Synod Skeptics

I have given so much space to supporting the Synod process, I think it’s about time to acknowledge that there are skeptics. Maybe that includes you, your friends and family, those you share liturgy with – lots of others. Who could not be a little skeptical after all we’ve been through?

Joan Chittister opined a month ago in NCR, that most of the changes after Vatican II were “window dressing.” She reminds us that there were  “2,000-2,500 bishops from around the world” (including a clever link to the Vatican website about the Council, in case you want some basic information), many of whom “simply ignored” what they had voted for in Rome. “No one talked about reunion with the Christian family of multiple denominations, for instance. No one moved to include women as fully baptized members of the church.” John Paul II and Benedict XVI cemented this resistance once they were popes.

Now Chittister is not skeptical, exactly. My image of what she’s saying is that by asking the laity to be involved Francis is smashing that cement, and not by himself. Certainly, nobody is waiting for buy-in from the clergy. Listening to reports from the German church, she reports, “I got a chill. I was listening to a drumbeat of human issues that were separating people from the church, from support, from holiness in this day and age. The drone I was hearing was clearly the drone of the Holy Spirit: “Group A: Married priests … women priests … deaconesses …” — topics from every nook and cranny in the area over and over again.” She captures the genius of the Synod process.

“Brethren, be sober and watchful:” Chittister might be quoting to us from Compline. Even Vatican II, which so many hold in such high regard, also disappointed. “May this council truly begin what the world is waiting for lest the Catholic world gets stopped in its tracks by those who do not want the church to grow.”

Now, as I mentioned briefly on June 17, Massimo Faggioli finds danger in Chittister’s warning. “If we see the council as a failure, and synodality as a chance to repair that failure (or worse, to avenge it), then we are bound to fail for sure. Synodality can change the Church, but not overnight. The Synod assembly next October—the first of the two on synodality—is not likely to make any groundbreaking decisions. We must be prepared for the long haul.”

This sounds to me like the very skepticism I hear around me. Faggioli is concerned that “if too many of the current cardinal-electors are frightened or alarmed by the Synod on synodality, they may vote for someone at the next conclave who is eager to bring Francis’ project to a halt.” And, by implication, John XXIII’s along with it. This is Chittister’s concern as well.

So how do we manage expectations without giving up aspirations expressed by so many around the globe?

Skepticism slides into satire in Mary Hunt’s article for Religion Dispatches. With intensity that doesn’t quite match Jonathan Swift on Irish children (A Modest Proposal), Hunt still wounds my tender heart as she writes, “Roman Catholic women priests of various stripes are excommunicated upon ordination, so that’s that. Meanwhile, the Catholics who remain keep mucking their way in what’s called a ‘synodal process.’” With characteristic humor, Hunt describes the successes of some “Germans who have progressive views and the money to make them stick” but the general problem that “the Synod seems designed to simply acknowledge the hot-button issues, a minimalist result at best, with no clear mechanism and less promise to do anything about them. The exception proves the rule.” And she finds an exception:

“Cue the brass band to herald the papally approved decision to include 70 non-bishops, half of whom are to be women, as voting members of the Synod. This is the first substantive structural change for women in Roman Catholicism perhaps since Mary gave birth to Jesus.” Hunt also notes that leaders of religious congregations, whether ten men or five men and five women, are still lay people, so that’s ten more.

After a brief summary of The International Survey of Catholic Women: Analysis and Report of Key Findings, “an important read” which I have not yet addressed in this blog, Hunt learns a new term from one of its authors, as do I. “Breadcrumbing means giving just enough affirmation to keep people involved while suggesting more interest than is really there. It’s used mostly in personal situations but it feels like what’s going on with the Synod.” Hunt’s examples move beyond satire as she examines the trail from Natalie Becquart’s voting privileges to “once they’re approved by Francis, at least 35 women,” to “the mere mention of marginalized people in the documents,” especially “women’s ordination and LGBTQIA+,” each of which “has a 50 year history of struggle and then some.”

There’s a whole lot more here that may adjust your attitude towards the Synod even further than has the backsliding in each successive round of documents. Hunt punctures some certainties and probably some hopes in a very different way but leading to a conclusion similar to both Chittister and Faggioli.

I will briefly address the brand of skepticism Thomas Reese brings up in NCR:  Americans would prefer a corporate model, with all the numbers that implies. Somewhere this week something reminded me of the decision-making model used so successfully by religious orders of women, the consensus-building communal process. That’s similar to CELAM, the gatherings of Latin American bishops which has reached such monumental pastoral decisions for years. Reese hints that it’s the spiritual foundation of synodality that will make the difference this time, and that’s certainly there. But I would say that rather than the stereotypically male corporate model, it’s the stereotypically female process model, a relational model, similar to consensus, that is determining the synod process we have, as skeptical as we might be. The only ringer is the reversion to the hierarchical model at the end.