Father Orobator, a Nigerian Jesuit and voting member of the synod, understands the skepticism that has crept in since last year’s session. But he still has hope for the synodal process.
When Catholics in the global North are “obsessed” with the issue of women’s ordination, “women who in many parts of the church and world are treated as second-class citizens are totally ignored,” Bishop Anthony Randazzo said.
Focus on the fate of Israel, its hostages in Gaza and the people of Gaza and south Lebanon means that little attention is being paid to other continuing crises around the world—Sudan, Haiti, Myanmar among them.
One South African theologian described “a deep sense of disillusionment that the church, on the one hand, is saying we need to be a synodal listening church, and has yet again taken the diaconate for women off the table.”
Conversion is never easy, but participants from all continents must undergo conversion if the synod is to successfully carry out its task, Gerard O’Connell writes.
Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernández, the Vatican’s doctrine chief, announced today that “based on the analysis so far…there is still no room for a positive decision” on ordaining women deacons.
Catholics in the audience may not have been as startled by Senator Vance’s emphatic, sympathetic invocation of the second response of the Kyrie eleison.
October 6, 2024, the Twenty-seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time: Somewhere in the background of today’s passages hides the sacramental analogy that refers to the church as bride and Christ as her groom.
The wide-ranging debate between Mr. Vance and Mr. Walz covered climate climate change, immigration, abortion, the economy and the state of democracy, among other issues.
Pope Francis has decided that this year, we will be discussing not any series of topics—clericalism women’s ordination to the diaconate, or ministry to L.G.B.T.Q. Catholics—but synodality itself.
“Those who arrogantly claim to have the exclusive right to hear the voice of the Lord cannot hear it,” Pope Francis said at the opening Mass of the Synod on Synodality.
The Catholic Church cannot be credible in its mission of proclaiming Christ unless it acknowledges its mistakes and bends down “to heal the wounds we have caused by our sins,” Pope Francis said.
I have admittedly rolled my eyes at the language the Vatican uses around the Synod on Synodality. But it should prompt all Catholics to ask themselves: Do I know what I am really trying to say?