Many Catholics, as they have watched the multi-year process leading up to the upcoming Bishops’ Synod on Synodality, to be held in Rome this coming October (2023) and then concluded in a second session in October 2024, with some concern.
The concern is that the Synod’s methods and goals may, whether intentionally or unintentionally, allow orthodox Church doctrine to be brought into question, increasing confusion in the minds of the faith and in the teaching of the Church.
Now Bishop Athanasius Schneider, auxiliary bishop of Astana in Kazakhstan, has specified one of these concerns: the norms recently published for the upcoming Synod are problematic because they “resemble more the norms of synods of the Anglican and other Protestant communities, where clergy and laity are given equal voting rights” than traditional Catholic synodal norms.
The new norms, Schneider continues, threaten, as our title suggests, to “undermine the hierarchical structure of the Church.”
This is because a vote at the Synod will be given to lay participants, and not just to bishops, who are consecrated to be the shepherds and teachers of the Church.
The full interview in which Schneider sets forth and explains his concerns is below.
His remarks are thoughtful and reasonable, and deserve to be taken into consideration by the organizers of the Synod.
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After originally being planned to end in 2022 as the culmination of a two-year process that began in 2021, the Catholic Bishops’ Synod on Synodality was delayed — in part due to the coming of the Covid virus and its consequences — from October, 2022 (last year) to October 4-29, 2023 (this year, in three and a half months).
According to a communique of the Holy See Press Office a year ago, on October 16, 2022:
“This decision stems from the desire that the theme of a Synodal Church, because of its breadth and importance, might be the subject of prolonged discernment not only by the members of the Synodal Assembly, but by the whole Church. Moreover, this choice is in continuity with the ongoing synodal journey…
“The Synod is not an event but a process in which the whole People of God is called to walk together toward what the Holy Spirit helps it to discern as being the Lord’s will for his Church.
“Therefore, the Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops will also take on a processual dimension, configuring itself as ‘a journey within the journey’ to foster more mature reflection for the greater good of the Church.” (link)
On April 26, seven weeks ago, just five months before the start of the October 2023 Synod on Synodality, the General Secretariat of the Synod announced it had decided to change to the composition of the assembly to include lay men and women as voting members, replacing dozens of bishops.
Bishop Athanasius Schneider, spoke with concern of this decision to American Catholic journalist Diane Montagna in an important interview published last week, on Thursday, June 8, in the UK’s Catholic Herald. It is worth reading.—RM
