It highlights some of the inherent tensions between the use of synods and the power of the papacy in modern Catholicism.

Speaking to Jesuits in Belgium on September 28, Francis said Eastern Christians have not lost synodality, but the Western Catholics "have lost it."

In the Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox churches, synods of bishops are responsible for the election of new bishops and the establishment of inter-diocesan laws within each province. Eastern Catholic Churches also use synods for such purposes.

In the West, synods were often held in the early centuries of the Church, and included important theological debates.

However, as the powers of the papacy grew, the synods became less common, although "councils" - which are arguably synods by a different name - still continued.

Ecumenical Councils, such as Vatican II, continue to issue theologically definitive statements, but more localized councils generally tackle administrative affairs, with theological questions reserved to the Vatican.

However, synods did take on some different definitions in the West.

First, diocesan synods - which used to be required to happen once a decade (admittedly, a rule observed more in the breach than in the execution) - involved both clergy and laypeople. Much like the more traditional synod, it involved looking at local diocesan laws and reforming them if needed.

More prominently, after Vatican II, Pope Paul VI established the Synod of Bishops, which had no real authority at all.

This synod could make "proposals" which could be accepted or rejected by the pontiff.

Soon, these meetings became talking shops, where many of the participants were more interested in Church gossip at the local restaurants in Rome than the official issue being discussed at the Synod meeting in the Vatican.

When Francis was elected, he wanted to make the Synod a more prominent feature of the life of the Catholic Church - but which Synod was he talking about?

"Synodality is very important. It needs to be built not from the top to the bottom, but from the bottom to the top," he told the Jesuits on Sep. 28.

Yet, historically, synods at best were built from the top down, although the little-used diocesan synod did allow lay participants.

"Synodality is not easy, no, and sometimes this is because there are authority figures that do not bring out the dialogue aspect. A pastor can make decisions by himself, but he can make them with his council. So can a bishop, and so can the pope," he said.

However, in the case of the papacy, his council is usually very much "his." The Ecumenical Council of Vatican I confirmed the doctrine that the Bishop of Rome has universal primacy over the Church and is "infallible" when he speaks ex cathedra.

In practical terms, this means a "Synodal Church" is whatever the pope says it is. Read more

• Charles Collins is an American journalist currently living in the United Kingdom, and is Crux's Managing Editor.

But sometimes a footnote can help illuminate a tragedy's unhappy whole.

For decades, the Middle East's increasingly beleaguered Christian communities have suffered from a fatal invisibility in the Western world.

And their plight has been particularly invisible in the United States, which as a majority-Christian superpower might have been expected to provide particular support.

There are three reasons for this invisibility.

The political left in the West associates Christian faith with dead white male imperialism and does not come naturally to the recognition that Christianity is now the globe's most persecuted religion.

And in the Middle East the Israel-Palestine question, with its colonial overtones, has been the left's great obsession, whereas the less ideologically convenient plight of Christians under Islamic rule is often left untouched.

To America's strategic class, meanwhile, the Middle East's Christians simply don't have the kind of influence required to matter.

A minority like the Kurds, geographically concentrated and well-armed, can be a player in the great game, a potential United States ally.

But except in Lebanon, the region's Christians are too scattered and impotent to offer much quid for the superpower's quo.

So whether we're pursuing stability by backing the anti-Christian Saudis or pursuing transformation by toppling Saddam Hussein (and unleashing the furies on Iraq's religious minorities), our policy makers have rarely given Christian interests any kind of due.

Then, finally, there is the American right, where one would expect those interests to find a greater hearing.

But the ancient churches of the Middle East (Eastern Orthodox, Chaldean, Maronites, Copt, Assyrian) are theologically and culturally alien to many American Catholics and evangelicals.

And the great cause of many conservative Christians in the United States is the state of Israel, toward which many Arab Christians harbor feelings that range from the complicated to the hostile. Continue reading

Source

• Ross Douthat in The New York Times

Ross Douthat joined The New York Times as an Op-Ed columnist in April 2009.

In 2025, Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox Christians may return to Nicaea, the spot in modern-day Turkey where Christianity was literally defined.

In 325, early followers of Jesus came together to figure out what it means to be a Christian; the goal was to create theological consensus across all of Christendom.

This was way before the faith sub-divided into East vs. West, Catholics vs. Protestants, Southern Baptists vs. Primitive Baptists—these were the early days of the religion, when it still seemed like it could be observed as one, united faith.

The council's effect on Christianity was huge; for one thing, most Bible-school students still learn some version of the Nicene Creed, the profession of Christian faith.

On his way home from a meeting with Pope Francis in the Holy Land, Patriarch Bartholomew I, the primary leader of Eastern Orthodox Christians,gave an interview in which he said that he and Francis are planning a gathering in Nicaea 11 years from now "to celebrate together, after 17 centuries , the first truly ecumenical synod."

That's a pretty big deal; in 1054, theological disagreements led to a schism in Christianity, which is how Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox Christians became separate faith traditions.

This is a call back to a time before the schism, before the fundamental disagreements that kept popes and patriarchs from talking to each other for more than 900 years. Continue reading.

Source: The Atlantic

Image: Icon of the first council of Nicaea, with Emperor Constantine and the first bishops, Royal Doors

A chotki is a "prayer rope," similar to the rosary, used by the Orthodox and Eastern rite Catholics.

When praying, the user normally holds the prayer rope in the left hand, leaving the right hand free to make the Sign of the Cross. When not in use, the prayer rope is traditionally wrapped around the left wrist so that it continues to remind one to pray without ceasing. Continue reading

"Biodiversity is the work of divine wisdom and was not granted to humanity for its unruly control," wrote Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew on the eve of a new Eastern Orthodox liturgical year, which begins on September 1.

Continue reading