The past week saw the opening of the XVI General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops. This month marks the end of a process that began in 2021. Unlike last year, however, the feeling is that at the end of this meeting there will be no upheavals in the Church already shaken by a year of controversy, especially almost a year after the publication of the Declaration “Trust supplicans” which took away from the discussion of the synod fathers a very hot topic such as that of blessing of gay couples.
The furrow of Tradition
On the eve of the opening of the Synod, Francis seemed intent on clearing the field of potential accelerations of the most progressive front of the Church. There was a preview last week during the apostolic trip to Belgium, when the Pope told the local clergy that the aim of the Synod is not to arrive at “some fashionable reform”. In the speech given at the opening, Francis called for always respect “the deposit of faith and living Tradition” and on the presence of non-bishops he pointed out that “does not undermine the ‘episcopal’ dimension of the Assembly” And “even less does it pose any limits or exception to the proper authority of the individual bishop and of the Episcopal College”. Words that suggest the desire to contain certain pressures that the Church has witnessed, for example, in the synod path in Germany.
The bishop’s rebuke
That the more liberal agenda carried out especially by the German Church is indigestible it also emerged to many in these first moments of the Synod. Indicative in this sense was the intervention of the Australian bishop of Broken Bay, current president of the Federation of Catholic Bishops Conferences of Oceaniawho at the press conference said what many representatives of the so-called peripheral Churches think: topics such as the ordination of women are big media bubbles because they interest few within the Church. For Randazzo the woman priest “It’s a fixation of a small minority that has a powerful Western voice.” The prelate also invited us to look at the real situation discriminationwhen for example “women are marginalized, in places of violence, when they have limited professional opportunities or are considered second-class citizens” saying that “this is the scandal against the Gospel“. For Randazzo “we need to talk about it, instead of being fixated on this issue”, a statement that shows intolerance for the space dedicated in reconstructions on the Synod to the most divisive themes. A minority argument that is carried forward by a part of a Church now destined, as the Australian prelate observed, to be itself a minority: the European one.
Minority Europe
Outside Europe, in fact, there are healthy ecclesial realities that do not consider it essential to do anything female priesthoodrainbow blessings, changes to the Catechism are the priorities of one’s evangelizing action. The bishops of Africa and much of Asia have already made this clear, just as the American Bishops’ Conference is notoriously more comfortable in defending so-called non-negotiable principles. The still living influence of the long season of John Paul II weighs heavily on this. This point of view is also prevalent in Churches of Eastern Europe. Not only Hungary, but also the Polish Church – with a heritage of recent martyrs such as Blessed Jerzy Popiełuszko, whose 40th anniversary of martyrdom at the hands of the communist regime is remembered in a recent biography published by Ares and written by six hands by Grzegorz Górny, Włodzimierz Rędzioch and Janusz Rosikoń – and the other Churches mindful of the experience of the Iron Curtain are not aligned with the agenda carried out by many Northern European brothers. Who believes that the female priesthood is one vanguard battle has already been warned in the first week of the Synod, with the impatient declaration of an Australian bishop: the priorities are different.
It would not be surprising if the Pope, who in a Northern European country with a very progressive episcopate like the Belgian one had said he did not want an assembly intent on pursuing fashionable reforms, thought the same way.