By Catherine Pepinster
After three years of debate, consultation, delight and disappointment, the Roman Catholic Church’s “Synod on Synodality” has finally come to an end, with headlines about transparency in the Church and the role of women in an institution run by a male-only clergy.
What was the Synod?
Like the Church of England, the Catholic church holds synods to discuss significant issues. But they usually only involve the clergy. In 2020, Pope Francis announced a larg and innovative project to hold a synod to discuss the way in which the church would develop for the future and that these discussions would involve laypeople as well as priests, bishops and cardinals.
How long did the process last?
The synodal process began three years ago. It started with Catholics being invited through their parishes to talk about their concerns about the church, their beliefs and their hopes, from October 2021-April 2022.
Details of these parish conversations were then compiled and sent on to each diocese. The bishops came together and produced a synthesis of their thoughts while a team for each country — a team made up of priests and laypeople — created a synthesis based on the dioceses’ reports, together with the thoughts of Catholic charities and other lay organisations. There was also a working document produced for each continent. Britain is represented by three bishops’ conferences: one for England and Wales, one for Scotland, and Northern Ireland is part of the Irish bishops’ conference.
The first gathering in Rome was held in 2023 and the second month-long session has just finished.
How involved were ordinary Catholics?
It depended on their parishes and their bishops. Some priests ignored the request for information; some encouraged their parishioners to get very involved. Some bishops organised training in their diocese for facilitators to encourage the conversations in parishes, so that people got a chance to converse and listen.
What about different interest groups?
Representatives of different interest groups, such as LGBTQI+ and women, also offered input to the synod, holding meetings and reporting back their findings.
After the first assembly of this synod in 2023, Pope Francis set up 10 study groups to consider controversial or complicated issues that had arisen. They included women and the diaconate and women’s roles in the church; ministry to LGBTQI+ people, how bishops are chosen, and improving seminary education.
What did the Jesuit order have to do with this?
Pope Francis, who called the synod, is a member of the Society of Jesus, also known as the Jesuits, and the synod embraced a form of “attentive listening”, which the Jesuits use. Facilitators took “attentive listening” into the parishes to encourage conversations where people did not interrupt one another, but listened with deep concentration, with the talks surrounded by prayer as well.
What were the hot-button issues?
The position of gay people in the church was a key one, but even more so was the role of women.
How many people were involved in the synod discussions in Rome?
There were 368 voting delegates, of whom 54 were women.
What is the final outcome?
A 52-page document, approved by the 355 synod members who attended the final sessions, provided substantial plans for the renewal of the Catholic church. They voted on 151 proposals.
What was notable about this moment?
Usually, after a synod, the Pope would write his own document — called an apostolic exhortation — with his observations and recommendations. But this time the Synod assembly’s main conclusions are offered to be implemented.
What does this renewal comprise?
The final document calls for five forms of conversion: spiritual, relational, procedural, institutional, and missionary. It wants pastoral councils to be strengthened in parishes, and regular church assemblies across church levels. There is to be an increase in lay involvement in the church.
Will the Pope still be seen as the ultimate authority?
The text talks about synodal authority but it also points out in “a synodal church, the authority of the bishop, of the episcopal college, and of the bishop of Rome [the Pope] in regard to decision-taking is inviolable”. In other words, more conversation, but the source of power remains the same.
And what about the role of women?
The document paves the way for women to assume leadership roles in the church, saying there is “no reason or impediment” for them not to do so. However, leadership roles tend to be given to priests, bishops and cardinals — and there is no chance that women are going to be admitted to the priesthood.
Could anything advance on that front?
The document does say that “the question of women’s access to diaconal ministry remains open”, and that “discernment should continue”.
So is there really any progress on women’s role in the church?
Women cannot be priests, the leaders are currently priests, yet the synod has indicated there should be openness to women being involved in leadership roles. The Catholic church therefore has to find some way to enable women to become involved in leadership without ordination. Some religious sisters have already risen to senior positions within the Vatican’s offices, otherwise known as the Roman Curia.
One other indication of progress is that in previous papacies the topic of women’s ordination was not even allowed to be discussed. Now women deacons are at least referred to.
But the synod showed how major a concern the role of women is in the Catholic church — a church where women make up the majority of members, yet its episcopal hierarchy is entirely male.
The synodal document says:
“By virtue of baptism, women and men have equal dignity as members of the people of God. However, women continue to encounter obstacles in obtaining a fuller recognition of their charisms, vocation and roles in all the various areas of the church’s life. This is to the detriment of serving the church’s shared mission.
“Scripture attests to the prominent role of many women in the history of salvation. One woman, Mary Magdalene, was given the first proclamation of the Resurrection. On the day of Pentecost, Mary, the Mother of God, was present, accompanied by many other women who had followed the Lord. It is important that the Scripture passages that relate these stories find adequate space inside liturgical lectionaries.
“Crucial turning points in church history confirm the essential contribution of women moved by the Spirit. Women make up the majority of churchgoers and are often the first witnesses to the faith in families. They are active in the life of small Christian communities and parishes. They run schools, hospitals and shelters. They lead initiatives for reconciliation and promoting human dignity and social justice. Women contribute to theological research and are present in positions of responsibility in church institutions, in diocesan curias and the Roman Curia. There are women who hold positions of authority and are leaders of their communities.
“This assembly asks for full implementation of all the opportunities already provided for in canon law with regard to the role of women, particularly in those places where they remain under-explored. There is no reason or impediment that should prevent women from carrying out leadership roles in the church: what comes from the Holy Spirit cannot be stopped.
“Additionally, the question of women’s access to diaconal ministry remains open. This discernment needs to continue. The assembly also asks that more attention be given to the language and images used in preaching, teaching, catechesis, and the drafting of official church documents, giving more space to the contributions of female saints, theologians and mystics.”
What is the probable response of women?
For many women, this will be deeply frustrating. They were angered by the decision for key issues such as women in the church and gay people to be sidelined to special study groups rather than fully discussed at the synod.
They were already offended by the words of Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernández, prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, who said the Pope considered the question of women’s deacons “not mature”. Then he failed to attend a special meeting on 18 October that had been organised for delegates to offer their feedback on one of the synod’s most closely watched issues for which he is responsible. He later apologised and rearranged his meeting.
When the synod asked for “full implementation of all the opportunities already provided for in canon law with regard to the role of women, particularly in those places where they remain under-explored”, and leaves open “the question of women’s access to diaconal ministry”, women will have noticed that it was the most contested paragraph of the final document, with 258 votes for and 97 against. It was not clear if the “no” votes were because the language went too far or not far enough.
Kate McElwee, the executive director of Women’s Ordination Worldwide, told CNN. “Women are looking for concrete changes and reforms that urgently recognise their equality. How much longer must women wait?”
For those who have campaigned on the issue of women in the church, such as the Root and Branch group and the Wijngaards Institute for Catholic Research, which advocates women’s ordination, there will be disappointment but renewed resolve to continue campaigning.
For other Catholics, what happens next depends on their local priests and bishops as to how the synodal recommendations are implemented. Pope Francis said the synodal recommendations were “highly concrete” and “can be a guide for the missions in the different continents and contexts”.
“We cannot remain inert before the questions raised by the women and men of today, before the challenges of our time, the urgency of evangelisation and the many wounds that afflict humanity,” Francis said in his homily during the closing mass for the synod of bishops in St Peter’s Basilica on 27 October.
“A sedentary church that inadvertently withdraws from life and confines itself to the margins of reality is a church that risks remaining blind and becoming comfortable with its own unease,” he said.
One significant long-term impact of the synod is likely to be the interest in “attentive listening” and its use at local level in the church.
At the end of the synod assembly, Pope Francis said: “The Bishop of Rome … also needs to practise listening, in order to be able to respond to the Word that each day says to him, ‘Affirm your brothers and sisters … Feed my sheep’.”
This act of listening, he said, was essential to cultivating harmony within the church, a harmony envisioned by St Basil and the Second Vatican Council.
Were there any British people involved in the Synod?
There were several: Archbishop John Wilson of Southwark; Bishop Marcus Stock of Leeds; Bishop Nicholas Hudson, auxiliary bishop of Westminster; Austen Ivereigh, a papal biographer; Anna Rowlands, theologian from Durham University; and Bishop Brian McGee of Argyll and the Isles.
The most notable participant from Britain, though, was Fr Timothy Radcliffe, a Dominican friar from Blackfriars, Oxford, who contributed spiritual reflections at both this year’s and last year’s synodal sessions — reflections which set the tone of the gatherings. Radcliffe was named a cardinal during the synod by Pope Francis.
