Pope Francis on Wednesday opens a giant meeting on the longer term of the Catholic Church, with progressives hoping it should result in more women in leadership roles and conservatives warning that church doctrine on all the pieces from homosexuality to the hierarchy’s authority is in danger.
Rarely in recent times has a Vatican gathering generated as much hope, hype and fear as this three-week, closed-door meeting, often known as a synod. It won’t take any binding decisions and is barely the primary session of a two-year process. But it nevertheless has drawn an acute battle line within the church’s perennial left-right divide and marks a defining moment for Francis and his reform agenda.
Even before it began, the gathering was historic because Francis decided to let women and laypeople vote alongside bishops in any final document produced. While fewer than 1 / 4 of the 365 voting members are non-bishops, the reform is a radical shift away from a hierarchy-focused Synod of Bishops and evidence of Francis’ belief that the church is more about its flock than its shepherds.
“It’s a watershed moment,” said JoAnn Lopez, an Indian-born lay minister who helped organize two years of consultations prior to the meeting at parishes where she has worked in Seattle and Toronto.
“This is the primary time that girls have a really qualitatively different voice on the table, and the chance to vote in decision-making is large,” she said.
On the agenda are calls to take concrete steps to raise more women to decision-making roles within the church, including as deacons, and for abnormal Catholic faithful to have more of a say in church governance.
Also into consideration are ways to higher welcome of LGBTQ+ Catholics and others who’ve been marginalized by the church, and for brand new accountability measures to envision how bishops exercise their authority to forestall abuses.
Women have long complained they’re treated as second-class residents within the church, barred from the priesthood and highest ranks of power yet answerable for the lion’s share of church work — teaching in Catholic schools, running Catholic hospitals and passing the religion all the way down to next generations.
They have long demanded a greater say in church governance, on the very least with voting rights on the periodic synods on the Vatican but in addition the correct to evangelise at Mass and be ordained as priests or deacons.
While they’ve secured some high-profile positions within the Vatican and native churches across the globe, the male hierarchy still runs the show.
Lopez, 34, and other women are particularly excited concerning the potential that the synod might indirectly endorse allowing women to be ordained as deacons, a ministry that’s currently limited to men.
For years supporters of female deacons have argued that girls within the early church served as deacons and that restoring the ministry would each serve the church and recognize the gifts that girls bring to it.
Francis has convened two study commissions to research the difficulty and was asked to contemplate it at a previous synod on the Amazon, but he has up to now refused to make any change.
The potential that this synod process could lead on to real change on previously taboo topics has given hope to many ladies and progressive Catholics and sparked alarm from conservatives who’ve warned it could lead on to schism.
They have written books, held conferences and brought to social media claiming that Francis’ reforms are sowing confusion, undermining the true nature of the church and all it has taught over two millennia. Among essentially the most vocal are conservatives within the U.S.
On the eve of the meeting, considered one of the synod’s most outspoken critics, American Cardinal Raymond Burke, delivered a stinging rebuke of Francis’ vision of “synodality” in addition to his overall reform project for the church.
“It’s unfortunately very clear that the invocation of the Holy Spirit by some has the aim of bringing forward an agenda that’s more political and human than ecclesial and divine,” Burke told a conference entitled “The Synodal Babel.”
He blasted even the term “synodal” as having no clearly defined meaning and said its underlying try and shift authority away from the hierarchy “risks the very identity of the church.”
In the audience was Cardinal Robert Sarah, who together with Burke and three other cardinals had formally challenged Francis to affirm church teaching on homosexuality and ladies’s ordination before the synod.
In an exchange of letters made public Monday, Francis didn’t bite and as a substitute said the cardinals shouldn’t be afraid of questions which can be posed by a changing world. Asked specifically about church blessings for same-sex unions, Francis suggested they might be allowed so long as such benedictions aren’t confused with sacramental marriage.
