The Vatican’s synod office has now published the document that will guide the work of the Synod of Bishops that will meet in Rome in October 2023 and October 2024.
The caution church leaders are using in talking about the document, known as an instrumentum laboris, so far contrasts with the salvo of the responses coming from conservative Catholic influencers. One example is the latest anti-Francis article by New York Times op-ed columnist Ross Douthat. Douthat laments that the Catholic Church is about to “water down or just talk less about its teachings on sex and marriage and family, rather than find a way to reassert them or offer them anew” and worries about falling into the trap of “reconciliation with our decadent culture, our depressing post-Dionysian world.”
There is no such thing in the synod text, which is not a document of the magisterium and is not definitive nor definition of anything. This particular text is descriptive, in a cautious but honest way, of the issues on the table of global Catholicism today: The synod has not just heard from but has listened to those who engaged in the synodal process, and the preparation for the October assembly reflects this. “This Instrumentum Laboris was drafted on the basis of all the material gathered during the listening phase, and in particular the final documents of the Continental Assemblies,” the text states in its forward.
The text has the Francis genius, and also some weaknesses. But it’s honest and hopeful. It is a re-elaboration and preparation for the synod of the material that came up from the global consultation process, without bending it to a particular theological option, and without denial of reality. It is nonsense to accuse it of tilting the synodal process in favor of an agenda, either the pope’s or anyone else’s.
To continue reading this article, click here.
Massimo Faggioli is professor of theology and religious studies at Villanova University. His most recent book is The Liminal Papacy of Pope Francis: Moving toward Global Catholicity (Orbis).
With thanks to the National Catholic Reporter and Massimo Faggioli, where this article originally appeared.
