Pope Francis clearly intends the international Synod of Bishops on the Family, which has reached its final stage, to be both the end of something and the start of something. The end is of the process he initiated soon after his election, of examining how the Church can preach the Gospel to modern families and the members thereof, and asking what stands in the way. The something new, which he has signalled with increasing emphasis as the synod progressed, is to turn the “synodical model” into the normal way the Catholic Church regularly and routinely makes up its mind on issues of theory and practice. And this model, established for the first time in the current case, involves not just consulting a selection of bishops and then deciding how much of their advice to accept, as wa