The 51-page report stops short of proposing changes sought by the laity such as ordaining women as deacons or priests and greater recognition of LGBTQ Catholics.
However, it did recommend an overhaul in the training of future priests, greater lay involvement in selecting bishops, expansion of women’s ministries and a revision of church law to mandate greater transparency and accountability throughout the church.
The synod document was adopted on Saturday evening in Rome by a two-thirds majority of 368 delegates of lay women and men, bishops, clergy and members of religious orders from all over the world, including Pope Francis.
The more tentative approach of the Final Document will stem any possibility of schism by conservative elements within the church opposed to changes on ‘hot button’ issues. However, it is likely to disappoint more progressive elements in the church.
Commentators have stressed that the synod is about a way of being church and not about any specific actions particularly in relation to more contentious issues. These were removed from the discussion by Pope Francis before the synod re-opened at the beginning of the month.
“The final Synod report is one big wordy yawn, signifying absolutely nothing,” Mary McAleese said and warned that the “Magisterial Church is now on course to bore the faithful to death”.
“Nothing to see here, folks. Not one single thing has shifted even marginally,” she noted and said every word in the report was “designed to avoid acknowledging the full God-ordained equality of all Church members”.
“The outcome reminds me of a recent two-year diocesan synod in Ireland, the main recommendation of which was that there should be a cup of tea after mass,” the former head of state said in a reference to the 2016 synod held by the Limerick Diocese.
She said that anyone who thinks that the Final Document will energise the faithful to “new levels of ecclesial engagement and commitment is deluded” and added that only a church committed to equality can do that. “The Catholic Church is manifestly not yet that,” she said.
However, Bishop Brendan Leahy and Bishop Alan McGuckian SJ, who attended the Synod in Rome on behalf of the Irish Bishops’ Conference, said the Synod shows how best to be a ‘synodal church’, that is, a church where there is increased lay participation in decision-making processes and a higher level of accountability.
“I was struck when Pope Francis said to us yesterday that the Synod experience has shown it is possible to walk together in diversity, without condemning each other,” Bishop Leahy said.
But Colm Holmes of We Are Church Ireland, a lay reform group, said that despite high initial hopes for the Synodal process, “it reverted back to the patriarchal ‘father-knows-best’ hierarchical model.”
Excluding topics such as women in ordained ministries, he said, “totally undermined the Synodal Process”.
