In the end, Pope Francis steered his synod toward a soft landing

ROME – From the beginning, one of the most persistent charges against Pope Francis’s Synod of Bishops on Synodality, which got underway in 2021 and wrapped up last night in Rome, is that the deck was stacked with progressive voices, creating an unrepresentative sense of the totality of global Catholic opinion.

To cite a classic for-instance, critics have noted that plenty of advocates of women clergy and LGBTQ+ outreach were included among the official delegates, but no devotees of the traditional Latin Mass and few prominent pro-lifers. (Notably, the word “abortion” never appears in the 51-page concluding document.)

A superficial look at the voting on the concluding document, adopted Saturday night, could support an impression of false conformity. Most of its 155 paragraphs were adopted by an overwhelming majority of the 355 participants casting votes, with a typical result being 352-3 or 350-5.

The lone case in which the “yes” vote dropped below 300 was for paragraph 60, which deals with women deacons, but even the 97 contrary votes it drew do not necessarily represent a register of conservative dissent.

Consider the wording: “The question of women’s access to diaconal ministry remains open. This discernment needs to continue.” That might have displeased a conservative who would prefer a straightforward “no,” but it equally might have irritated a liberal frustrated with all the talk who believes the time has come to pull the trigger.

The left-leaning ethos of the synod was perhaps most clear on Oct. 24, when Argentine Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernandez, prefect of the Vatican’s Dicastery of the Faith, held an open meeting with roughly 100 participants to discuss the role of women, including an earlier statement by Fernandez that “there is still no room for a positive decision” on the diaconate.

To be clear, Fernandez is hardly anyone’s idea of a traditionalist. He was the ghost writer of 2016’s Amoris Laetitia, opening a cautious door to communion for divorced and civilly remarried Catholics, and the official drafter of Fiducia Supplicans, the December 2023 text authorizing blessings of persons in same-sex relationships.

Yet he was forced to spend most of the hour and a half discussion last Thursday convincing synod insurgents that he’s progressive enough.

(We know the contents of this discussion because the Vatican released an audio recording of it, despite a general information blackout on internal synod discussions.)

During the discussion, Fernandez took a total of 12 questions, almost all of which, to one degree or another, were critical.

One questioner, for instance, asked why of the ten study groups established by Pope Francis to ponder sensitive matters raised by the synod, the group dealing with ministry, including female deacons, is the only one entrusted to a Vatican department, suggesting it’s not a terribly “synodal” arrangement.

Another mockingly asked about repeated claims that conditions are not “mature” for resolving the issue of women deacons. With fruit, he said, one determines maturity by looking at color, aroma and texture. What, he asked, are the indicators for the church? Without such clear criteria, he warned, “We could be doing this for the rest of our lives.” (That line drew one of just three rounds of applause during the session.)

Another questioner noted that a 1997 study by the International Theological Commission which was favorable to the idea of women deacons was never published, and said “there are suspicions something similar” is happening now.

The final questioner pointed to Pope Francis’s recent decisions to open the ministries of acolyte, lector and catechist to women, saying that when he started out in the church decades ago, his local community already had women playing those roles. How long, he wondered, will we have to wait for the pope and the Vatican to recognize that once again, they’re fifty years late?

Throughout, Fernandez often seemed a bit on the defensive, trying to assure everyone he’s not the stereotypical Vatican official of years past.

“I’m not famous in the church for being stuck in the Middle Ages,” he insisted at the end. “You can relax, knowing I’ve got an open heart for seeing where the Holy Spirit takes us.”

Given all that, the real question about the 2024 synod may how such a seemingly skewed assembly nevertheless produced a basically cautious and non-revolutionary result. Examining the final document, on most points it seems to bend over backwards to strike a balance between innovation and continuity, and never actually endorses radical change on any front. In effect, the earthquake many expected three years ago turned out to be a minor tremor.

One explanation may be that the more conservative minority in the synod punched above its weight, another a general fatigue among participants with the arguments that erupted last time and a desire to end on a pacific note. Mostly, however, one has to say it was Pope Francis who steered the synod toward this soft landing, taking most of the hot-button issues off the table and sending signals that he wanted the focus to be on the journey, not the destination.

Francis also announced Saturday night that unlike in past synods, this time there will be no apostolic exhortation to draw conclusions – the final document will stand on its own as the closing act. In this way, Francis has short-circuited the possibility that activists disappointed with the lack of breakthroughs from the synod might hope to get them from the pope.

As to why the pontiff chose this path, a variety of explanations are possible. Perhaps the example of the German synodal way, with its seemingly real risk of schism, provided a cautionary tale; perhaps the pontiff didn’t want the jubilee year in 2025 to be overshadowed by narratives of a Catholic civil war.

Whatever the reason, Francis has engineered a denouement to his synod that may not stir anyone’s imagination, but neither will it create many new fault lines. To put the point differently, the conservative wing of the church may not have been well represented in the synod hall, but it did seem to be present in the calculations of the synod’s founding father.

So, is the outcome of the synod a letdown – a case of going out with a whimper rather than a bang?

Perhaps, although there is another perspective to consider. In a deeply divided and polarized age, the fact the Catholic church could stage such a massive consultative exercise and still somehow manage to hold everyone together at the end, even if no one’s fully satisfied, has to rate as a minor miracle – and, come to think of it, maybe not so minor after all.