Big Changes at the Vatican

As the Synod on Synodality continues we get another change that will help us to become a church that lives by listening to all its members. The Vatican announced on April 26th that 70 members of the 200 or so members at the upcoming synod meeting in Rome will be lay people, more than 40 of them women. The group is also to include young people. Now having such people in the synod hall is not that unusual. What is unusual is that the members this time will have full voting power. Up to now the voting members of a synod have always been bishops, and recently the occasional priest.

So what will these new members be doing with their votes? They will be preparing a document on the synod topic (which this time is no less a topic that how the church should operate) that will go to Pope Francis, who will issue a papal exhortation based on it. The place of women in the church will certainly be discussed and incorporated into the final document. Originally the synod meeting was to take place this coming October, but the synod has been lengthened and there will now be a meeting this October as well as in 2024. It is then that the final document will be produced.

The length of time for the synod has been growing as well as the numbers of participants. This is a factor of learning what it means to be a synodal church as that was described by Vatican II. We are going through the same processes in our parishes, learning to live by a synodal model along with the wider church. Our next step is our listening sessions around what worship is in our parishes. Please make time to attend.