The “Synod on Synodality” is set to begin on Wednesday after a weekend of preparations, including a consistory where Pope Francis created 21 new cardinals and an ecumenical prayers service where he said that silence “is essential to the life of the believer”.
“In a world full of noise, we care no longer accustomed to silence,” said Francis. “Indeed sometimes we struggle with it because it forces us to face God and ourselves.”
He was joined at the Taizé-run service by the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew and the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, among other Orthodox and Protestant Church leaders.
These also included the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem Theophilus III, who attended the consistory earlier in the day “as a show of solidarity” with the Latin Patriarch Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the first patriarch to be made a cardinal while in post.
Others elevated at the consistory included Cardinal Robert Prevost, the prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops, and Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernández, prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith.
On Monday, while the roughly 450 synod delegates attended a retreat ahead of the start of proceedings, five cardinals who are not taking part – Walter Brandmüller, Raymond Burke, Sandoval Íñiguez, Robert Sarah and Joseph Zen – published five dubia submitted to the Pope about the synod.
They said they had originally submitted them in August “to elicit a clear response based on the perennial doctrine and discipline of the Church” after Francis had replied to an earlier set of dubia in July but not to their satisfaction.
The dubia ask whether the Church can teach “doctrines contrary to those she has previously taught in matters of faith and morals”, what kind of authority of the synod will exercise, and whether a penitent must repent to receive absolution.
They also specifically address the possibility of blessings for same-sex unions and of the ordination of women.
On Monday, Cardinal Fernández published the Pope’s July response to the original dubia. Regarding doctrine, Francis wrote that “while it is true that divine Revelation is immutable and always binding, the Church must be humble and recognise that she never exhausts its unfathomable riches”.
He said that synodality “as a style and dynamism, is an essential dimension of the life of the Church” but that it would be wrong “to sacralise or impose a particular synodal methodology”. He noted that in their dubia the cardinals “manifest your need to give your opinion freely and to collaborate, and thus you are claiming some form of ‘synodality’ in the exercise of my ministry”.
The Pope confirmed the necessity of repentance, implying the intention not to sin again, for sacramental absolution, but added that “there is no mathematics here” and that “the mere fact of approaching confession is a symbolic expression of repentance”.
He said that same-sex blessing could not “give the impression that something that is not marriage is recognised as marriage”, but “pastoral prudence must adequately discern whether there are forms of blessing” which could be appropriate to certain situations.
Regarding women’s ordination, he said that John Paul II’s “definitive” teaching on the male priesthood did not entail male superiority and so “it will be difficult to accept that the priesthood is reserved only to men and we will not be able to recognise the rights of women” if the Church does not understand the nature of this teaching.
He said it could not be publicly contradicted but could be a subject of study, like the validity of Anglican orders.
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