The Synod Can't Do Anything, So Chillax
A Catholic programming note
No matter how much the press and the pope hype it up, the upcoming [whoops, took too long to publish this] Catholic “Synod on Synodality” is not an ecumenical council and is therefore capable of formally teaching error. That is, according to the Catholic Church’s own teachings about its own infallibility, the Synod could assert things that are objectively false and anathematize things that are objectively true.
It is, in general, entirely possible for a synod of bishops (other than an ecumenical council) to directly contradict the Catholic Church's prior (or future) infallible teachings. It’s happened before in much closer cases. It will happen again. This would not impede either the prior teachings or the Church's general mark of infallibility. It would simply be a black mark for the Synod. The Synod would just be wrong.
Moreover, as a random assembly of papal advisors, the Synod cannot even (of its own force) issue disciplinary decrees that are binding on anybody. A national council, like the American Councils of Baltimore of the nineteenth century, may make doctrinal errors (sometimes serious ones), but a national council is still capable of resolving controversies and setting disciplines within its territorial jurisdiction (like deciding whether Friday penance must involve giving up meat or not).
But the Synod has no territory! It's just... some dudes. Their sole function is to advise the Pope, who can issue disciplinary decrees and doctrinal judgments, but this Pope has been singularly reluctant to do so. To be fair to Pope Francis, the Church teaches that a Pope who attempts to teach erroneous doctrine through a solemn, ex cathedra definition will be struck dead1 before this is allowed to happen, so I would be reluctant, too—especially if my position seemed to dance around the limits of previously-defined doctrine.
This combination—lack of teaching authority and lack of disciplinary authority—is why the current Synod simply doesn't excite me. No matter what it does, in whatever direction—whether (tacking left) it implicitly rejects Lateran II's teaching on false penance2 or (tacking right) it attempts to formally extend Ordinatio Sacerdotalis's condemnation of women's ordination to include the diaconate—the Synod’s conclusions will be dismissed, with cause, by the people who are already entrenched against those conclusions. Their alienation seems all but certain to be the only practical consequence of the upcoming Synod.
Popes have held advisory synods like this one since Vatican II, but nobody has ever hyped a synod as if it were a council until recently, which is why things have gotten so weird. However, if the Pope wanted the Synod to be more than a press event, he knows how to convene an ecumenical council. He chose not to. So the only remaining question is how big the Synodal train wreck is going to be.
Preliminary signs are: pretty big! There is growing evidence that the Pope personally and knowingly shielded serial sex abuser Fr. Rupnik. Despite all the horrific failings of Pope John Paul II and Benedict XVI on abuse, this would still represent a diabolical new frontier in papal sex-abuser-coddling. Meanwhile, there's fresh drama over the Dubia, a controversy now in its sixth or seventh pointless and frustrating year. The Church is set to have a tumultuous October for no particular reason, with no meaningful outcome.
So just skip it. You’re not J.D. Flynn. You’re not Mark Brumley. You’re not Janet Smith.3 It’s not your job. It’s no skin off your nose. Take a nap. Read a novel. Learn to paint. Sue a President. Something constructive.
Bonus: Difference Between a Synod and a Council
For most of history, "synod" and "council" have been more or less synonymous. Many of the great ecumenical councils were also called "synods" both by their successors and within their own proceedings. Both words basically mean, "bishops having a meeting."
In recent decades, "synod" has been used much more to describe a meeting where a bunch of bishops come to Rome to advise the pope on some issue (and they are cough mostly for show cough cough sorry St. John Paul), but there are plenty of historical synods where, for example, the bishops of France all got together to settle some pressing question of Church discipline in France. When all the bishops of France get together, they can settle important questions of discipline and the boundaries of doctrine within France—condemning local heresies, celebrating local uncanonized saints, issuing excommunications, specifying days of fast and feast, removing clergy who committed simony (there’s so much of this through the centuries), and so forth. They have these powers whether you call it a “local synod,” a “local council,” or both. They have jurisdiction over their shared locale—in this case, France.
The big difference is not between synods and councils, then, but between local and ecumenical councils. An ecumenical council—which, you could also call an ecumenical synod, if you prefer, I guess (please don’t, it’s weird)—is (to quote St. Bellarmine), a council “in which the bishops of the world can and ought to be present, unless legitimately impeded, and over which no one may rightly preside, except the supreme pontiff or one designated by him.”4 The Pope (or his legates) must not only preside; the Pope must also ratify or at least tacitly accept the outcome of the council. An ecumenical council has universal jurisdiction. They can do all the things a local council can do, but for the entire world.
Moreover, an ecumenical council (and only an ecumenical council) has the power to issue extraordinary definitions pertaining to issues of faith and morals. These doctrinal definitions, though rare, are (according to Catholic teaching) guaranteed by the Holy Spirit to contain no falsehood. Notice that doesn’t mean they state the full truth, or even that they state a partial truth clearly. It just means the statement, fairly construed, contains no actual falsehood.
As a source of infallible teaching, the twenty-one5 ecumenical councils are therefore exponentially more important, historically speaking, than local councils, much less advisory synods.
One final note: in Catholicism, “synod” means, essentially, “a meeting of bishops.” The Synod that just started includes some bishops, some lower-ranked clerics, and some lay people, all of them as voting delegates. Now, I am an orthodox Catholic who supports the abolition of the college of cardinals. Indeed, I support some presence for lay people (including women) in whatever replacement body elects the Pope. So I’m not averse to the idea of having laity involved in this Synod, which is (as discussed above) essentially just a papal advisory group with no power of governance. The problem is, now that non-bishops are participating as full members, I’m not sure the current Synod is properly a “synod” anymore. So the current “Synod” may be best understood, not as a pointless new version of something old, but as an entirely new pointless thing.
FROM THE ARCHIVES: The last time De Civitate covered a synod, I was more depressed about it, therefore much funnier. Check out my exclusive reporting from the 2014-15 Synod on the Family!
…or mute, like Zechariah, or inspired by the Holy Spirit to not say the wrong thing, or all his pens will become too hot to touch like in the Star Trek episode “Errand of Mercy,” or he’ll manage to write the decree and put it in his desk drawer but God will make him forget where he put the desk key so he can never get it back out to mail the decree to the world, or any number of other things.
The teaching is that the Holy Spirit will not permit the Pope to formally teach falsely in a solemn, definitive teaching on faith and morals addressing the universal Church, when he is acting in his capacity as heir of Peter and not as a private theologian. The exact method of not-permitting is up to the Holy Spirit.
There is a wholly unsubstantiated pious legend that this is exactly what happened to Pope John Paul the First, who was famous for two things:
Deep skepticism toward the Church’s teaching against contraception in general, and against Pope Paul VI’s encyclical Humanae Vitae in particular, to the point where it was widely expected that Pope John Paul I would issue a new encyclical, revising or reversing Humane Vitae, in the first hundred days of his papacy, and
Dying on the thirty-fourth day of his papacy, despite excellent overall health, following a sudden and unexpected heart attack.
U b da judge.
Canon #22 from the Canons of the Second Lateran Council. There is real tension between this canon, which bears all the marks of an infallible extraordinary definition on a matter of faith and morals, and Pope Francis’s concededly fallible teaching on the use of sacraments by putatively adulterous Catholics in Amoris Laetitia. Seven years after Amoris, the humans who make up the Church on Earth are still arguing about whether they fit together, or if Amoris must be discarded.
Unless J.D. Flynn, Mark Brumley, or Janet Smith reads this, in which case, guys, I’m so sorry you have to pay attention to all this.
This is from Christian Washburn’s excellent paper, “St. Robert Bellarmine on the Infallibility of General Councils of the Church,” which includes Bellarmine’s original Latin alongside Washburn’s English translation, in case you want to translate it yourself.
Importantly, St. Bellarmine is not just another theologian weighing in. His work definitively settled the list of Catholic ecumenical councils, which, up to that time, was still sometimes disputed. He’s just a sainted theologian, not an ecumenical council, so his judgment is fallible, but nobody within Catholicism has seriously disputed Bellarmine’s verdict in four hundred years.
Eastern Orthodoxy agrees with seven of them, but proposes six rival councils. This gets confusing, because there are two Fourth Councils of Constantinople—one Catholic, one Orthodox.
Oriental Orthodoxy accepts only the first three councils, having entered schism with the Council of Chalcedon. Protestants, as in all things, vary.