s ideal for marriage while recognizing the difficulties that would arise from ending polygamous relationships, particularly its impact on the women and children involved. Likewise, how can those who find it difficult, or even impossible, to “regularize” their situation nevertheless be included in the life of the Church?
Polygamy was identified as one of the challenges facing the global Church in the Working Document for the Continental Stage, the document produced by the Vatican in 2022 to be used as a guide for the various continental gatherings of the synodal process. It was given significant focus in the African continental document, as I discussed here. At the end of the first session of the Synod, the assembly’s final synthesis document encouraged SECAM to undertake a discernment process on the issue.
Ambongo announced that SECAM has established a four-step process for completing that charge. The first step will be for a working group of experts established by SECAM to write a draft document outlining a pastoral response to polygamy. The document will then be sent to the various episcopal conferences of Africa, as well as to the DDF, for comment. The bishops attending SECAM’s gathering in July 2025 will review and revise the document, and then it will be sent to the Vatican for additional input before its final release.
In his remarks, Ambongo himself seemed to adopt a pastoral approach reminiscent of that taken by Pope Francis toward the divorced and remarried and individuals in same-sex relationships in his apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia; he insisted that “Pastoral accompaniment for polygamists is urgently needed,” and simply reaffirming the Church’s doctrine on marriage is not sufficient:
[A] respectful and fraternal dialogue must be established between these people [in polygamous relationships] and the pastor, the representative of the merciful Christ who goes in search of the sheep lying in spiritual or existential peripheries.
SECAM’s work on this document will likely be a positive step, but Ambongo’s presentation couldn’t help but bring to mind that he was among the leading critics of Fiducia Supplicans, the document published by the DDF last year that opened the door to offering blessings to individuals in same-sex relationships, which itself was a concrete application of the need for “pastoral accompaniment of people’s lives” (#36). Under Ambongo’s leadership, the bishops of SECAM refused to implement Fiducia Supplicans in their dioceses, even after some helpful clarifications on its meaning and application by Cardinal Fernández and Pope Francis himself.
Interestingly, although it was widely interpreted as a document primarily about same-sex relationships, Fiducia Supplicans itself discusses blessings not just for individuals in same-sex relationships, but those in other sorts of “irregular situations,” as well; although the term remains undefined in that document, Francis’s Amoris Laetitia uses the term to refer to the divorced and remarried and to unmarried but cohabiting couples. The African continental document, cited earlier, includes polygamous relationships among other “irregular family situations,” as well as the divorced and remarried and families with single parents.
This convergence suggests that analogous pastoral approaches should be adopted for the divorced and remarried, same-sex relationships, and polygamous relationships, and to be fair, SECAM’s letter announcing its stance on Fiducia Supplicans insists that “Clergy are encouraged to provide welcoming and supportive pastoral care, particularly to couples in irregular situations,” including those in same-sex relationships. Still, several African bishops and episcopal conferences have supported the criminalization of homosexuality and imprisonment for LGBTQ persons, suggesting a stance far removed from the pastoral accompaniment envisioned in Amoris Laetitia, for example.
These issues make obvious the complexities involved in contextualizing the faith in different cultures. Ambongo has claimed that many African Catholics saw Fiducia Supplicans as a form of “cultural colonization” by the West, and SECAM’s letter to the Vatican states that “[T]he cultural context in Africa, deeply rooted in natural law values regarding marriage and family, further complicates the acceptance of same-sex unions, as they are seen as contradictory to cultural norms and intrinsically evil.” Yet in the case of polygamy, according to Ambongo, the cultural context demands pastoral sensitivity.
At the October 4 Synod press briefing, Cardinal Cristóbal López Romero, S.D.B., the Archbishop of Rabat, Morocco, openly criticized Fiducia Supplicans, not so much because of its contents (as had earlier been the case with Ambongo soon after the document’s release), but because of the absence of a synodal process in its drafting. He noted that the bishops of the world were not consulted, and indeed did not know it was in the works, a mistake he believes contributed to the strong negative reactions in sub-Saharan Africa. He added, however, that the bishops of North Africa had supported Fiducia Supplicans, and he likewise criticized SECAM for not consulting with the bishops of all of Africa before reaching their decision. He pointed out that Ambongo had apologized to the bishops of North Africa for this lack of synodality.
As with the question of ordaining women to the diaconate, then, although somewhat less prominently, the issue of the Church’s inclusion and pastoral accompaniment of LGBTQ persons came to the fore at the Synod despite its having been taken off the gathering’s formal agenda. Also, as Michael J. O’Loughlin reports for America, Outreach, the organization founded by Fr. James Martin, S.J. to support pastoral outreach to LGBTQ Catholics, and America Media hosted a dialogue aimed at Synod delegates and including LGBTQ Catholics from Africa, Europe, and North America as panelists who shared their experiences with the participants. And so, conversation on this issue continues amongst the delegates, as well, even if outside the assembly hall (but probably there, too).
It’s also worth noting that the presentations by the representatives of the study groups were remarkably short; each included a short video and a presentation of no more than three minutes, so each was probably less than ten minutes. As the summaries provided by Vatican News suggest, this was hardly enough time to summarize the work of theological experts that has supposedly been going on for months, and therefore inadequate to the task of informing the Synod delegates of their progress.
The delegates themselves seem to have agreed. On October 5, they voted to devote the afternoon of October 18 to a dialogue with the leaders of the study groups to learn more about their work. Cindy Wooden, a Vatican correspondent for Catholic News Service, reports that it is rumored that the delegates were particularly concerned about Cardinal Fernández’s report on women’s leadership roles in the Church, although no one has confirmed this on the record. Regardless, this is a smart move by the delegates, who deserve more details on the work of all of the study groups.
The second session of the Synod, then, seems to have had a rocky start. Issues taken off the delegates’ formal agenda in part because of the risk that they could dominate the conversation to the exclusion of other topics have nevertheless come to the fore, not least because of the awkward timing of the study groups’ presentations. The procedures in place for sharing the findings of those study groups were deemed inadequate and so ad hoc changes have been made to the Synod schedule. More recent reporting on the second week of the gathering suggests that the discussion groups have now delved into conversations centered on the topics of the second section of the Instrumentum Laboris, which is a positive sign, but I will have more to say on that as we get more information.