This week, hundreds of delegates from around the world began a monthlong meeting as part of Pope Francis’ “Synod on Synodality”—a gathering to discuss the future of the Catholic Church. It could radically change the religion. The group is considering groundbreaking alterations to orthodoxy on same-sex unions and whether or not women can be ordained as priests. The process has changed, too. For the first time, delegates include women.
A synod is a conference for church leaders and lay people to engage in conversation about how to bolster the good of the church. Since the 1960s, delegates from the global church have come together to discuss evolving issues. The current synod is part one of a multi-year process that will culminate in 2024 with Francis’ decisions and includes particularly controversial topics, like celibacy and divorce.
The lead up has been punctuated by conservative concerns about just how liberal this meeting may get. The synod kicks off days after a letter became public in which the pope considered blessing the existence of queer couples and the allowance of female priests.
Pope Francis wrote that while marriage is an “exclusive, stable and indissoluble union between a man and a woman, naturally open to conceiving children,” pastoral charity is also needed, and may be discretionary. Pastoral prudence, he wrote, “must adequately discern if there are forms of blessing, solicited by one or various persons, that don’t transmit a mistaken concept of marriage.” On female priesthood, the pope asserted that, whereas nobody can publicly contradict the church’s current rules prohibiting women’s ordination, they should study it.
For some, this rhetoric may seem like the bare minimum. But for others, like Americans on the right, it’s scary as hell.
Conservative Catholics across the U.S. have been some of the most vocal globally in pushing against reforms, and fear that the church is changing in a way that doesn’t match scripture or their ideology. One New York City priest, Reverend Gerald Murray, worried publicly that the pope “will authorize things that are not contained in Catholic doctrine or that will contradict it,” like women deacons or blessing gay unions. “We’re not Protestants,” he said.
Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke, Archbishop Emeritus of St. Louis, a vocal opponent to Pope Francis, was in the group that sent the pope a letter inquiring how he would be responding to these issues at the summit. “It’s unfortunately very clear,” Burke said on Tuesday, “that the invocation of the Holy Spirit on the part of some has as its aim to push forward an agenda that is more political and human than ecclesiastical and divine.” (Burke was not invited to the meeting at the Vatican.)
Pope Francis’ track record on queer and women’s rights is complicated. He formally allowed women to read from the Bible during Mass, but also came out against women becoming ordained. Speaking about queer people in 2013, the pope famously asked, “If they accept the Lord and have goodwill, who am I to judge them?” He has argued that homosexuality should not be treated as a crime in different countries but clarifies that he still thinks it’s a sin. Francis has framed many of these decisions as instances where localities should turn toward scripture and an evolving discernment as it befits their needs as part of his hope of growing the Catholic Church.
Because of this potential divide between local and global doctrine and application, it is possible that American Catholics may not even see these changes, should they be formally supported by the pope but not adopted by local priests.
As Mother Jones previously reported, American catholicism has splintered as some of the devout entrench themselves in wider conservative politics. Right-wing provocateurs like Milo Yiannopoulos and Steve Bannon notably have moved in Catholic circles saying Pope Francis should be curtailed. Yiannopoulos, who touts a traditionalist form of Catholicism, has been telling anyone who will listen to him, to “make the Vatican straight again” and “make America homophobic again.”
The pope himself seems unfazed by the ire of American Catholics. “They got mad,” he told reporters in late August after a squabble. “But move on, move on.”
If you can just get together and decide “OK, now rule X has been changed to rule Y”; how is anyone supposed to take any of it seriously? It is literally made up as it suits them.
I’m not here to defend any religion, but you’re basically describing a social contract, which is just how humanity is organized
But the central conceit of any religious faith is the belief in the divine. The Pope is supposed to speak for God, the creator of all things, and the infallible judge of every soul that has or will have ever lived. Changing it to suit the modern social contract is a tacit admission that they were full of shit the entire time.
Like if the Church started blessing gay marriages, then all those homophones who marched around with plaquards promoting bigotry would have to acknowledge that they were just ordinary, hateful morons, instead of divinely righteous holy warriors.
The entirety of the modern Christian faith is that god said one thing to one group and then changed it. This is not to get into the debate of authenticity or logic of religion or anything like that, it’s simply how it’s always been. God said only the Jews get to be my people. Then it was everyone who believes. God said no unclean meats. The he said the meats were fine. It’s the nature of the Christian faith. If you include the Mormons, there’s more changes, but I don’t know them.
Within the faith, it’s accepted as basically a change in the promises god made to humanity. And if we look at it giving them some leeway, why can’t he change it again?
The answer is, they don’t agree and that’s how religion branches off and all these hundreds of denominations come into existence.
I worked in an Anglican school two years ago and it almost happened in my time there. As more kids were coming through with fluid gender, half the clergy were in support, the other half weren’t, so there was talk about splitting up and creating some kind of Anglicanism 2.0.
So, you’ve gotta wonder, if this has been going on for 2,000 years how far off its original tracks is religion today? And people still follow it like it’s God’s word? Even if it was God’s word we’ve proper fucked it a few hundred times times to suit our narrative since.
Not everything is written in the Bible. Modern times bring modern problems and religious people need to decide which solution is in accord with their faith.
This started literally thousands of years ago.
Yeah, when you start off with “Everything we say is always right”, then any change of stance or admission of error immediately brings everything else into question.
If you’re really curious, you can look at the tomes… and tomes… and tomes of tomes written chronicling the tomes of Catholic doctrine. They may be nutty, but they reason their way to the outcome they decided in advance. Out of all the christian sects, Catholics are the most ‘logical’ in their beliefs, and definitely the most prolific in their apologetics.
So all of these changes being considered will be put on the ever-updating philosophy they have. In fact, many of the changes are likely already supported by some priest’s writing, ready to be pulled out of the oh-so-super-secret heresy vault it’s currently in.
It just seems ridiculous on its face. If the “rules” are the literal word of God, then how can men change them? If they can change them to suit their own purposes, why should other men listen to them? How do the followers not care?
Prettttty sure this has happened a lot in the history of Christianity…
I don’t think the religion would’ve even lived this long without it.
Read up (or listen to podcasts) on the earliest history of Judaism. It’s genuinely fascinating history. Lesson learned is that they were making things up to suit circumstance since Yehovah became the big thing and probably longer. What protestants did and what Catholics think about considering doing now it’s just the newest developments in the long line.