Evaluating the Synod Process

Despite the tremendous appeal of Pope Francis’s trip to ask for forgiveness from the indigenous peoples of Canada to the media worldwide, I am going to write about the Synod Process again. If we are to effectively advocate for people of all genders to be ordained, we have to understand what is happening around the world.

I wrote on July 9 in the middle of the Australian Plenary Council, and I am inspired today by a long analysis after its conclusion by Massimo Faggioli in LaCroix International.  Faggioli has a much longer-term view of this meeting than I, as he consulted with the planners as the process developed.

He writes: “Despite the undeniable gap between some of the proposals in the ‘Light of the Southern Cross’ and the final documents of the Plenary Council, I can honestly say that I was not disappointed with what happened earlier this month in Sydney.” He places the crisis at the meeting in Australia in the context of Vatican II and I cannot avoid quoting his description of what happened:

Sixty years later…the disruption on July 6 was over the deliberative vote on “Part 4: Witnessing to the Equal Dignity of Women and Men”.

The motion failed because it was not supported by the required two-thirds majority of the bishops. It was an immensely painful moment.

The response in the room was immediate; it was just before morning teatime, and the vote occasioned deep grief, consternation and tears.

There is little history in Catholicism of this type of (mostly) lay-led “insurgency”. But something similar happened at Vatican II…

[In Australia] Bishop Mackinlay, the Deputy President of the Plenary Council, saw that the program could not continue as it was. After morning tea, 60 or so people (mostly women, two bishops, some priests and lay men) stood at the back of the hall as a form of protest.

Bishop Mackinlay announced that the program would be revised and that there would be further discussion of Part 4. He said the bishops would meet with the Steering Committee over lunch to discuss a way forward.

Part 4 of the document was then revised by a new drafting team with a minor revision, without using the language of “complementarity”.

It was re-introduced to the assembly on Friday and gained very strong support. Credit should be given to the goodwill of many of the bishops who were seeking a way through.

There was a definite strategy planned right from the start by a conservative group to stop all the creative motions, but it did not work. As happened at Vatican II, the strategy of saying no to everything that challenges the status quo does not work in well-prepared and well-led ecclesial assemblies…

Finding a way to overcome the blow-up after the bishops’ negative deliberative vote on women showed that a further step of reception by the whole assembly is needed after the deliberative vote.

In a synodal Church, consultation [with everyone, including laity] and deliberation [by bishops] must be understood as a circular relationship.

This is, my friends, the Synodal process. Faggioli says: “Synodality is the way to defeat polarization in the Church: not just because it shows, in the physical and liturgical setting, the real size and import of tiny but vocal minorities, [emphasis added] but also because it helps reflect in an ecclesial, non-reactive way on the issues these vocal minorities raise.” The tiny but vocal minority opposed to the inclusion of women was not allowed to prevail against the majority who wanted something different.

John Warhurst examines the dynamics, rooted in “hierarchy” and patriarchy as well, I would say. Christopher Lamb describes the decision-making as “flatter.” But Patty Fawkner SGS tells us how it felt, reprinted in LaCroix International: “profound visceral sadness.”Why?

it was mostly women who spoke against suggestions for a more inclusive role for women. Any talk of greater engagement of women in leadership and governance roles was interpreted as a push for ‘power’, a push for ordination.

The use of the ‘o’ word, in any context, spooked some Members. Over the days of the Assembly, no-one, I repeat no-one, lobbied for women’s ordination to the priesthood.

A proposed amendment that it merely be recorded that Members had heard the frustration and disappointment about women’s exclusion from ordination was too much for some. A simple acknowledgement of women’s experience was expunged.

Perhaps this is what we have to expect about women’s ordination in other Synods, especially as the decision-making goes up the levels established for consolidation of the results. I wonder if the laity will even be involved in the United States. Fawkner describes that fateful day much the same as Faggioli does, but she deals with how it felt: “From a depressive and despondent mood in the morning you could feel the communal spirit lift as the afternoon wore on.”

The resulting Decree on the equal dignity of women and men, though not vastly different in intent from the original motion, had in many ways been strengthened.

The Church committed itself unequivocally “to enhancing the role of women in the Church, and to overcoming assumptions, culture, practices and language that lead to inequality”.

The inclusion of the words “culture” and “language” was balm to my wounded spirit.

Women’s “frustration and disappointment” that there were barriers to them offering “their gifts in service of the Gospel” was finally acknowledged.

The contentious motion of admitting women to the diaconate was bolstered to say that the Australian Church would not merely consider this, but would “examine how best to implement it”, should ‘Rome’ so authorise.

Members agreed that women be “appropriately represented in decision-making structures” at all levels of Church life.

“Appropriately” allows some concerning ‘wriggle room’ as I’m pretty sure that it won’t be women who will be the arbiters of appropriateness!

However, my overall assessment is that the final Decree on women is neither confused nor lukewarm.

Here’s a link to the entire document as passed in Australia: Witnessing to the Equal Dignity of Women and Men. Very cleverly, it quotes John Paul II and Paul VI. I hope you agree with Fawkner that it gives the Australian church a way to proceed, yet those who were present “learnt from experience that synodality is not for the faint hearted and that real tensions are inherent in a true synodal journey.” And she quotes Francis: they “dared to dream.”