John L Allen Jr considers how the Synod of Bishops will be able to deal with hugely divisive issues.
On October 4, the curtain will rise on the first of two keenly anticipated Synods of Bishops on the theme of synodality – really, they’re synods “with” bishops, but more on that shortly – which, depending on who’s talking, represent either “the biggest consultation exercise in human history” or a facsimile of listening driven by an elite cadre of activists with an agenda.
The synod in Rome has been three and a half years in the making, first announced by Pope Francis on March 7, 2020. It has involved consultations at both diocesan and continental levels around the world, and is now set to culminate in two assemblies featuring the largest and widest cross-section of participants since modern Synods of Bishops were established by Pope St Paul VI in 1965 in the wake of the Second Vatican Council.
A robust total of 363 participants will have the right to vote, of whom slightly over 20 per cent will be non-bishops. That share includes, for the very first time, 54 women, including members of religious orders – perhaps not accidentally, 54 is precisely the same number of cardinals who will take part.
In other words, these two summits are more akin to synods “with” bishops, in which clergy, religious and laity will also have a significant voice. The stated intent is to listen to the entire Church, including those presently at its margins.
While all that may suggest this is a gathering genuinely representative of the global Catholic population, such claims have been vigorously contested by sceptics who point out that data released by dioceses around the world paint a very different picture in terms of the share of the Catholic population which actually has been heard.
In the United States, a report from the Bishops’ Conference indicates that roughly 700,000 people participated in the diocesan phase of consultations, out of a total Catholic population in the country close to 70 million, thus representing about 1 per cent.
The picture is more or less the same in other regions for which data is available, suggesting that an extremely small share of the world’s 1.3 billion Catholics actually put in their two cents.
What difference might that make? Let’s take the case of one of the issues expected to arise during synod discussions – the blessing of same-sex unions, which has already been recommended by the German “synodal path”, and which is likely to arise as part of a broader discussion of outreach to the LGBTQ+ community called for by the synod’s working document (technically known as the Instrumentum Laboris.)
There is no direct data on global Catholic opinion on the issue. However, we can get a rough sense of the lay of the land from two sources: first, the most recent statistics from the Vatican about the distribution of the Catholic population, and second, a 2023 Pew Research Center survey on attitudes towards same-sex marriage in 24 nations.
The Pew study is an inexact gauge for this discussion, for at least three reasons. First, it concerns civil marriage, not ecclesiastical blessings; second, it represents general public opinion, not specifically Catholic sentiment; and third, there’s no guarantee that the 24 nations involved, 12 of which are in Europe and North America, and another of which is Australia, are necessarily representative of overall global opinion.
The imprecision is compounded by the fact that since polling data tends to be more readily available in developed societies, the results skew towards the views of affluent populations. Yet two-thirds of the global Catholic population today lives in the developing world, a share that will rise to three-quarters by mid-century.
One could also argue that relying on general population data is misleading, given that religious communities often tend to be more conservative on many moral questions. On the other hand, in many societies, such as the United States and Brazil, Catholics are more likely than Evangelicals or Pentecostals to favour gay marriage, so perhaps overall the difference comes out in the wash.
In any event, this is the best we’re going to do, so let’s run the numbers with regard to recognition of same-sex unions. A genuinely consultative exercise among the world’s entire Catholic population would probably produce an x-ray of a divided church on the question of blessing same-sex unions, with the split running almost right down the middle.
Three observations suggest themselves in the light of that probability. First, while knowing public opinion is always useful, it does not neatly translate into doctrinal conclusions.
As Newman famously observed in his 1859 essay “On Consulting the Faithful in Matters of Doctrine”, one can “consult” opinion in the Church in the same sense in which one “consults” a weather report before heading out of the door – doing so attests to the fact of the climate, but it doesn’t necessarily dictate one’s decision about whether or not to take a walk.
Second, one test of the legitimacy of the synodal discussions will be whether they do justice to the complexity of Catholic opinion suggested by these numbers. To take a concrete example on the matter of same-sex relationships, one synodal father from Africa, Bishop Sanctus Lino Wanok of the Diocese of Lira in Uganda, may be expected to have strong views. This past Ash Wednesday he publicly condemned same-sex coup-les asking for blessings, saying: “It is a shameful thing actually, they are mocking the Church by saying we want blessings for our union. That mockery should stop, otherwise it is offensive to God as our creator.”
Whether voices such as Wanok’s will be given a hearing will be closely watched as a bellwether of the fairness of the process. During the 2014-2015 Synods of Bishops on the family, there were accusations that the deck had been stacked in favour of progress-ive positions on the contentious issue of Communion for divorced and civilly remarried Catholics. Those inclined to scepticism about this new set of synods will be watching closely for indications that a similar dynamic is at work this time around.
Third, the division in opinion reflected in the data here suggests that one major discussion point in the synod perhaps ought to be how to balance the possibility of decentralised local solutions on pastoral questions, against the imperative of unity in matters of faith.
It’s tempting to say, for example, that since the pastoral realities on same-sex relationships are obviously different in, say, Germany and Nigeria, given the stark contrast in public opinion, perhaps the solutions in each setting should differ as well. Yet because the discussion has implications for doctrine, especially regarding the sacrament of marriage, it can’t entirely be left to local control.
If the synods can generate new insight on how to thread that needle, they may well be an enormously productive exercise. If, on the other hand, they attempt to paper over real differences in the Church in the name of an artificial consensus, then they could end up exacerbating rather than healing divisions.
The bottom line is that Catholicism is a global family of faith, and its nuances will only grow as its centre of gravity continues to shift from the West to the developing world. A synod which acknowledges that complexity, resisting the lure of facile solutions and fostering a spirituality in which having a seat at the table is perceived as more important than getting one’s own way, could be a true watershed moment.
Such an outcome could be the cornerstone of the legacy of the first pope from the developing world. Part of the drama of October, therefore, will be whether that’s actually how things play out.
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