Synod, October 26: participants discuss synthesis report, which will be merely ‘transitory’
October 27, 2023
As the first session of the 16th Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops began to draw to a close, participants discussed the synthesis report that will mark the fruit of their deliberations.
349 of the Synod’s 364 voting members were in attendance at the morning session on October 26, according to Paolo Ruffini, prefect of the Dicastery for Communication. The synthesis report is scheduled to be approved on October 28, and the first session will conclude the following day. The Synod’s second session will take place in October 2024.
Synthesis report: merely ‘transitory’
The status of the synthesis report has been downgraded since the beginning of the assembly.
On October 5—the second day of the Synod—Ruffini announced that the final report of the October 2023 session of the Synod would form the agenda of the October 2024 session. The synthesis report “will therefore be something more like an Instrumentum laboris [working document] than the final document of past synods,” he said at the time.
On October 18, Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich, SJ, the Synod’s relator general, modified Ruffini’s announcement. Vatican News reported:
The Commission in charge had decided that the text would be relatively short and at the service of a process that continues. It will be a transitional text, based on the experience of the Assembly, which will contain the points where there is consensus and those where there is a lack of agreement, as well as open questions that will need to be studied in depth from a canonical, theological and pastoral point of view, to be verified together with the people of God. It will have a simple style, it will not be a final document, nor will it be the Instrumentum laboris [working document] of the next assembly.
At the October 26 press conference, Ruffini emphasized that the synthesis report will be merely “transitory,” while the final document approved at the end of the October 2024 session is what will be presented to the Pope. Vatican News reported:
This morning, “before the start of the work in the Circles, after the prayer, the Commission for the drafting of the Synthesis Document shared with the Assembly the criteria underlying the Document that will be submitted for a vote on Saturday, and which we are now examining,” the Prefect explained. He clarified that “the Document that will be submitted to the Pope as the outcome of the Synod will be the one approved in the next Assembly in October 2024.” While “the Document under discussion now has a different nature; it is transitory.”
The synthesis report’s “main purpose is to help us understand where we are, to remember what has been said in these weeks of discernment, and to restart, in a circular process, a journey that began at the beginning of this Synod and will end in October 2024,” he continued. The report “should contain points where discernment is more advanced and those that require further exploration. It should faithfully represent everything. We are in a process of circularity. The Assembly will return to the People of God their own discernment, just as the People of God, when listened to, offered theirs.”
Discussing the synthesis report, Ruffini added:
This is a journey, and certainly, due to the nature and brevity of the document—it is 40 pages; it wouldn’t make sense to have a transitory text of 100 or 200 pages—it cannot contain every detail ...
The document will serve to encourage those who are already on the journey: all the baptized, laymen and laywomen, deacons, priests, bishops, consecrated persons. Everyone should feel encouraged and thanked for embarking on or continuing the journey. Many are already on the march.
There are many beautiful things in the Church that unfortunately sometimes do not appear. The document should also serve to bring energy and joy to this synodal experience.
The motivation of the document must be clear: it will help us understand and learn how to walk together, to seek solutions together, hand in hand, without excluding anyone ... The People of God need priests and laity who walk together serenely, without yielding to the temptation of clericalism.
Discussion topics
At the October 26 press briefing, Sheila Pires, communications officer of Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference and secretary of the Synod’s information commission, said that Synod participants discussed the following topics during their interventions (brief speeches) on the draft synthesis report:
- the need for missionary audacity of the Church
- the encounter with Jesus as the center of faith and missionary enthusiasm.
- “The Church is constituted as such in the announcement of the Gospel, and one cannot think of the Church independently from the mission.”
- the importance of prayer and prayer groups
- the fundamental importance of the Eucharist and the Sacrament of Reconciliation
- the “liturgical dimension of synodality”: “synodality as a liturgical act, and the Synod as a maternal place in liturgy”
- the importance of the sensus fidei [the sense of the faith]
- “the appreciation of women and the opportuneness of referring to the many women who accompanied Jesus”
- “the ability to listen, console, advise, which is typical of women”
- “women should not be objects but subjects of the Church”
- “abuses, not only physical ones”
- “the importance of the concept of the Kingdom of God was emphasized: the Church is for the Kingdom and not for itself. It was said that, for this reason, the Church must be welcoming.”
- “the teachings and hermeneutics of Vatican II”
- “the great mission of Christian unity, dialogue with other religions, and relations with non-believers”
- “the forms of cultural colonialism of the global North towards the global South”
- “the importance of emphasizing the presence of the Church in the world’s crises. It was said that the Church is not outside the world and cannot ignore what is happening: wars and the desire for peace”
- “the situation of suffering of those who still need to understand how to raise and educate their children in a reality where children die every day due to conflicts and in situations of severe inequality”
- “the evangelical request to place the poor at the center of the Church’s journey”: “a Christological aspect, not a social one.”
During the press conference, non-Catholic fraternal delegates shared their experiences, as did Cardinal Kurt Koch, prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity. Archbishop Stanislaw Gadecki of Poznan, president of the Polish bishops’ conference, contrasted doctrine, which must be the “same for everyone,” with practices that may vary.
The press conference concluded with a discussion of the ordination of married men to the priesthood. Vatican News reported:
Dr. Ruffini mentioned that it was touched upon but not one of the most discussed topics. Cardinal Koch recalled that it was discussed in the Synod for the Amazon, but in the end, the Pope did not make a decision because he explained that, although he had listened to too many voices, he had not heard that of the Holy Spirit. “
We Orthodox, after millennia of married priests, remind Catholics that this possibility exists,” echoed [Romanian Orthodox] Metropolitan Iosif. Dr. [Catherine] Clifford [a Canadian voting member] concluded by saying that the topic was not absent from the discussions.
Earlier coverage
- Synod of Bishops publishes retreat texts
- Pope at Synod’s opening Mass: Let us walk with the Holy Spirit
- Synod, October 4: Pope emphasizes role of Holy Spirit; Cardinal Hollerich calls for ‘new insights’
- Synod, October 5: ‘Expert-facilitators’ guide discussion; final report will form agenda of 2024 Synod session
- Synod, October 6: discussion of 1st topic nears close; Vatican spokesman says participants may speak with media
- Synod, October 7-8: working groups submit first reports; leading African cardinal emphasizes listening, discernment
- Synod, October 9: participants turn to new topic; Orthodox prelate draws sharp contrast between Eastern synodality, current Synod
- Synod, October 10: participants discuss 2nd topic, elect members of key commission
- Synod, October 11: some participants call for ‘greater discernment’ of Catholic teaching on sexual morality
- Synod, October 12: participants pray for peace
- Synod, October 13: Cardinal Hollerich asks participants to set aside their own thinking, listen to others
- Synod, October 14-15: presiding sister says Synod is ‘setting the stage for future changes’
- Synod, October 16: women’s ordination to diaconate, LGBTQ ‘woundedness’ gain greater prominence
- Synod, October 17: Vatican spokesman mentions ‘reinstatement of female diaconate’
- Synod, October 18: Cardinal Hollerich calls for ‘small but sensitive changes’ in Church governance
- Synod, October 19: Cardinal Czerny says ‘identification’ between Holy Orders and Church offices is being ‘overcome’
- Synod, October 20: participants discuss authority and authoritarianism
- Synod, October 21-22: German bishop says apostolic Tradition needs to be set aside
- Synod, October 23-24: Father Radcliffe compares year between Synod sessions to pregnancy; Cardinal Schönborn speaks
- Synod, October 25: Assembly approves message: listen to everyone and God’s holy people are infallible, Pope tells Synod
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