After tens of thousands of local meetings on every continent, and two month-long gatherings of bishops and lay people in Rome in 2023 and 2024, the Roman Catholic Church says it is ready to be a synodal church.
That’s the conclusion of the final assembly of the Synod on Synodality, a process that started three years ago and ended in October.
The Church’s decision to be a synodal church means the Church will prioritize creating a culture that values every member’s contribution to church life and decision-making — instead of just relying on deacons, priests and bishops to make decisions.
A synodal church is an “open square where all can feel at home and participate,” Pope Francis said in 2021, when the Synod on Synodality started. The Church should reflect the way God works in closeness, compassion and tender love, he said.
Greater participation
A synod — sometimes called a council — is a gathering where people from the Catholic Church decide what the Church should do about a particular issue. Usually, only bishops — the most powerful position in the Church — attend the synods, which are held in Rome.
But this synod was different.
It began with “listening meetings” with church members at the local or regional level. It is the first Catholic synod conducted this way, the synod’s official website says.
Pope Francis initiated this process in 2020, when he called on the Church to find new ways for Church leaders and members to listen to each other and work together. His aim was for Catholics to find new and creative ways to worship God and serve their communities in the 21st century.
The 368 delegates from around the world who met in Rome for a month in October released a 51-page document of recommendations. Among other things, the document calls for changes to the ways future priests are trained, promotes greater involvement from Church members in selecting bishops, and mandates greater transparency and accountability about how decisions are made throughout the entire Church.
The document emphasizes the importance of lay people — Church members who are not deacons, priests or bishops — in making Church decisions.
The document also recommends ways to make worship services more accessible to churchgoers, including by incorporating culturally appropriate music and other expressions. This is an important idea since the Church has traditionally insisted on uniformity in its services.
Female deacons
The document does not recommend women be ordained as deacons, as many women hoped would happen during the synod.
Deacons help lead churches’ efforts to care for vulnerable people. They also help priests and bishops during worship services and can baptize people, bless weddings and lead funerals.
But the document does not close the door to the possibility of female deacons. “The question of women’s access to diaconal ministry remains open” and “discernment needs to continue,” the document says.
Another controversial topic that did not receive any mention in the final document was a fuller welcome and affirmation of members of the LGBTQ community — something LGBTQ Catholics and their allies had hoped might be addressed.
The document does state that some Catholics “unfortunately” continue to experience “the pain of feeling excluded or judged because of their marital situation, identity or sexuality.” This exclusion prevents them from pursuing “real and meaningful relationships” in the Church, it says.
It is unclear what this exclusion means for LGBTQ people. Some would like to see the Church be more welcoming of people in that community, but there is no indication that that will happen soon.
Ordination of women as deacons and LGBTQ inclusion were not on the agenda of the synodal assembly. However, they are subjects of two study groups that are to report to the Pope next year.
Actions and words
One thing the document makes clear is that the synodal process “does not conclude with the end of the current assembly.” Local churches are asked to continue identifying concrete ways to implement the synod’s findings at the local and regional level.
Or, as Pope Francis put it in his concluding remarks, the synodal Church now needs its words “to be accompanied by deeds.”
Calgary Bishop William McGrattan agrees. As president of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, the body that coordinates and promotes the Church’s teachings in Canada, he believes the experience was a way to get a jump-start in Canada about how to be a synodal church.
“Now we need to take the recommendations to the various levels of the Church in Canada — national, diocesan and parish,” said McGrattan, who was also a delegate from Canada at the synod assembly in Rome. “We need to work together to make them more concrete and specific.”
McGrattan took inspiration from Pope Francis, who modelled what synodality looks like by immediately giving his stamp of approval to the final document. In a break from tradition, he did not wait to review and approve it before releasing it publicly. “What we have approved is enough,” he said.
By not waiting to do that, the Pope showed “he trusted the process,” McGrattan said. “It was leadership by example.”
The Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops plans to look for ways to foster greater participation of all Catholics in decisions that affect the Church, McGrattan says.
“We need to create more opportunities for meeting and listening to each other, ways to involve lay people more in those conversations,” he said.
As for ordaining women and being more affirming of LGBTQ people, McGrattan said the conference will wait for the reports to the Pope from the two study groups.
The Catholic Church in Canada should also be more open to different ways of celebrating its liturgy, he said. This could mean incorporating different cultural expressions from Catholics from other countries — things like singing and dancing, or Indigenous spirituality.
“We need to be more open and flexible,” he said.
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