바티칸 18/09/18 Francis reworks the Synod of Bishops - The pope has sought to involve lay people more closely in Synodal reflection

[성기화 요셉]

Francis reworks the Synod of Bishops

The pope has sought to involve lay people more closely in Synodal reflection

Nicolas Senèze
Vatican City

September 19, 2018

• 카페회원들의 안전을 위해 iframe 태그를 제한 하였습니다. 관련공지보기▶
• 
• 
• 
• 

Pope Francis celebrates the closing Mass at the Synod's special assembly on the family on October 25, 2015. (Photo by M. Migliorato/CPP/Ciric) 

The Apostolic Constitution Episcopalis Communio, published on Sept. 18, is much more than an updating of the Synod of Bishops, the institution created by Pope Paul VI in 1965 and which Pope Francis has transformed into one of the tools of his missionary reform of the Church.

Essentially, the document engraves in marble the innovations born out of the experience of the 2014 and 2015 Synodal assemblies on the family and the preparation for the forthcoming assembly on young people.

However, it also innovates in giving greater scope to Synod decisions.

Concerning Synod functioning, Pope Francis has sought to involve the faithful more closely in Synodal reflection.

Evidently, the Synod remains “of the Bishops.” However, as Pope Francis has noted, the latter need to appreciate how to place themselves in a position “of listening to the voice of Christ who speaks through the whole people.”

Moreover, the Synod needs “to become a privileged instrument” for such listening.

In line with the process at the Synod on the Family, Episcopalis Communio thus provides that each assembly will be preceded by a “consultation with the People of God,” particularly through dioceses and religious institutes but also – and this is new – through lay associations.

The possibility of a Pre-Synodal Meeting like the one in March next year, where more than 300 young people came to Rome to prepare for the next Synod, is also formalized.

Finally, once again drawing on the lessons of the experience of the two assemblies on the family and reviving an idea launched in 1983 by Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini but never implemented, Francis will allow the same assembly to hold several sessions spaced out over a period of time.

“The aim is to enable a process of going deeper that will lead to mature reflection,” Bishop Fabio Fabene, the under-secretary of the Synod, explained.

The main aim of Pope Francis’ new apostolic constitution is thus to better articulate the relationship between pontifical primacy and episcopal collegiality.

There will be no more synods such as those held under John Paul II, where bishops read out their interventions in series to a passive assembly before finally voting on a list of proposals that the pope drew from to draft an apostolic exhortation!

Benedict XVI had previously introduced a period for discussion and Francis has extended this.

As in 2014 and 2015, the Synod’s work will now conclude with a document drafted by a commission comprising members elected by the assembly and appointed by the pope.

This document will then be submitted for approval by the Synod, “seeking moral unanimity as far as possible.”

“It is a matter of achieving a consensus that clearly goes beyond 50 percent,” said Synod secretary-general, Cardinal Lorenzo Baldisseri. “However, there is no legal definition. Moral unanimity is not defined by numbers.”

The Church’s tradition in this area is often for a two-thirds majority, a figure that three paragraphs of the first Synod that discussed the Family failed to achieve.

Significantly, Pope Francis has also opened up the possibility that the final document will form part of the ordinary pontifical magisterium.

In a consultative synod this will require express approval of the document while in a Synod to which the pope has granted deliberative power it will require ratification and promulgation.

In the latter case, as in a Council, the document will be solemnly signed by the pope and members of the Synod.

Finally, Episcopalis Communio establishes an important, new “phase of implementation” after each Synod.

This prioritizes the role of the General Secretariat of the Synod with which the Curia is invited to collaborate and which has had its powers augmented, particularly in being able to publish “implementation documents” in its own right.

The aim is to turn the Synod into a tool that is more responsive to the service of the Church “in a permanent state of mission” that Francis desires.

“For the pope, it is a matter of profoundly remodelling all ecclesial structures so that they become ‘more missionary,’ that is, more sensitive to the needs of people, more open to novelties that emerge, more supple in an era of rapid transformation,” Cardinal Baldisseri said.

In a sign of this suppleness, the new constitution will also apply to the next Synod's assembly of young people, which opens on Oct. 3.

The Synod General Secretariat thus has less than two weeks to publish the applicable documents.