The new “listening to everyone and excluding nothing” process so far undertaken in the first two phases of the Synod on Synodality has been trumpeted as revolutionary and indicative of a new era in the Church, but it contrasts starkly with the previous legislation of Pope John Paul II.
In 1997, John Paul II issued an Instruction on Diocesan Synods, which addressed the danger he perceived in the postconciliar era that questions which are definitively settled by the papal or conciliar magisterium might be treated as open to discussion.
“In view of the bonds uniting the particular Church and her Pastor with the universal Church and the Roman Pontiff,” he wrote, “the Bishop has the duty to exclude from the synodal discussions theses or positions – as well as proposals submitted to the Synod with the mere intention of transmitting to the Holy See ‘polls’ in their regard – discordant with the perennial doctrine of the Church or the Magisterium or concerning material reserved to Supreme ecclesiastical authority or to other ecclesiastical authorities.”
While this instruction is directed at local synods, the same fundamental theological criteria that underlie Pope John Paul II’s norms also apply to a universal synod. As Vatican I’s dogmatic constitution Pastor aeternus famously insists, “[T]he Holy Spirit was promised to the successors of Peter not so that they might, by his revelation, make known some new doctrine, but that, by his assistance, they might religiously guard and faithfully expound the revelation or deposit of faith transmitted by the apostles.”
And yet, for the first two local phases of the Synod on Synodality, which recently culminated in a Working Document for the Continental Stage, these clear directives appear to have been rejected.
At the release of the working document on 27 October, this correspondent asked Cardinal Mario Grech, Secretary General of the Synod of Bishops, about several controversial images his office proudly published on social media as they were preparing the document. The images, hailed as “works of art” by the synod secretariat, have caused considerable consternation among Catholics as they imply a rejection of the Church’s definitive teaching on the impossibility of ordaining women to the priesthood and the objective immorality of homosexual acts.
Asked if synod officials are “listening” to the opposition to all this, Cardinal Grech said the working document, titled “Enlarge the space of your tent”, clearly shows they are “listening to everybody… without excluding anybody”.
“Our duty at this moment,” he said, “is to be a channel, to make the voices of the People of God that arrived through the episcopal conferences [heard]. So, I repeat, we exclude nothing. We take note of everything, and we submit that then to the pastors who have the responsibility to guide the People of God.”
Vatican II is sometimes criticised for not explicitly professing the creed of the previous ecumenical council, as had been the custom. This failure, critics say, could give the impression that it was treating as “open” matters previously settled by the papal and conciliar magisterium.
Many fear that the same strategy is arising around the forthcoming Synod on Synodality. Questions which are definitively settled by the papal or conciliar magisterium are being treated in its working document as open to discussion on the grounds that the preliminary stages are merely a listening exercise. The suspicion is that once they reach the floor of the Synod next October, these ecclesio-gastric rumblings will be repackaged as the voice of the Holy Spirit wafting up from the People of God – the problem being that one of the three ways of determining whether someone is actually part of the People of God or merely a cultural adherent of the Church is whether they profess the defined teachings of the Catholic Church, the first of the tria vincula famously identified by St Robert Bellarmine and listed by Vatican II. The Holy Spirit has often been invoked by officials and enthusiasts justifying the work of this synod. But many are sceptical that the Paraclete would bless with His presence an event so open to ideas rejected by the Church.
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