The Synod on Synodality: Petering Out Into Irrelevance?

You were probably unaware that there was anything of note going on at the Vatican this month. Even if you’re a diehard Catholic interested in the inner workings of Church politics, there’s enough going on in the wider world to keep you distracted.

We’re less than a month away from a major national election here in the United States (early voting is underway at this point), two hurricanes just wreaked havoc across North Carolina and Florida (and the current administration has failed epically at responding appropriately), and the war trumpets of World War III seem to be getting louder and clearer much more rapidly than any of us would like.

Meanwhile, at the Vatican, just under 400 clerics, religious, and lay Catholics are sitting at round tables, seeking to finish a process that began nearly three years ago and which we were promised would come to an end last year. For those of us who are watching the proceedings from home, it’s still just a “meeting on meetings” — a process that Cardinal Christophe Pierre, apostolic nuncio to the U.S. reportedly compared to a lower ring of hell in Dante’s Inferno — and interest in it is slowly petering out.

The synod’s agenda is not entirely clear to those of us who aren’t sitting at round tables in the St. Pope Paul VI Hall, but we do know a couple of things: First, the female diaconate (perhaps the controversial issue the synod was supposed to comment on) is not on the agenda. Back in March, the pope handed that issue to a study group, but he never gave it a deadline for when to turn in a report.

Then, in May, he told 60 Minutes in no uncertain terms that a female diaconate involving the sacrament of Holy Orders was not in the works. So it seems the issue is mostly resolved. One imagines the media will continue to stir up controversy over female ordination for years to come, but at least there’s a definitive statement that one can point to as assurance that major changes to the way women are involved in parish life are not coming to the Catholic Church anytime soon.

What may be on the agenda, whether the Vatican hierarchy likes it or not, is blowback to Fiducia supplicans, the document released by the Dicastery of the Doctrine of Faith (DDF) last December, which allows Catholic clergy to bless homosexual couples (although it does not permit them to bless the union between those couples). (READ MORE: Vatican Scrambles to Clarify Same-Sex Blessings. Is It Enough?)

The Pillar reported that during a press briefing last week connected with the Synod on Synodality, the archbishop of Rabat, Morocco, Cardinal Cristóbal López Romero, criticized the way Fiducia supplicans was released. “It would’ve been better that [it] underwent a synodal path. It didn’t come out of the synod, but from the Dicastery of the Doctrine of Faith, without us bishops knowing it was coming, without being consulted. That’s why it’s not strange that there were many reactions against some parts,” he said.

One imagines that discussion of the document, which had left many African clerics annoyed (ultimately, the Vatican saw fit to exempt the entire continent from Fiducia supplicans), is likely to take place — especially since it was something of a betrayal of the synodal way.

Here, it would be remiss not to say that the Synodal Way may have had some positive outcomes in the last couple of years. As Ed Condon pointed out at the Pillar, “[I]f one wanted to point to a visible fruit of ‘synodality’ over the course of the process, it would seem to be the ability of bishops from places like Africa to assert themselves, and the weight of the Church moral authority, with confidence in the face of minority calls for radical change.”

Condon is, of course, right. African bishops have proved themselves far more traditional than some of their loud European (and even sometimes American) counterparts. The Synodal Way has given them yet another opportunity to make their voices heard.

Not only have African bishops pushed back against minority calls (usually coming from Germany) to embrace radical change in Church teaching or practice, it’s likely due to their influence that there won’t be major and permanent structural change to the way the Catholic Church runs things — the Vatican doesn’t seem inclined to develop a permanent parliamentary system for governance anytime soon.

Even though we have yet to define what “synodality” looks like in the long term (stay tuned for more in July 2025) and even though there is plenty that the Synod should probably address in terms of global issues to avoid being condemned by future generations, nobody’s worst fears from 2021 and 2022 have been realized.

Instead, the synod seems to have petered out into irrelevance, the way most “meetings on meetings” tend to do.

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