By Monica Showalter
The Vatican Synod on Synodality is over, the 41-page synthesis (or summary) document is out, and the Catholic Church’s advocates for LGBTQ+ don’t sound as though they got what they wanted:
It had been going pretty badly for them — as I wrote about in early October.
If the quote is correct (it also appears in the National Catholic Reporter article, which Martin retweeted), Martin probably accidentally violated the Vatican rule on “what happens here stays here” for not discussing the internal Synod process in public. But it’s a useful point for the rest of us to know and it’s helpful that he made it, so I don’t want to be critical. The tone of the discussions there sounded like the tone of discussions from my local Catholic parish in San Diego, led by left-wing Cardinal Robert McElroy, at the local Synods being held there, too. The result is the same: The faithful are more conservative than their leaders.
So they talked and talked about LGBTQ+ and women priests and other changes the far left has been advocating for, and they held a Synod full of bishops, coupled with laity, meaning, based on what was visible in the press — handpicked leftwing activists, short-haired women with theology doctorates, progressive priests, and the Liberation Theology crowd — and they came away empty handed.
Instead of get all they wanted — women priests, gay marriage, married priests, Gaia and Pachamama worship, global warming, and other things you see in the kind of mainstream Protestant churches with empty pews — whoever these faithful were who attended the Synod, merely agreed to find ways to expand Church participation and attendence through “inclusion,” which pretty well opens the door to traditional forms of worship, which is drawing converts. The ‘trads’ as they are known, were excluded from “inclusion” in this gathering, but apparently not everyone there is hostile.
According to Catholic News Service:
VATICAN CITY (CNS) — A report summarizing discussions at the assembly of the Synod of Bishops said the church may need more welcoming pastoral approaches, especially to people who feel excluded, but also acknowledged fears of betraying traditional church teachings and practices.
Among the topics addressed in the report were clerical sexual abuse, women’s roles in the church, outreach to poor and the concept of “synodality” itself.
The assembly, with 364 voting members — 365 counting Pope Francis — met in working sessions six days a week Oct. 4-28 after a three-day retreat outside of Rome. They were scheduled to join the pope Oct. 29 for the assembly’s closing Mass.
They put this out, and seemed to have a pretty decent consensus:
The assembly’s discussions set the stage for a year-long period of reflection that will culminate in the second and final synod assembly in late 2024 on the same topic.
The 41-page synthesis report, voted on paragraph-by-paragraph Oct. 28, described its purpose as presenting “convergences, matters for consideration and proposals that emerged from the dialogue” on issues discussed under the headings of synodality, communion, mission and participation.
Every item in the report was approved by at least two-thirds of the members present and voting, synod officials said. They published the results of each vote.
And they didn’t mention gays:
The synthesis report did not use the term “LGBTQ+” or even “homosexuality” and spoke only generally of issues related to “matters of identity and sexuality.”
Which, realistically, they shouldn’t — gays go by the same rules as non-gays in Church doctrine, so to single them out seems a bit precious. To be really serious about ‘inclusiveness’ for gays, gays (etc.) shouldn’t be singled out as something different from the rest of us. And in reality, nobody is. Nobody is being excluded from the Church for being gay. They are just excluded from the same acts the rest of us are excluded from doing, so yeah, that’s inclusive.
What it shows is that the Church faithful think a lot of this social change being foisted upon the Church is pretty irrelevant stuff. Church people are more concerned about morality, about community, about empty pews, about young people leaving the Church, and about how to make themselves closer to God. The gay stuff and women priests stuff is special interest group politics and trendy wokesterism, and since the press won’t shut up about it, it’s boring as heck. They’d rather focus on the life of the whole Church, not divvy it up into special classes of ‘oppressed.’
What it ultimately means is that maybe if they got rid of the wokesterism, they wouldn’t have the empty pews problem.
In any case, Pope Francis didn’t have much to say about this after his earlier statements that there weren’t going to be any women priests, which heartened a lot of the faithful. He said goodbye and bade them on their way, possibly sharing the disappointment of the progressives, but obviously knowing how