Father James Martin: What will happen at the synod’s final session? It’s up to the Holy Spirit.
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stained-glass window illustrating the Holy Spirit is seen in the
Cathedral of St. Peter in Wilmington, Del., May 27, 2021. (CNS
photo/Chaz Muth)Sono già arrivato!
One danger of having an Italian mother who spoke some Italian at home and then taking an Italian-language class in college is that you are tempted to think you know far more Italian than you do. Whenever I visit Rome, that’s disproven as soon as I open my mouth. But one phrase I remember is that lead-off sentence, which means “I have already arrived.”
I’m writing this from a room at the Jesuit Curia, or headquarters, which is only a stone’s throw from the Vatican, on Friday, Sept. 27. (“And some of those stones used to reach us,” as one Jesuit told me decades ago.) I’m here for the second and final session of the Synod of Bishops (also known as the Synod on Synodality, more formally the XVI Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops). I’m honored to be a delegate and to be among what were called last year, non-pejoratively, “non-bishops,” that is, the priests, men and women religious and lay people who serve as voting delegates but who don’t wear pink or red skullcaps.
At the end of last October, Ireported on what happened at the first session, which concluded with a Synthesis Report that pleased some (who were enthusiastic about history’s largest consultative gathering) and disappointed others (who were hoping for some concrete change, even though the synod is consultative, not legislative).
Since last year, some of the topics that we discussed have been handed over to smaller study groups for further work. Therefore, this year, Pope Francis has decided that we will be discussing not any series of topics (clericalism, the role of bishops in a synodal church, women’s ordination to the diaconate, or ministry to L.G.B.T.Q. Catholics) but synodality itself. But given that synodality means listening to all sorts of people for whom those topics are important, I would imagine that those topics will probably be, in some sense, in the background.
That decision to appoint study groups has been defended by those who say it would be impossible for 350 people to answer all those complicated questions in a month; better to give them over to study groups that can focus on them more effectively. Besides, on complex topics like, for example, the relationships between the Latin Rite and Eastern Rite churches, most of us aren’t experts. Others, however, argue that these are the very topics that were raised in parishes and dioceses for the synod itself to discuss, rather than handing them off to study groups. Likewise, some worry that the study groups, whose work is not supposed to conclude until 2025, will postpone action on important issues.
How will we tackle the main question raised in the currentworking document: How to be a missionary synodal church? Will we be able to issue a document for Pope Francis that will suggest practical ways for the church to become more synodal? Will we be able to put some “teeth” into synodality? That’s up to the Holy Spirit, not me. Besides, I’ve only just arrived!
The Rev. James Martin, S.J., is a Jesuit priest, author, editor at large at America and founder of Outreach.
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