The Dangerous ‘Spirit of Synodality’, by Phil Lawler

By Phil Lawler, Catholic Culture, Nov 15, 2024

Phil Lawler has been a Catholic journalist for more than 30 years. He has edited several Catholic magazines and written eight books. Founder of Catholic World News, he is the news director and lead analyst at CatholicCulture.org.

The Synod on Synodality— a project on which Pope Francis embarked in 2021, a project that spawned hundreds of meetings and thousands of pages of verbiage, a project that threatened to go on forever— has finally ended.

Or has it?

Officially the Synod closed on October 26, having approved a final statement the previous day. “What we have approved in the document is enough,” Pope Francis declared, explaining that he would not follow up with the customary apostolic exhortation commenting on the Synod’s deliberations.

Yet even while the Synod churned through the lengthy preparations that led up to the plenary meeting, the Pope had created ten study groups to reflect on particular topics— thereby taking those topics off the agenda for the October assembly. Prominent among those reserved topics was one that had dominated early discussions among the Synod participants: the question of whether women could be ordained as deacons. Other potentially hot topics were consigned to the study group that would ponder: “Theological criteria and synodal methodologies for shared discernment of controversial doctrinal, pastoral, and ethical issue.” …

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