Although Pope Francis's exhortation on the Amazon bypasses making decisions about women deacons and married priests, there is still room to move, say number of the pope's close advisors.

In the post-synodal apostolic exhortation, Querida Amazonia (Beloved Amazon), Pope Francis released last week , Francis appears to leave the question of married priests open-ended. He didn't give a clear yes or no on the issue.

Instead, he suggests there be a better distribution of priests in the Amazon.

He wants to encourage missionary priests to work in the region and to go to more rural areas.

At the same time, he says there is a need for a priestly formation which better understands and appreciates local cultural traditions.

Francis's exhortation on the Amazon also avoided making decisions about women deacons.

Rather, it warned against the temptation to "clericalise" women rather than empowering them through leading community roles which better "reflects their womanhood."

Cardinal Michael Czerny said the best way of looking at the pope's approach to married priests in the document is that it is "part of a journey."

"We are at a very important point in the synodal process."

"There are long roads ahead, as well as roads already traveled," he said

He also pointed out that on the question of married priests, Francis "has not resolved them in any way beyond what he has said in the exhortation."

Czerny stressed that the exhortation "is a magisterial document".

This means it is binding, whereas the final synod document, which includes supportive proposals for married priests and women deacons which the pope must approve, does not bear the same weight.

Czerny said without a firm 'no' from the pope on these issues, they will continue "to be debated, discussed, discerned, prayed over and, when mature, presented to the appropriate authority for a decision."

These decisions, he said, can be made at a diocesan, national and universal level.

Czerny said the proposal for ordaining women deacons is still "being studied". He said this is probably awaiting a conclusion on the topic from a commission Francis formed in 2016 to study it.

Source

• Crux
• Image: Jesuits.org

Two-thirds of the 180 bishops at the synod approved all the 140-paragraph document's findings, which they voted on paragraph by paragraph.

One of the document's main focuses further including laity and women in the Church's ministry in the Amazon region.

The most contested sections of the document concerned the:

• Roles of the female diaconate (30 votes against)
• Viri probati — a discussion of ordaining married "men of proven virtue" to the priesthood — (41 votes against)
• Creating an Amazonian rite (29 votes against).

The bishops said they wished to "share their experience and reflections" with the Commission for the Study of the Female Diaconate that Francis created in 2016.

That study was tasked with providing further study and historical context for the role of women in the early church.

Although the final document does not have any real decision-making power, Pope Francis will consider all the bishops' recommendations

Francis says after considering the document, he will prepare and release an apostolic exhortation on the Amazon.

Although Francis praised the spirit of the discussions among the bishops, he says the final document falls short on recognizing the role of women in the church.

"We haven't yet comprehended what women mean for the church and we stay in the functional side" he said.

He also pointed out "the role of women in the church goes much further than functionality."

Francis said he interprets the document as calling for the creation of a second commission to look into the historic role and diaconate of women in the church.

Although the first commission did not reach a comprehensive conclusion, Francis said he will submit it to a new commission.

With the help of the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Church, the commission will ensure women seeking further inclusion will "be heard."

The lack of priests to minister to the numerous indigenous peoples in the Amazon region, is one of the main problems bishops grappled with at the synod.

If women deacons were permitted, they would be able to preach, distribute the Eucharist and officiate at weddings, baptisms and funerals. Deacons may not hear confessions or consecrate the Eucharist.

Another way to address the shortage of priests, amid growing competition from Pentecostal denominations, will be to encourage the ordination of tested married men to the priesthood, the final synod document says.

While they acknowledged "celibacy as a gift of God," they also said "the legitimate diversity does not harm the communion and unity of the Church, but expresses and serves it."

They also note that creating an "Amazonian rite," through a liturgy that would better reflect the Amazonian region is not unprecedented.

The Church already recognizes over two dozen liturgical rites, which usually have their own bishops and specific liturgies.

Source

• Religion News Service
• Image: Pan-Amazon Synod Watch

They should not pay "undue attention to aspects of the assembly's final report addressing Church discipline while ignoring the assembly's "diagnoses" of four major aspects of life in the Pan-Amazonian region.

These concern the region's cultural, social, pastoral and ecological issues, Francis told media in his remarks at the closing of the synod last Saturday.

Although small disciplinary things are significant, focusing on them won't help society take care of the four main concerns the synod has spent time diagnosing, he explained.

"There is always a group of elite Christians who like to take up this kind of diagnosis [in relation to discipline] as if they were universal, however small, or in this kind of more inter-ecclesiastical disciplinary resolutions."

Francis said there is a danger, of the elite only looking to see "what they decided on this disciplinary issue, what they decided on another, making of the world who won this game, lost this…

"No, we all win with the diagnoses we made and as far as we arrive in the pastoral and inter-ecclesiastical issues, but don't get locked in on that."

Francis continued, saying "Thinking today about these Catholic and Christian elites sometimes, but especially Catholics who want to go to the little things and forget the big things, I remembered a phrase from Péguy ...

"... 'Because they don't have the courage to be with the world, they believe they are with God.

'Because they don't have the courage to compromise on man's options, on man's life options, they believe they are fighting for God.

'Because they don't love anyone, they believe they love God,'" Francis said.

Francis's remarks were met with long applause from the Vatican synod hall.

The Amazon synod's final report was presented at the seession, and voted on paragraph by paragraph by the 185 synod members.

Francis said based on a request in the final report, he will re-open the Church's study of the possibility of women deacons.

He will also re-open his 2016 commission on the study of the possibility of having a female diaconate.

This may involve adding new members and having study group operate within the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, he said.

Francis said he would like to write a post-synodal exhortation on the Amazon synod "before the end of the year so that not much time passes,".

"It all depends on the time you have to think," he added.

Source

• Catholic News Agency
• Catholic News Agency

Many of the 185 prelates at the synod approve of ordaining women as deacons to address a lack of ministers in the region.

Bishop Derek Byrne, who is from a Brazilian diocese, says the support is especially strong from bishops who "find that they just can't serve their people" because they lack ministers.

Despite the "substantial support," Byrne observed among other prelates, he says he doesn't know if it would reach the two-thirds threshold required to get approval from the synod.

Several small working groups mentioned women deacons in their reports last Friday.

These reports are expected to be used in coming days as the basis for a tentative first draft of the synod's final document.

Byrne says he raised the issue of women deacons both in his own small group and during his four-minute speech at one of the synod's general sessions.

"The second thing that I spoke about was the role of women in the church," he says.

"I said we have all seen this, especially in our rural communities — they depend so much on women, and some of them are really mothers of the community, and the community wouldn't be standing if it were not for the women.

"I said that I hoped that the church would return to ordaining women deacons".

His claim relating to women's former role in the church is a reference to research from church historians showing evidence that women served as deacons in the early centuries of the church.

Saying he thinks the church has given a "raw deal to women, he adds:

"I believe the ministry of women has to be more recognized, and this would be certainly be a first step in the right direction."

Byrne, 71,says his diocese is about half the size of his native Ireland. It takes him about six hours to reach some of his 19 parishes because of the dirt roads.

He has about 30 priests to serve his Catholic population.

Source

• National Catholic Reporter
• Image: National Catholic Reporter

Last Sunday, the prelates, including two cardinals, went to the Catacombs of Domitilla, on the outskirts of the Eternal City, to sign the "Catacombs pact for a Common Home".

Lay people and women were included among the signatories.

The historic declaration is a renewal of a pact signed in 1965 in the same place by bishops attending the Second Vatican Council.

In the 1965 pact, a group of bishops pledged to live simply, renounce personal possessions and "names and titles that express prominence and power."

The 2019 agreement revives the 1965 pact's spirit, albeit focusing on the Amazon synod and building a Church with an "Amazonian face". There is also less focus on the lifestyle choices of bishops.

Among its 15 pledges, the agreement includes:

• A call to defend the natural world, the rainforest and the indigenous peoples of the Amazon.
• A "preferential option of the poor" and the region's native peoples along with a rejection of "all types of colonialist mentalities and postures".
• A recognition of the service of "the great number of women who today direct communities in the Amazon".
• A pledge to avoid the "avalanche of consumerism" by living "happily sober lifestyle, simple and in solidarity with those who have little or nothing", and "favouring the production and commercialisation of agro-ecological products and using public transport whenever possible".

This last pledge is like the 1965 pact where the bishops pledged to "try to live according to the ordinary manner of our people in all that concerns housing, food, means of transport, and related matters".

Another similarity to the 1965 pact is the inclusion of laity.

Where the 1965 pact says bishops would look for "collaborators in ministry so that we can be animators according to the Spirit rather than dominators" the 2019 agreement calls for a "synodal lifestyle".

In this lifestyle, laity would have a "voice and vote" in ecclesial structures.

By signing the agreement, the bishops are seeking to connect the Amazon synod with the spirit of the early Church, by acknowledging the extent to which the contemporary Church is linked to the first Christian communities.

Throughout his pontificate, Pope Francis has rekindled the spirit of the 1965 pact and is part of the inspiration for new one.

He has pledged a "poor Church for the poor" and a desire to implement Vatican II.

Since becoming pope, Francis lives in a suite of modest rooms in a Vatican guesthouse, continuing the simple lifestyle he pursued while in Argentina.

Source:

• The Tablet
• Image: The Archdiocese of Baltimore

The full text of the letter dated 1 August was posted last Friday evening by the ‘Cardinal George Pell Supporters' Twitter account.

Prison authorities are investigating whether Pell broke Melbourne Assessment Prison rules by posting the letter.

A Department of Justice and Community Safety spokeswoman on Saturday said prisoners are denied any access to the internet or social media, and it is a prison offence to "commission other individuals to post something on social media on behalf of a prisoner".

There has been no comment as to whether Pell asked his supporters to pass on his letter to a wider audience.

The Twitter account has since been taken down.

Critical of Amazonian Synod

In the handwritten, signed letter, Pell criticises the agenda of the upcoming synod on the Amazon.

"We have reason to be disturbed by the Instrumentum Laboris of the Amazonian Synod," writes Pell.

He calls the Instrumentum a "low-quality document".

The Instrumentum, which has been the source of considerable discussion and commentary, includes discussion, for example, on the subject of ordaining viri probati, (married men, to answer a shortage of priestly vocations).

It also calls for "a Church with an indigenous face," and recommends the synod identify "an official ministry that can be conferred upon women, taking into account the central role they play in the Amazonian church".

Cardinal Müller has written "an excellent critique" of the Instrumentum, Pell writes.

Noting he doesn't know the Amazon region, Pell says in his letter: "One point is fundamental, the Apostolic Tradition, the teaching of Jesus and the Apostles, taken from the New Testament and taught by Popes and Councils, by the Magisterium, is the only criterion doctrinally for all teaching on doctrine and practice."

"Amazon or no Amazon, in every land, the Church cannot allow any confusion, much less any contrary teaching, to damage the Apostolic Tradition," he said.

Life in prison

Pell says prison life is helping him develop his faith and compares his suffering to that of Jesus.

"My faith in our God, like yours, is a source of strength," his letter says.

"The knowledge that my small suffering can be used for good purposes through being joined to Jesus' suffering gives me purpose and direction.

"Challenges and problems in Church life should be confronted in a similar spirit of faith."

Pell says he's received between 1500 and 2000 letters since his imprisonment, and that messages from his supporters have brought him "immense consolation, humanly and spiritually" while he awaits a decision on his appeal.

Sources

• The Age
• National Catholic Register
• ABC News
• The Australian
• Image: The Courier

One of the most important critics of the agenda set out in the instrumentum laboris is German Cardinal Walter Brandmüller, who has flatly announced that it "contradicts the binding teaching of the Church in decisive points and thus has to be qualified as heretical."

That, as they say in the business, is a strong statement.

One might expect that Cardinal Brandmüller would focus his criticism on the possible exceptional measures suggested in the working document to ordain elderly, indigenous married men in remote areas of the Amazon so the faithful there could go to Mass.

This is where most of the buzz in the unfolding debate has been focused, with traditionalists laying out the case that the ordination of married men, however exceptional, would be heretical in ways that the church's current practices — admitting married Episcopal clergy as converts to Catholicism or married priests in the Eastern Catholic Churches — are not.

But this is not where Brandmüller and others in his camp have voiced concern.

Disturbingly, their first target seems to be Catholic social doctrine.

"Clearly," Brandmüller writes in a letter that LifesSite News published in full, "there is an encroaching interference here by a synod of bishops into the purely secular affairs of the Brazilian state and society.

"What do ecology, economy, and politics have to do with the mandate and mission of the Church?

"More importantly: what professional expertise authorizes an ecclesial synod of bishops to express itself on such topics?"

This may sound like a reasonable concern until it is put in the context of the Vatican's true aims in the synod.

Put plainly, this synod will put the church on the side of the indigenous Amazon peoples.

In particular, it will put the church on the side of an integral ecology that respects both God's creation and its relationship with the flourishing of the indigenous Amazon peoples.

It will recognize, furthermore, that the church cannot be identified with the developed West alone and will honor the fact that, as Pope St. John Paul II insisted, Christ is present in indigenous peoples in a very special way.

Indeed, the working document insists that life in the Amazon is threatened by environmental destruction and exploitation and by the systematic violation of human rights.

In particular, it is threatened by the violation of the rights of indigenous peoples, such as the right to territory, to self-determination, to the demarcation of territories and to prior consultation and consent.

According to the communities participating in the synod, the threat to life comes from global economic and political interests, especially resource-extractive companies, often in collusion with, or tolerated by, local and national governments as well as traditional indigenous leaders.

The Amazon has great riches — both in its people and its resources — that these forces have taken, are taking, and mean to take in the future.

The synod's working document turns its critical attention to "insatiable vision of unlimited growth, of the idolatry of money, of a world disconnected from its roots and environment, of a culture of death."

The developed economic and political powers, of course, will not go down without a fight. But it is incumbent on the Catholic Church to remain faithful to our social doctrine by insisting on our religious duty to be on the side of the indigenous peoples in this conflict.

Bizarrely, Cardinal Brandmüller discards this mandate by suggesting that the questions the Synod document raises involve matters of professional expertise that the bishops do not have.

He even suggests that topics like "ecology, economy, and politics" have nothing to do with the mission and mandate of the church.

This suggestion, which is closer to heresy than anything in the instrumentum laboris, is totally inconsistent with nearly 130 years of Catholic social doctrine.

According to the Vatican's Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, this body of teaching is concerned with just and holy relationships in society — situations and problems regarding development, human work, economics, politics, human ecology, safeguarding the environment and more.

It is true that judgments made about specific public policies can only be informed by — not determined by — Catholic teaching.

Catholic social doctrine insists on the right to unionize and be paid a living wage, for instance, but how such unions are organized and what counts as a living wage in a particular social and economic context is not a matter that Catholic teaching can decide in the abstract.

But Catholic social doctrine demands that economic and political policies be designed with a preference for indigenous people over and against their powerful exploiters.

It demands that Western-style preferences for unlimited growth of capital, idolatry of money and exploitation of God's creation be resisted with an integral ecology that honors God's plan for vulnerable, embodied human beings and their relationship with the broader ecological world.

The specifics of how these goals are accomplished, of course, cannot be decided upon in the abstract.

The insight of those with expertise beyond bishops' knowledge should be listened to quite carefully for precisely this reason.

But as the instrumentum laboris makes clear, this synod has "the historic opportunity to differentiate itself clearly from the new colonizing powers by listening to the Amazon peoples."

Indigenous voices must speak first, and the Church must listen.

Catholic social doctrine demands no less.

• Charlie Camosy is a professor of theological and social ethics at Fordham University. He is the author of five books, including, most recently, "Resisting Throwaway Culture." He is the father of four children, three of whom were adopted from Philippines.
• First publised in RNS. Republished with permission.

According to Brandmüller's essay, the synod's recently-published preparatory document "burdens the Synod of Bishops, and finally the Pope, with a grave breach with the depositum fidei, which in its consequence means the self-destruction of the Church or the change of the Corpus Christi mysticum into a secular NGO with an ecological-social-psychological mandate." Read more

"We need the care of the whole world, that it be a place where everyone can live.

"This is integral ecology. The care of the earth and the care of the person, that they can have life, and an abundant life."

Titled "Amazonia: New Paths for the Church and for an Integral Ecology," the Amazon synod will take place in October 2019.

It will focus on the Pan-Amazonian region of South America, which includes parts of Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, French Guyana, Guyana, Peru, Venezuela and Suriname. Read more