Six Synod Fathers to Team that Writes Final Report

Oct 17, 2014

By Gerard O'Connell
As the synod on the family reached the midway stage on a positive note, Pope Francis took the unprecedented and highly significant decision to add six highly qualified synod fathers to the team that will write its Final Report. That decision could prove to be a game changer.

At almost all of the synods over the past 49 years the Final Report was drafted by the Relator, the Special Secretary and the Secretary General. It had been presumed that the Final Report of the 2014 synod would follow suit and be drafted by the Hungarian cardinal Peter Erdo (the Relator), the Italian theologian-archbishop Bruno Forte (Special Secretary), and Cardinal Lorenzo Baldisseri (Italy), the Secretary General who is attending the synod for the first time. That is no longer the case.

The Vatican announced today - October 11,that Pope Francis has decided to add six highly qualified synod fathers to assist them in that onerous and all important task. They are: Cardinals Gianfranco Ravasi (Italy, President of the Pontifical Council for Culture) and Donald William Wuerl (Archbishop of Washington D.C), Archbishops Victor Manuel Fernandez (Rector of the Catholic University of Buenos Aires and the Pope’s main theological advisor at Aparecida in 2007), Carlos Aguiar Retes (President of CELAM), Peter Kang U-IL (President of the Korean Bishops’ Conference), and Father Adolfo Nicolas Pachon (Father General of the Society of Jesus).

The Final Report will be the key text to emerge from this extraordinary synod, and will be based on what has emerged in speeches and discussions during this 2014 synod. It is a most important document as it will provide the basis for discussion in Bishops’ Conferences and Churches around the world between now and the synod of October 2015. It will serve as the equivalent of a Working Document in preparation for the next synod which is expected to come up with important proposals regarding the pastoral approach to the family in the 21^st century, including those regarding how the Church will respond to the questions of cohabitation, the admission of divorced and remarried Catholics, other irregular situations, same-sex unions and much else.

The Jesuit Pope took this important decision as the first part of the synod on the family ended on an upbeat note and participants moved into the crucial second phase where they will discuss, in ten small language groups, the key issues and then express their majority and minority views on them.

In this first week the 253 synod participants spoke either from prepared texts or spontaneously on one or other topic of the Working Document that had been assigned for that particular day. They have now concluded that part, but already several things stand out that are worth mentioning.

To begin with, participants who have attended previous synods confirm that the climate of freedom and the method that is operative here is significantly different to that of past synods, and they confirm this is producing positive results.

Every participant that I have spoken to in private, as well as those who met the press, gave fulsome credit to Pope Francis for creating a climate of freedom in which everyone has felt totally free to say what they really think on a given topic. “People are very relaxed, and even make jokes”, Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin commented. He said the Pope has contributed greatly to this climate not only by advocating that they speak freely and boldly on the first day but also by arriving early each day, greeting participants when they arrive, and mingling with people at the coffee breaks.

It is well known that in past synods a discreet but effective censorship was exercised by Vatican officials, but what was even more serious and damaging to the realization of an open and honest debate was the “self-censorship” exercised by the bishops themselves at these gatherings. Archbishop Jose Maria Arancedo, President of the Argentine Bishops Conference, stated this frankly in an interview on October 9 when, referring to past synods, he said, “The worst censorship is self-censorship”.

A second very important factor that differentiates this synod from previous ones is that “the inductive” rather than “the deductive” method has prevailed. Archbishop Paul-Andre Durocher, President of the Canadian Bishops Conference, highlighted this particular aspect at a Vatican briefing on October 9.

Source: America