Synod on Synodality: Vatican reveals framework for next stage of discussions The Synod of Bishop at the Vatican, Oct. 5, 2018. | Vatican Media. By Courtney Mares, Hannah Brockhaus Rome Newsroom, Oct 27, 2022 / 04:15 am The Vatican revealed on Thursday a key document to guide the next stage of discussions in the Synod on Synodality. The working document, titled “Enlarge the space of your tent,” covers issues across a broad spectrum, from the clergy sexual abuse crisis to Christian unity. The text calls for “a Church capable of radical inclusion” and says that many synod reports raised questions about the inclusion and role of women, young people, the poor, people identifying as LGBTQ, and the divorced and remarried. The 44-page working document is officially called the DCS (Document for the Continental Stage). It summarizes the reports shared with the Vatican by bishops’ conferences, religious congregations, departments of the Roman Curia, lay movements, and other groups and individuals. Published on Oct. 27, the document aims to be “the privileged instrument through which the dialogue of the local Churches among themselves and with the universal Church can take place during the Continental Stage.” The text notes diverse challenges the Church faces worldwide, such as increased secularization, forced conversion and religious persecution, lack of structures for people with disabilities, and clericalism. It identifies the celebration of the Mass, whether according to the pre-Vatican II missal or the post-Vatican II liturgy, and access to the Eucharist, as “knots of conflict” in the Church and cites a great “diversity of opinion” on the subject of priestly ordination for women, which some reports called for and others considered “a closed issue.” "Enlarge the space of your tent" is “not a conclusive document,” but meant to spark dialogue and arouse feedback on what should be the priorities for discussion during the first session of the Synod of Bishops in October 2023. The text will operate as an outline for the next stage of synod discussions: The Continental Assemblies, to be held on different continents between January and March 2023. In particular, the document presents three reflection questions to which Continental Assemblies will need to respond after people have read and prayed over its content: Which intuitions resonate most strongly with the lived experiences and realities of the Church in your continent? Which experiences are new, or illuminating to you? What substantial tensions or divergences emerge as particularly important in your continent’s perspective? Consequently, what are the questions or issues that should be addressed and considered in the next steps of the process? Looking at what emerges from the previous two questions, what are the priorities, recurring themes, and calls to action that can be shared with other local Churches around the world and discussed during the First Session of the Synodal Assembly in October 2023? All Catholic dioceses are asked to provide feedback on these questions. Diocesan feedback will be collected and synthesized by bishops’ conferences, who will share responses with the Continental Assembly. The Continental Assemblies will meet between January and March 2023. According to the document, they should be made up of representatives from the entire People of God, with particular attention paid to ensuring the participation of women, young people, people living in poverty, representatives of other religions, and people with no religious affiliation. Each Continental Assembly is required to submit a Final Document of no more than 20 pages, providing the region’s response to the three reflection questions by Mar. 31, 2023. “Their task will be to draw up a list of priorities, upon which the First Session of the XVI Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, which will be held from 4 to Oct. 29 2023, will carry out their discernment,” the document says. Bishops are also asked to meet to “collegially reread” the synod experience and validate and approve the final document produced by the Continental Assembly to ensure that it is the “fruit of an authentically synodal journey.” The Vatican published "Enlarge the space of your tent" one year into the three-year global synodal process. Synod leadership, an advisory committee, and around 30 hand-selected people drafted the working document in September at a retreat house outside Rome in Frascati, Italy. The continental phase of the Synod on Synodality follows the local stage, in which parishes and dioceses held listening sessions and solicited feedback from Catholics on the future of the Church. The document is filled with direct quotations from the reports sent by bishops’ conferences around the world, summarizing the feedback from the diocesan stage of the Synod on Synodality. MORE IN VATICAN Analysis: The diplomatic principles behind the Vatican’s agreement with China Read article For example, the Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference wrote in its report: “Southern Africa is also impacted by the international trends of secularization, individualization, and relativism. Issues such as the Church’s teaching on abortion, contraception, ordination of women, married clergy, celibacy, divorce and remarriage, Holy Communion, homosexuality, LGBTQIA+ were raised up across the dioceses both rural and urban. There were of course differing views on these and it is not possible to give a definitive community stance on any of these issues.” Pope Francis recently announced his decision to extend the Synod on Synodality to 2024. Following the Continental Phase, the Synod of Bishops will meet in Rome in October 2023 and October 2024. The feedback from the seven Continental Assemblies on the Document for the Continental Stage (DCS), will be used as the basis for another Instrumentum Laboris, or working document, that will be completed in June 2023 to guide the Synod of Bishops’ discussion. https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/...r-next-stage-of-discussion-radical-inclusions
What a bunch of goodly-gonk! This process reminds me of the Tower of Babel! Include everyone while ditching the Deposit of Faith. Please remember Paul's admonition to Timothy: 2Timothy 1: 12 ...therefore I suffer as I do. But I am not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed, and I am sure that he is able to guard until that Day what has been entrusted to me. 13 Follow the pattern of the sound words which you have heard from me, in the faith and love which are in Christ Jesus; 14 guard the truth that has been entrusted to you by the Holy Spirit who dwells within us. Lord where are You? Save us from ourselves!
From what I understand from this passage they will use the continental synods as a test laboratory to destroy the universal Church at the conclusion of the process in October 2023/2024; for example the synod of Asia suggests an ecumenical liturgy with Islam and other religions; the European synod the blessings for sodomy; the Latin American synod the end of celibacy.
I have a feeling they will take away the consecration. Just my opinion from things i have read in the past.
German bishops’ leader: ‘The Synodal Process has already changed the Church’ Bishop Georg Bätzing said a new Vatican document was ‘an encouragement to the Church in Germany to seek dialogue with the other particular churches.’ LUKE COPPEN October 27, 2022 . 9:55 AM 3 min read Share on Twitter Share on Facebook Share on LinkedIn Share via Email Bishop Georg Bätzing at a synodal way meeting in Frankfurt, Germany, on Sept. 8, 2022. © Synodaler Weg/Maximilian von Lachner. The global synodal process has already changed the Church, the head of the German Catholic bishops’ conference said Thursday. In an Oct. 27 statement, Bishop Georg Bätzing welcomed the publication of a new Vatican document guiding the synod on synodality’s continental phase. He said: “After only one year, this Synodal Process has generated a dynamic that has led to a new understanding of the dignity of all the baptized, to a broader co-responsibility of the faithful for the mission of the Church, and to a clearer perception of the challenges we face in the worldwide Church. Thus, the Synodal Process has already changed the Church.” Share The Pillar Bätzing is the co-president of Germany’s controversial “synodal way”: a multi-year gathering of bishops and lay people to discuss four main topics: power, the priesthood, women in the Church, and sexuality. At a stormy meeting in September, synodal way participants approved texts calling for changes to Church teaching on sexual morality and endorsed the creation of a permanent “synodal council” to oversee the local Church. In his statement on Thursday, Bätzing said that the new Vatican text “makes it clear that the synodal way of the Church in Germany is to be understood as part of a synodal dynamic that has taken hold of the entire Church.” “The issues we deal with in the four forums and at the synodal assemblies are also being discussed in other parts of the Church,” he commented. He added: “The working document can therefore also be read as an encouragement to the Church in Germany to seek dialogue with the other particular churches even more strongly than before, especially with regard to synodality. It is an invitation to listen to one another on the worldwide synodal journey and to walk the next stage together.” At a press conference launching the new document for the synod on synodality’s continental stage on Oct. 17, Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich said that the text was not a formal “instrumentum laboris,” or working document, but rather “a kind of summary” of synthesis documents sent to the Vatican by bishops’ conferences worldwide. “This document is therefore not a writing emerging out of theological writings, it is the fruit of a lived synodality, a dimension of the life in the Church,” said the synod on synodality’s relator general. “We were able to notice that the Holy Spirit is at work.” Sign up to read The Pillar for free Pope Francis formally launched the global synodal process in October 2021. It opened with a “diocesan phase” that featured local consultations with Catholics around the world. Participation rates varied widely, but in many cases were low. Earlier this month, Bätzing applauded the pope’s decision to extend the global process by a year. In an Oct. 17 joint statement with Irme Stetter-Karp, his fellow synodal way co-president and head of the Central Committee of German Catholics (ZdK), Bätzing said that the extension of the process to October 2024 was “an important sign.” Germany’s bishops are preparing for an ad limina visit to Rome in November. It will be their first in seven years and include a meeting with Pope Francis and prefects of Vatican dicasteries scheduled for Nov. 18. Senior German bishops’ conference officials visited Rome earlier this month to prepare the ad limina meetings. The General Secretariat of the Synod shared a photo of the German officials with its leaders, saying that they had met in “an atmosphere of great cordiality.” Cardinal Mario Grech, the Secretary General of the Synod of Bishops, has lamented public criticism of the synodal way by bishops outside Germany. “I have trust in the Catholic Church in Germany, in the bishops, I trust they know what they are doing,” he said earlier this year in an interview for a magazine promoting the synodal way. Subscribe nos https://www.pillarcatholic.com/germ...nodal-process-has-already-changed-the-church/
I have the impression that in 2023/2024 we will be praying in the liturgy for an end to a schism in the church and that depending on the bishop/priest he will blame the traditionalists for this.
One never knows. If the warning/miracle as prophesied by Our Lady in Garabandal occurs in 2023/24, then the Synodal process in the fall of 2024 will become one of fasting and repentance by our bishops and faithful! May it be so!
Is it too much to ask that the framework for the synod might be the Holy Scriptures? Ephesians 5v6 But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God’s holy people. We need a holy Church not an inclusive Church.
The kingdom of heaven is not inclusive 2 Cor 6v9 Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.
