By Russell Shaw, The Catholic Thing - As the Council drew to a close, Pope St. Paul VI announced the creation of a permanent Synod of Bishops for the universal Church, but so far its assemblies have had mixed results. In his forthcoming book Things Worth Dying For, Archbishop Charles Chaput complains that “instead of being occasions for an honest exchange of ideas,” the two synod assemblies he attended, in 2015 and 2018, suffered from “manipulation. . .exercises of power rather than efforts to arrive honestly at a common position.”