~ by Gerard O’Connell for AMERICA

Pope Francis has decided that the second session of the Synod of Bishops on Synodality will open on October 2 and end on October 27, the General Secretariat of the synod announced on February 17. It will be preceded by a two-date retreat on September 30 – October 1.

Contrary to expectations, the synod will in fact be more or less the same length as the first session. As already known, almost all the synod’s 365 members (including women and men who are not bishops) participated in last October’s synod. They will continue to focus on the theme: “For a synodal church: communion, participation and mission.”

Accompanying this news, Pope Francis also issued a chirograph – that is a document directly written and signed by the pope – in which he announced the establishment of study groups to delve into some of the themes that had emerged last October in the first session of the synod. Francis did not specify which of the many themes that emerged from the first session will be subjected to the study.

A rapid glance at the 81 proposals made in the synthesis report issued at the end of last October’s synod suggests that the following themes are likely to be among those discussed and researched in the study groups: the role and place of women in the church, including the question of the diaconate in general and the diaconate for women; structures of synodality at the diocesan and parish level; the updating of the Code of Canon Law. These and other issues mentioned in the document released by the synod secretariat on December 11 entitled “Towards October 2024,” may require theological, canonical or pastoral input.

The latter document emphasized that next October’s synod will focus on how to live synodality at all levels in the church. To read the entire account, please click here

~ by Christopher White, Vatican News for National Catholic Reporter

As Pope Francis’ major summit on the future of the Catholic Church enters its final week, bishops and laity were reminded of the Second Vatican Council’s emphasis on the church’s “living tradition,” including the participation and inclusion of all of the “people of God.”

delegates commenced work on their hotly anticipated final document from the monthlong meeting, Australian Fr. Ormond Rush — one of the world’s leading scholars on Vatican II — encouraged the synod’s more than 450 members to be attentive to the “traps” of “being drawn into ways of thinking that are not ‘of God.’ ”

“These traps could lie in being anchored exclusively in the past, or exclusively in the present, or not being open to the future fullness of divine truth to which the Spirit of truth is leading the church,” said Rush on Oct. 23. “Discerning the difference between opportunities and traps is the task of all the faithful — laity, bishops, and theologians — everyone.”

Rush’s remarks, made during one of the synod’s occasional open sessions, drew heavily on the writings of the late Pope Benedict XVI. As Fr. Joseph Ratzinger, the future longtime Vatican official and pontiff participated in the council and served as a drafter of some of its key texts. At the time, Ratzinger articulated a distinction between so-called “static” and “dynamic” understandings of the church’s tradition.

Rush said the “living tradition” of the church, as taught by the council, is guided by the Holy Spirit through the interrelated means of the work of theologians, the lived experience of the church’s faithful and the oversight of church authorities.

“Sounds like a synodal church, doesn’t it?” Rush asked.

In recent weeks, some synod delegates have expressed skepticism over the inclusion of lay persons in the Synod of Bishops. Some delegates have also expressed frustration about the assembly’s discussion of issues — such as better inclusion of LGBTQ persons and women’s leadership in the church — that they argue have previously been settled by the church’s tradition.

Rush, who has been a theological adviser to the Vatican’s synod office, seemed to offer an indirect reply to those critics in his remarks, noting that the council taught that divine revelation is not something in the past, but rather an “ongoing encounter in the present.”

“The same God, in the same Jesus Christ, through the enlightenment and empowerment of the same Holy Spirit, is forever engaging with, and dialoguing with, human beings in the ever-new here and now of history that relentlessly moves humanity into new perceptions, new questions and new insights, in diverse cultures and places, as the world-church courses through time into an unknown future until the eschaton,” he said.

“This synod is a dialogue with God,” he told the delegates, who are now preparing to begin making recommendations for the assembly’s final report. “God is waiting for your reply.”
To read the entire article, please click here 

 

~Rhina Guidos – Global Sisters Report

VATICAN CITY – On the third day of the Synod of Bishops, Mercy Sr. Angela Perez, of Guam, noted that since women haven’t been allowed into such synods as full members before, she had no reference point, nothing to compare it to, yet as normal as the gathering seems, she also understands something is different and historic.

I’m experiencing and witnessing the dismantling of the hierarchical,” she told Global Sisters Report, describing the scene inside the synod hall — where cardinals, bishops, young and older lay Catholics, and women religious like herself are sitting together at roundtables, without hierarchical distinctions.
Pope Francis, like the other some 460 participants in the synod, is also sitting at a roundtable — the head of the Catholic Church being treated, more or less, just like everyone else in the room.

“It reminds me of when we have our chapter, the Sisters of Mercy, that that’s how we gather — and to gather there like that and the Pope in the circle at one of those tables with the other participants, it’s just very positive to see that,” she told GSR.

Likewise, Sr. Iris Altagracia González, of the Dominican Republic and a member of the Congregación de las Hijas de Jesús (Daughters of Jesus), said she quickly realized that for all the seemingly normal procedures, she noticed, too, something is different. She told the Global Sisters Report on October 6th, I realized the enormity, that I’m attending something really historic, really significant for the Church. I think this is not a synod like the others.”

It’s puzzling for her to hear people outside the synod express worries about its discussions, since she believes that what’s largely taking place is a conversation — a listening to oneself, others, and God, she said.

The atmosphere inside the synod hall has been one of great welcome, both women said. But it’s also one that’s making way for a different manner of leading the church and that includes listening to a wider circle of voices and letting the Holy Spirit guide conversations.

“What I’m witnessing is a different leadership style, like servant leadership style, where we’re all gathered at the table and participating, contributing. The voices at my table are the voice of a young person, a laywoman, and in my case, an older woman, a religious, and then the others are bishops, all together at the table sharing,” Perez said.

And at the center of it all, the Holy Spirit is the one in charge, not a person, she said.
To read the entire account, please click here
***
As the Synod on Synodality is taking place in Rome, Global Sisters Report, in conjunction with National Catholic Reporter, is offering these resources as an easy one-stop place to find information about this historic event.
Global Sisters Report/National Catholic Reporter coverage: Synod on Synodality
NCR’s weekly synod podcast: The Vatican Briefing
List of sister participants in the synod: Sisters involved in synod on synodality
Official synod on synodality resources: Synod schedule, List of synod participants
Other resources: Vatican News, Vatican Media Live
FutureChurch resources: Synod Watch, Synod on Synodality 2021-2024

~ by Aleja Hertzler McCain for National Catholic Reporter

As the first gathering of Pope Francis’ highly anticipated Synod of Bishops is set to begin on Oct. 4, Latin American and U.S. Latino theologians are recognizing influences from the Pope’s Latin American roots in the theology and methodology behind this first-of-its-kind two-part synod process.

With this synod gathering, Francis has introduced groundbreaking changes to the synod format, most notably adding laypeople, including women, as full voting members of the assembly for the first time.

The working document for the synod, known formally as the instrumentum laboris and released June 20, also debuted a new change, featuring many open-ended questions for synod members to consider during the Oct. 4-29 assembly, instead of being simply a draft of the synod’s final document, which had been the previous format.
Maria Clara Lucchetti Bingemer, a theology professor at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, was invited with other Brazilian theologians to advise the bishops outside of their sessions. She remembers that, although no one at the time suspected Bergoglio would become pope, his “capacity of leadership” as chair of the committee drafting the final document was evident.

Bingemer said Bergoglio kept a tight rein on the drafting process for the document, making sure the text contained “all the important things” exactly “as it was planned.” The final version, which took a see-judge-act model in looking at the current needs of the church and wider world, was widely praised.

Hosffman Ospino, associate professor of Hispanic ministry and religious education at Boston College, said that, in this synod, Francis is lifting up a model of “situated collegiality,” a type of collegiality where the ministry of bishops is “grounded in the geographically specific community of baptized people that they serve, the particular church, not just the fact that they are ordained.” Collegiality is a term that had previously been used only to refer to the relationship between the pope and the various bishops of the world, as they govern the church.

Jesuit Fr. Allan Figueroa Deck, a distinguished scholar in pastoral theology and Latino studies at Loyola Marymount University, said that Francis’ ideas about reform had been “percolating” in Latin America for over 50 years.

“There’s a long period of formation or gestation, whatever you want to call it, of the vision of renewal based on the spirit of Vatican II that was developed in Latin America, and it was the only place in the world in the Catholic world where that vision was as fully developed. The high point now of this process in my view is the synodal pathway that Pope Francis is proposing,” said Deck.

In addition to the Latin American influence on the synod, Deck also said that U.S. Latinos had developed “the synodal vision” in the U.S. Catholic Church “more than any other group” through five Encuentros, or national consultative processes of U.S. Hispanic Catholics.

“What a synodal approach to being church, what it means is inviting everybody to come in, listening to everybody, and having ways to process what you hear,” Deck said, explaining that this synodal process has been at the heart of the Encuentros, which also emphasized the “evangelizing and mission character of the church” and “going out to those on the margins.”

Francis’ willingness to experiment in the current synod is indicative of the level of “spiritual freedom and trust in the Holy Spirit” in the relatively young church in Latin America, Ospino said.

His groundbreaking decision to allow women delegates to vote in this synod can be also understood in light of Francis’ Latin American roots.