REPORTS AND COMMENTARY, FROM ROME AND ELSEWHERE, ON THE SYNOD ON SYNODALITY: “FOR A SYNODAL CHURCH – COMMUNION, PARTICIPATION, MISSION.”
EDITED BY XAVIER RYNNE II
A Note from the Editor
During Synod-2014, the first of two such international meetings to discuss the Catholic Church’s response to the crisis of the 21st-century family, Cardinal George Pell expressed grave concern about the performance of the Vatican Press Office and suggested that alternatives to the official spin would be important when the second Synod on the family met a year later. Thus these Letters from the Synod were born at Synod-2015 and have continued at subsequent Synods. Their aim is to offer to a global readership an example of what our predecessor, the original “Xavier Rynne,” writing during Vatican II, described as theological journalism.
The goal has been to inform, not titillate. So, over the next four weeks, Letters from the Synod-2023 will explore the deeper issues involved in the Catholic Church’s current experiment in “synodality.” Concurrently, Letters will provide a forum in which Catholics from different states of life in the Church an opportunity to address those gathered here in Rome under the rubric, “What I Would Say to the Synod”—an opportunity that will also be afforded to some who, while not Catholic, understand the Catholic Church’s importance at this moment in history.
We hope, in this way, to provide a service to a Church of “communion, participation, and mission,” always keeping in mind that this is Christ’s Church, not ours, and that it is the Risen Lord Jesus who must always be at the center of the Church’s proclamation and witness. Writing recently on the Jesuit-sponsored America website, a young Catholic claimed that “our Church is just that: ours.” Well, no, it isn’t. Such claims tend to empty the Church of its supernatural character as the “earthen vessel” (2 Corinthians 4:7) of God’s grace at work in the world, for the world’s salvation. Letters from the Synod-2023 will always keep that basic Christian truth in mind. Christus vincit, Christus regnat, Christus imperat.
Xavier Rynne II
WHAT, EXACTLY, IS THIS “SYNOD”?
The Annuario Pontificio, the Holy See’s yearbook, is one of the most important Vatican publications, including detailed information on the officials of the Holy See and the Roman Curia, on the membership of the College of Cardinals, on the global episcopate, and on every diocese and religious institute in the world. The 2023 edition clocks in at a hefty 2,278 pages, within which is a wealth of data on institutional Catholicism, the world’s largest and most complex religious body.
Because the Annuario is an official publication, produced by the Holy See’s Secretariat of State, nothing in it appears accidentally. And so alert readers of the signs of the times (Vatican subdivision) understood that something of potential consequence was afoot when, on p. 1,058 of the 2023 Annuario, what had been identified for decades by the title Sinodo dei Vescovi (Synodus Episcoporum)—the “Synod of Bishops,” in the yearbook’s standard Italian/Latin—was transformed into the Segreteria Generale del Sinodo (Secreteria Generalis Synodi), reflecting the change in nomenclature in Pope Francis’s 2022 apostolic constitution Praedicate Evangelium, which restructured the Roman Curia. What had once been an episcopal body—the Synod of Bishops—seemed to have become a bureaucratic entity: a General Secretariat. But a General Secretariat of what? Well, of “the Synod” (indexed as such, “Sinodo,” on p. 2,272 of the Annuario). But the Synod of what?
Matters were not clarified by the recent publication of certain critical materials produced by the Synod’s General Secretariat. The Instrumentum Laboris (working document) for Synod-2023 carried the banner headline, “XVI Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops,” while the “Informational Sheet” on Synod-2023’s schedule and methodology referred to the “XVI General Ordinary Assembly of the Synod of Bishops.” This latter document was distributed to all of Synod-2023’s official participants, which include about a hundred lower-order clergy, religious women, and laity in addition to more than 270 bishops (and five dozen “facilitators” of the Synod’s small-group discussions, none of whom is a bishop).
In what sense, then, is Synod-2023 a “Synod of Bishops,” the Instrumentum Laboris and the Informational Sheet notwithstanding? What did the Instrumentum Laboris mean when it referred to “. . . the Synod . . . in which the XVI Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops will take place”? Is Synod-2023 a kind of synodal sandwich, with a Synod of Bishops taking place within “the Synod”?
Whatever all of this may mean, it seems rather different than what Pope Paul VI had in mind when, on September 15, 1965, he issued the apostolic letter Apostolica Sollicitudo, “establishing the Synod of Bishops for the Universal Church” as an expression of the collegiality of the world episcopate defined by the Dogmatic Constitution of the Church, one of the Second Vatican Council’s foundational texts.
Nor does the Synod-2023 hybrid seem to be what is envisioned in the Code of Canon Law, where Canon 342.1 offers a precise definition: “The Synod of Bishops is a group of Bishops selected from different parts of the world who meet together at specified times to promote the close relationship between the Roman Pontiff and the Bishops.” True, Canon 346.1 envisions members of “clerical religious institutes” as members of a Synod. And, of course, the pope can, as he chooses, designate other members of a Synod, including lay members (as Pope Francis further stipulated in his 2018 apostolic constitution, Episcopalis Communio). But it is not at all clear how a Synod demographically configured like Synod-2023 is an exercise in “episcopal communion” (the title of Francis’s apostolic constitution), unless, as just suggested, there is a “Synod of Bishops” which functions somehow as the inner core of “the Synod.”
Nor does this form of “Synod” seem to have much to do with the synodal governance of either the Eastern Catholic Churches or the Orthodox Churches of the Christian East. In the run-up to Synod-2023, it was said more than once, and not least by the pope himself, that the Catholic Church was recovering a lost element of itself by rediscovering a “synodality” that Eastern Christianity had never lost. But the “synodality” on display on the earlier local, national, and continental phases of this multi-year “Synod on Synodality”—and that will be on display this month in Rome in what some have whimsically described as the Synod on Synodality’s “planetary phase”—does not seem akin to synodal church governance on the Eastern Christian model.
Thus Bishop Manuel Nin, Byzantine Catholic apostolic exarch in Greece and a member of Synod-2023 by papal appointment, told the National Catholic Register’s Edward Pentin that if “synodality” is understood as a way of being the Church in which “everyone, lay and clerical, act(s) together in order to arrive at some ecclesiastical, doctrinal, canonical, (or) disciplinary decision, whatever it may be, it becomes clear that such synodality does not exist in the East.” For the synodal experience of the Eastern Churches is “associated with the exercise of authority, pastoral ministry, service within the Christian Churches, which talks place in the assembly of bishops belonging to a particular Church and headed by a patriarch, archbishop or metropolitan.”
It might be suggested, then, that one of the most important tasks of Synod-2023 will be the clarification of its own specific character and authority—which would in turn help clarify just what is meant by those chameleon-like terms “synodality” and “synodal Church.” For absent such clarity, those usages risk becoming cover for a variety of ideologically-driven agendas.
George Weigel
BREAKING NEWS
On the morning of October 2, a group of cardinals, one from each continent, released five dubia, or questions, which they had sent to Pope Francis on August 21 and to which they had not received a reply. The dubia were made public because the authors—Cardinals Walter Brandmüller, Raymond Burke, Juan Sandoval Íñiguez, Robert Sarah, and Joseph Zen, SDB—believe that, in these questions, they have identified some of the key issues of doctrine and pastoral practice that have arisen along German Catholicism’s “Synodal Way” and in the two years of discussions leading up to Synod-2023: issues of which the entire Church should be aware. We publish the dubia here in the spirit of parrhesia—frank discussion—to which the Holy Father has called the Church, and in the hope that the discussion the dubia are intended to deepen throughout the world Church will be of assistance to Synod-2023 as it begins its work on October 4.
(Clarification: The dubia below are those submitted to Pope Francis on July 11, 2023. These dubia were then reformulated in a simpler form by the five cardinal-signatories in a letter to the pope of August 21. That letter, which has received no response, was sent by the cardinal-signatories after receipt of what they regarded as an inadequate papal reply to the original dubia. The original dubia were then appended to a letter to the faithful from the cardinal-signatories, released on October 2 to foster a more thorough discussion of the profound issues confronting Synod-2023—which is our goal in publishing them here. For further information, see here and here.)
Xavier Rynne II
DUBIA
1. Dubium about the claim that we should reinterpret Divine Revelation according to the cultural and anthropological changes in vogue.
After the statements of some bishops, which have been neither corrected nor retracted, it is asked whether in the Church Divine Revelation should be reinterpreted according to the cultural changes of our time and according to the new anthropological vision that these changes promote; or whether Divine Revelation is binding forever, immutable, and therefore not to be contradicted, according to the dictum of the Second Vatican Council, that to God who reveals is due “the obedience of faith”(Dei Verbum 5); that what is revealed for the salvation of all must remain “in [its] entirety, throughout the ages” and alive, and be “transmitted to all generations” (7); and that the progress of understanding does not imply any change in the truth of things and words, because faith has been “handed on . . . once and for all” (8), and the Magisterium is not superior to the Word of God, but teaches only what has been handed on (10).
2. Dubium about the claim that the widespread practice of the blessing of same-sex unions would be in accord with Revelation and the Magisterium (Catechism of the Catholic Church 2357).
According to Divine Revelation, confirmed in Sacred Scripture, which the Church “at the divine command with the help of the Holy Spirit . . . listens to devotedly, guards it with dedication and expounds it faithfully ” (Dei Verbum 10): “In the beginning” God created man in his own image, male and female he created them and blessed them, that they might be fruitful (cf. Genesis 1, 27-28), whereby the Apostle Paul teaches that to deny sexual difference is the consequence of the denial of the Creator (Romans 1, 24-32). It is asked: Can the Church derogate from this “principle,” considering it, contrary to what Veritatis Splendor 103 taught, as a mere ideal, and accepting as a “possible good” objectively sinful situations, such as same-sex unions, without betraying revealed doctrine?
3. Dubium about the assertion that synodality is a “constitutive element of the Church” (Apostolic Constitution Episcopalis Communio 6), so that the Church would, by its very nature, be synodal.
Given that the Synod of Bishops does not represent the College of Bishops but is merely a consultative organ of the pope, since the Bishops, as witnesses of the faith, cannot delegate their confession of the truth, it is asked whether synodality can be the supreme regulative criterion of the permanent government of the Church without distorting her constitutive order willed by her Founder, whereby the supreme and full authority of the Church is exercised both by the Pope by virtue of his office and by the College of Bishops together with its head the Roman Pontiff (Lumen Gentium 22).
4. Dubium about pastors’ and theologians’ support for the theory that “the theology of the Church has changed” and therefore that priestly ordination can be conferred on women.
After the statements of some prelates, which have been neither corrected nor retracted, according to which, with Vatican II, the theology of the Church and the meaning of the Mass has changed, it is asked whether the dictum of the Second Vatican Council is still valid, that “[the common priesthood of the faithful and the ministerial or hierarchical priesthood] differ essentially and not only in degree” (Lumen Gentium 10) and that presbyters by virtue of the “sacred power of Order, that of offering sacrifice and forgiving sins” (Presbyterorum Ordinis 2), act in the name and in the person of Christ the Mediator, through Whom the spiritual sacrifice of the faithful is made perfect. It is furthermore asked whether the teaching of St. John Paul II’s Apostolic Letter Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, which teaches as a truth to be definitively held the impossibility of conferring priestly ordination on women, is still valid, so that this teaching is no longer subject to change nor to the free discussion of pastors or theologians.
5. Dubium about the statement “forgiveness is a human right” and the Holy Father’s insistence on the duty to absolve everyone and always, so that repentance would not be a necessary condition for sacramental absolution.
It is asked whether the teaching of the Council of Trent, according to which the contrition of the penitent, which consists in detesting the sin committed with the intention of sinning no more (Session XIV, Chapter IV: Denzinger Hünermann 1676), is necessary for the validity of sacramental confession, is still in force, so that the priest must postpone absolution when it is clear that this condition is not fulfilled.
WHAT I WOULD SAY TO THE SYNOD
Monsignor Michael Nazir-Ali was born in Pakistan in 1949. He was the youngest bishop in the Anglican Communion when, in 1984, he became Bishop of Raiwind in his native country. After coming to England because of threats on his life, he worked in several ministries and then served as Bishop of Rochester (the former see of St. John Fisher) from 1994 until 2009. In addition to degrees from Oxford and Cambridge, Dr. Nazir-Ali holds a doctorate in theology and was awarded a Lambeth DD in 2005.
In 2021, Michael Nazir-Ali entered into full communion with the Catholic Church. He was ordained to the priesthood for the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham by Cardinal Vincent Nichols in 2022, in which year he was also named a Prelate of Honor of His Holiness by Pope Francis.
Msgr. Nazir-Ali has decades of experience with synodal processes and their effects in the Church of England and the Anglican Communion. When Letters from the Synod-2023 asked him for an essay outlining what he would say to those gathered in Rome this month, he suggested that the remarks he made at the annual meeting of the Federation of Asian Bishops Conferences on October 28, 2022, would fit the bill. A summary of the key points in those remarks, provided by Dr. Nazir-Ali and lightly edited for continuity of style, follows.
Xavier Rynne II
It is Christ who makes the Church, who renews the Church and reforms the Church. In Ephesians we are told that “Christ fills his Church with all his fullness (pleroma).” In Colossians, we are told of “Christ who is in us, the hope of glory.” At the same time, it is characteristic of St. Paul to say that “we are in Christ” (the En Christo formula).
. . . this being in Christ, and Christ in us, has to do with us personally. But it also has to do with the Church, with our standing as God’s people in the Church. We are in Christ grafted as a branch onto the vine, and Christ is in us, feeding, making, and renewing us. This . . . happens in the Church through the transmission of the Apostolic Tradition: how it is transmitted from generation to generation, culture to culture, person to person. It may be done well or badly, wholly or in part, but it is going on. People receive this Tradition (paradosis), and sometimes people notice particular elements in it, for example, God’s liberation of people in the Exodus. It is no surprise that this trajectory is noticed by the enslaved and oppressed and is widely expressed, for example, in the African American tradition. William Temple used to say that the definitive commentary on St. John’s Gospel will come from India, where their philosophical tradition will help them notice things others do not notice. Pope St. John Paul II spoke about the “feminine genius” and the perspective of how women read the Bible from which men can learn. (Perhaps, they could also learn from men how to read the Bible!)
How, then, does then does this Tradition engage with change, with new issues and new questions . . . even if not all claims to new knowledge are true?
John Henry Newman’s views on the development of doctrine are crucial for us. . . . You know these things, but just to remind you: in this process of development, of engaging with the new, the Gospel at all costs must remain and must be conserved in all its fullness. Creation, redemption, and reconciliation with the One from whom we have become alienated: these aspects of the Good News can never be compromised. And so the engagement with what is new must have a conservative action on the past. That is why in documents of the Church there is a constant reference back to the councils of the Chu
