The important synod of bishops scheduled for October to discuss the future of the Church will not avoid any of the thorny issues put on the table by dioceses around the world heard to prepare the appointment. The Vatican has released this week the document on which the more than 200 participants in the assembly will work, a text that includes sensitive issues such as the celibacy of priests, the role of women in the Church or the inclusion of the community LGTBI and the divorced.
The document, some 50 pages long, known as the “instrumentum laboris,” even seems to suggest that the Church should be more tolerant of polygamy. “What concrete measures are necessary to reach people who feel excluded from the Church because of their affectivity and sexuality?” reads the text, which specifically mentions the examples of the divorced and remarried, people in polygamous marriages or LGTBI people.
“We don’t have an agenda. There has not been any meeting to conspire between cardinals on how we can add more progressive points to the Church. It has been a listening experience”, explained the Archbishop of Luxembourg, Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich, during the press conference to present the document.
This is the roadmap for the synod on synodality, that is, on how the Church can be more united and listen to all its members in order to be stronger in the future. It is a meeting that will continue in 2024 and that preparation began two years ago, when the listening phase began. The document is not a draft of the final document as in other synods, but a synthesis of all the proposals collected in the continental assemblies, which are posed in the form of questions to discern the challenges of the Church in the 21st century.
One of the issues that will be most controversial is the proposal to discuss the possibility of allowing married men to be ordained in the most remote areas of the world where the Church suffers from a lack of priests. This is something that was already addressed in the last synod on the Amazon, held in 2019, and to which Pope Francis then closed the door.
Another of the important issues that the participants will address is how to favor the presence of women in decision-making in the Church, something that became more relevant in April, when the Pontiff, in an unprecedented decision, chose to grant the right of I vote for women and lay people who are elected to participate as members in the next synod. Women had traditionally been involved as observers or experts, unable to express their opinions, and until now only men had the right to vote on the final documents.
During the preparatory assemblies for the synod, the need arose to address the issue of “women’s participation in government, decision-making, mission and ministries at all levels of the Church, with the support of the adequate structures so that this does not remain a mere general aspiration”. There is also talk of the role of religious women, considering that they should have more prominence and be better paid and “more protected from abuse.” In addition, once again, it raises the question of women’s access to the diaconate, an issue that has been requested by most of the assembled assemblies, according to the Vatican road map.
The document also addresses the crisis of sexual abuse in the Church, some “open wounds” whose “consequences have not yet been fully addressed.” “In addition to asking the victims for forgiveness for the suffering caused, the Church must join the growing commitment to conversion and reform to prevent similar situations from happening again in the future,” they indicate. Another issue that will generate debate is the one that has to do with the authority of the Pope, asking “how should the role of the Bishop of Rome and the exercise of primacy evolve in a synodal Church.”
Even if the participants vote in favor of important changes, the last word will always be with the Pope, who must write an apostolic exhortation after the 2024 session, the official document in which Francis expresses his vision on the issues consulted. During the presentation in the Vatican it was stressed that the Church’s teachings on sexual morality do not have to change after this consultation process.
