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Up and down again, back and forth, forwards and back again.
This is how the Synod on Synodality proceeded over two long years at the round tables, above all with the explicit non-dispute over the church’s controversial issues that had been removed from it.
These are serious and will determine the real significance of the synodal negotiations.
The synod is not responsible for this, as it was a papal decision taken over the heads of the synod members.
It turned the synod into a torso, but Rome knows all about that.
Even as an overstretched torso, treating synodality for its own sake, the synod produced a long text with lines and between-the-lines that even attempt to stand up in some places.
Did this Pope mean such a standing up when he concluded by warning that the Church must not remain seated?
There was universal agreement in favour of this – of course in remaining seated, especially on irreconcilable positions on the outstanding issues.
The two go well together, as the power struggle is simply postponed, which is as certain to materialise in this church as the proverbial Amen.
But this power struggle should not be allowed to happen now and must not disrupt the overstretching of the synod format, which it will put an end to as soon as it breaks out.
This is why the text was immediately adopted by Pope Francis. What appeared to some to be an enormous and surprising step smells more like a dodge to others who are more legally savvy.
Now the head of the synod does not have to comment further on the synodal recommendations that do not suit him completely or at all.
Francis simply does not have to explain himself, especially not in a semi-definitive way, and can continue to pretend that he and his office are not a factor in the power struggle.
But somehow it doesn’t fit that he quickly sent an encyclical on devotion to the Sacred Heart in the final phase of the debates on women’s issues, which then became even more heated.
Why couldn’t it have waited, unless it was to divert the remaining public attention to it?
Agonising power struggle over synodality as destiny
These debates were always somehow clandestinely present, unstoppable either by the mere non-publicity of the negotiations, fatally reminiscent of the Pian era, or by the method of mere non-argument, as if a parallel ecclesiastical universe were available.
But the kairos that these two years have been for the women’s issue was so natural to sit out. Its window has now closed.
This kairos will not return, no matter how much, how gladly or how often the Holy Spirit is invoked, to whom we should now listen.
All that remains is an agonising power struggle for a synodality that is now a “constitutive dimension” (no. 29) of the Church.
It is only through the power struggles that it so ostracises that it can rise above this.
After all, it is not without reason that the contemporary world did not take any particular interest in the Synod on Synodality.
How could it, since it was definitely kept outside. It simply radiated little to the outside world if it is of so little importance there.
Now the Holy Spirit is supposed to sort it out; after all, he is unstoppable, according to No. 60. Will he soon storm in on synodal tracks? We shall see.
Delays are inevitable, no matter how slowly the trains are travelling with the serious problems that remain unresolved.
There are no overtaking tracks and well-developed high-speed lines.
The decisive passages on women and their marginalisation in the church are proof of this.
They do not recognise any good reasons that prevent women from holding leadership positions in the church, and they keep open the possibility of ordaining women as deacons (No. 60).
Those who consider both to be a serious step forward completely misjudge the situation of the Catholic Church.
It cannot afford not to recognise this openness without making itself completely untrustworthy and downright ridiculous; this applies on all continents and in all serious cultures on the planet.
No synod, no pope, no council is in a position to declare this question clearly closed. The only problem is that keeping a space open does not mean actually taking action to enter it.
Women in the Council of Cardinals
But this has now become the litmus test for synodality as well as for pontificates; they can only be active and activated after the end of patience with them.
The Church’s magisterium has been signalling that it is time for women to stop being discriminated against ever since John XXIII’s last encyclical, Pacem in terris.
If the current pope and his pontificate really took their own programme of devoting themselves to the marginalised in this world seriously, they would have to apply it to their own church and not just to a gallery of pretty pictures.
This is about women and also about victims of sexualised violence in the church.
There is no more patience here with non-openness for the definitive end of marginalisation and nothing will change.
Synodalities and pontificates will be judged by this; they can no longer get away with appeals for patience from anyone.
This applies to the current pontificate with the topos of the ordination of deaconesses.
But it also applies to the world synodal demand that the more synodal the church becomes, the more women should be allowed to take up positions of leadership in the church.
This is of little help and is suspected of not being taken seriously as long as there are no women in the cardinalate and the synodal voices accept this.
That is where the power is, because cardinals elect the Pope, i.e. the decisive Catholic governing body.
As long as this exclusion is not tidied up, the other appointments of women to influential positions will remain a waste of time, however synodally beneficial they may be, which is of course to be wished for these women.
Two or three legal strokes of the pen would suffice for the change.
Cardinal is not an ordained office. And of course women cannot be appointed to this body without recognising their possible eligibility in the conclave.
If the worst came to the worst, a cleric would probably still be found for the internal Roman episcopal see.
That would not even be clericalism.
- First published in english.katholisch.de
- Hans-Joachim Sander (pictured) has been Professor of Dogmatics at the University of Salzburg since 2002
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