Synod elite seize power following tiny participation

The Synodality Synod has been running for almost a year: participation in Europe was manageable. Elsewhere, more people have been mobilised. Before the bishops begin their deliberations in 2023, the results are to be sorted and sent back again. Rome has now explained what this is all about.

It has been running since October 2021: the World Synod of Bishops on Synodality in the Church. For Pope Francis, synodality is "what God expects of the Church of the third millennium". But because the Church has forgotten in the past 2,000 years that it can only exist synodally, Pope Francis has now prescribed a good two years of synodality studies for it. (Cathcon: what is the point of Catholicism if you believe that the Church has been so deficient for so long?)

The Church should work on the lived experience of synodality and grow.

In a first step, the Pontiff had a synod team send ten questions to all Dioceses and asked for active participation. Everyone had a role to play: The Synod of Bishops is for everyone, no one should be excluded and everyone should be involved, the Pope preaches tirelessly (Cathcon: and clearly without success(. The aim of the past months was to "gather together in the Dioceses the richness of the experience of synodality lived there in its various expressions and facets", it says in the Vademecum of the Synod of Bishops. By dividing the World Synod of Bishops into a Diocesan phase, a Continental phase and a global phase, the Synod planners hope for a "true listening to the people of God" - they want to create dialogue through circularity (Cathcon: a new concept in ecclesiology.  Some would call it running around in circles getting nowhere). Synergies between lay people, Bishops and the Pope are to be used to involve everyone according to their function. Through the three stages of the Synod of Bishops, the Synod is to become a process for the whole Church and lose some of its character as a unique, exclusive and solely episcopal event. The first stage ended in mid-August 2022.

Participation outside Europe greater

The feedback received by then from the universal Church and a look at the diocesan efforts to involve everyone now show: it was only possible to reach a fraction of those addressed. While the Pope energetically called for "more than 3, 4 or 5 percent" of the people to be reached, the German Bishops' Conference stated that the number of those reached was "in the lowest single-digit percentage range". The Italian Bishops' Conference recorded a participation of less than one per cent, other national summaries do not even mention any figures. Sister Nathalie Becquart, under-secretary of the Synod of Bishops, said they were aware of these problems. However, for her, this is a problem of individual countries; elsewhere, they have finally managed to mobilise the youth, for example. The Synod should therefore be seen globally and not be limited to countries like France, where youth participation was similarly low as in Italy or Germany. The General Relator of the Synod of Bishops, Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich, expressed similar views. The current Synod, he said, was without precedent in the history of the Church and that "not only because of the quantity of responses received or the number of participants (which may seem limited to some who want to rely only on numbers - which can only be approximate), but also because of the quality of participation."

Under the motto "For a Synodal Church - Communion, Participation, Mission", events  for the Synodality Synod also took place in Germany. Participation was in the "lower single digits".

For example, the Diocesan phase 2021-2022 was the first time that the Church had even asked them what they thought (Cathcon: the longer Synodality is given artificial life, the lower the turnouts will be!) and what they could contribute: "Pope Francis has said it again and again, and Cardinal Mario Grech and I have repeated it again and again: this [the Diocesan phase] is the most important phase of the Synod, because it is about listening to the people of God - in all their diversity," Nathalie Becquart said in an interview with katholisch.de. Of course, there were difficulties, challenges and resistance in the process. "But that is normal in a process of change. It is ultimately about a synodalisation, a Synodal conversion of the Church." Rome has formulated what this conversion of the Church should look like in the preparatory document for the Synod: "Pastors, appointed by God as authentic guardians, interpreters and witnesses of the faith of the whole Church, are therefore not afraid to listen to the flock entrusted to them. The consultation of God's people in no way entails the adoption within the Church of the principles of democracy based on the principle of majority." Nor is it a matter of representing different interests that may be in conflict with each other; rather, the Synod is a process that "defies human logic". It is an ecclesial process "that cannot be realised except in the body of a hierarchically structured community."

The participation of all in Synodal processes thus takes place in their respective roles and thus with differentiated competence to contribute and act. Behind this is the Catholic idea of "suo modo" - that is, a specific way of acting that is dependent on gender and status. In this kind of consultation, the essence of the Synodal church as the "common walk" of the people of God is shown. The summaries now sent to Rome from the first phase show to what extent Synodality is lived out in the local congregations, Synod head, Cardinal Grech is certain. "From the results we will see how much we can still do to make everyone take more responsibility and get involved."

On the second floor of the yellow and orange magnificent building with the house number 34, Cardinal Mario Grech, Sister Nathalie Becquart and their team are working on the preparation of this Synod of Bishops.The offices of the Synod of Bishops are extraterritorial territory of the Holy See.

Rome has now given an account of the first phase of the World Synod and a preview of the next stage. Last Friday, the head of the Synod, Grech, and his team appeared before the press in Rome. Cardinal Hollerich reported on the submissions to Rome. Thus, the Synod Office received just over 100 summaries from the total of 114 Bishops' Conferences. They contain syntheses of the surveys of parishes, associations, spiritual movements, universities, religious congregations and similar groups. Likewise, the Eastern Catholic Churches and the Superiors General of the International Union of Superiors General sent summaries to Rome. A number of dicasteries also sent wordings from their areas of activity to the Synod team, and for the first time the Secretariat of State had also consulted the Apostolic Nuncios and made a submission. According to Hollerich, one campaign by the communications dicastery alone had reached up to 20 million people. More than a thousand submissions had also been received from "individual believers, church groups or groups not officially recognised by the local church authority". Hollerich assured that all these contributions would be read carefully and taken seriously.

Hot potato and synodical path

The Synod team did not address the content of the feedback. It was clear that clericalism was a problem everywhere, said Becquart. Grechs' team did not address the "hot topics" such as power, separation of powers, women in the church and sexual morality, which came up in some of the responses, even when asked several times. When asked about the Synodal Path in Germany and similar topics at the World Synod, Synod Leader Grech quoted from the Pope's letter "To the Pilgrim People of God in Germany". These topics should not be ignored, but should always be seen in the context of the Magisterium and the universal Church. This applies to the World Synod and also to the Synodal Way in Germany. However, both are completely different, Grech emphasised. In a letter at the end of July 2022, Rome had called for the deliberations of the Synodal Way to be included in those of the World Synod. With regard to the Church's teaching on LGBTQI persons, Cardinal Hollerich stressed that one does not want to change Church doctrines, it is much more about listening and being open. "I don't want a change in doctrine. I want to change the attitude of the Church. I want everyone to feel welcome," the cardinal said.

To deal with the content of the feedback from around the world, Rome has come up with an elaborate process. At the moment, a group is reading all the inputs. It consists of the Synod team around Cardinal Grech and 25 other people. The team has been selected to ensure "a certain mix in terms of geographical origin (at least three per "continent", a little more for Europe and Asia), ecclesial "status" (7 diocesan priests, 7 religious and 11 lay people) and gender (9 women and 16 men)", explains Giacomo Costa. He is a consultant in the Synod Secretariat and organises the sifting of the inputs. The materials, he says, were divided and assigned so that they would be read several times by people with different backgrounds and disciplinary knowledge. Each person will then summarise the texts they have read. This is done in a spiritual process, Costa emphasises. What is important is not only what has been mentioned most often, but also what appears in only one contribution. At the moment, everyone is working at home, but from 20 September, the team will come together for a fortnight to get an overall picture of the submissions and to work out the "deepest cores and most important elements". Afterwards, they will write different parts of the text, which will then be processed - "by two laymen", Costa emphasises - into the document for the continental phase.

(Giacomo Costa on the Amazon synod - needless to say he is a Jesuit.  Some background on Nathalie Becquart.  Expect a special article from Cathcon on the consultors to the Synod.) 

Following a Synod of Bishops, the Pope summarises his decision in a post-synodal letter. The picture shows the document "Amoris laetitia" (2016) published after the Synod on the Family.

Normally, this would become the working document of the Synod of Bishops. This time, however, it was decided to return this document to the local churches in a continental phase. This circularity is intended to guarantee "respect for the actors in the synodal process", said Synod President, Cardinal Grech. The local churches are asked to read the document prepared by the Synod Secretariat once again and to report back whether it reflects the synodal horizon that has developed in the particular churches of the respective continent. In this continental phase, it is important to place what has been summarised in the respective specific context. However, critical comments were also requested. It is a dialogue that takes place "not only between the particular Churches and the universal Church, but also in a certain way between the individual particular Churches, especially within each continent", Costa explains. The Synod is not a process of progressive abstraction, "which gradually detaches itself from the ground, from everyday reality, in order to rise to ever more distant levels", but a process of going and returning. This idea was to be taken into account with the intermediate step of a continental re-reading. Here too, as during the first phase, as many people as possible should be involved. The working document of the 2023 World Synod of Bishops will then be drawn up from the feedback of the seven continental Bishops' Conferences, with "the broadest possible and most conscious ecclesial consensus". There will also be continental meetings for this purpose. The European meeting will take place in the Czech Republic from 5 to 12 February 2023.

"All" - "Some" - "One"

Finally, the Synod will reach its climax in autumn 2023 with the major meeting of bishops in Rome. This event should not overshadow the preceding phases, the Synod team emphasises again and again. Rather, it is a matter of reflecting on the inspirations with an overview of the world church and putting them in order for the Church as a whole. It is important to the Pope that it becomes clear that he, too, is a Bishop among Bishops - who, as the successor of Saint Peter, "reigns in love over all the churches". (Cathcon: so far in his Papacy, the Pope has operated without reference to the Vatican II doctrine of collegiality, instrumentalising the Bishops to discipline the Latin Mass communities and selling them to the wolves, as in China)

 After the conclusion of the Synod of Bishops in 2023, he will therefore draw up a post-synodal letter based on the advice of his fellow Bishops. The Synod experiment (Cathcon: experiment, now they tell us! And just how dangerous is this experiment) thus follows - as the Erfurt dogmatics Professor Julia Knop describes it - the Catholic synod rule of three: "All" - "Some" - "One". But the project does not end with the solemn Synod of Bishops. It is followed by a final step: implementation. For this purpose, the Pope will turn the tables. Whereas until now the word went from the people of the Church through the ear of the bishops to the Pope, it will then be the task of the bishops and the people of the Church to implement the papal decision of the Post-Synodal Exhortation. In this way, the Pope said, it becomes visible that the synodal process has not only its starting point but also its goal in the people of God.

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