You were probably unaware that there was anything of note going on at the Vatican this month. Even if you’re a diehard Catholic interested in the inner workings of Church politics, there’s enough going on in the wider world to keep you distracted.
We’re less than a month away from a major national election here in the United States (early voting is underway at this point), two hurricanes just wreaked havoc across North Carolina and Florida (and the current administration has failed epically at responding appropriately), and the war trumpets of World War III seem to be getting louder and clearer much more rapidly than any of us would like.
Meanwhile, at the Vatican, just under 400 clerics, religious, and lay Catholics are sitting at round tables, seeking to finish a process that began nearly three years ago and which we were promised would come to an end last year. For those of us who are watching the proceedings from home, it’s still just a “meeting on meetings” — a process that Cardinal Christophe Pierre, apostolic nuncio to the U.S. reportedly compared to a lower ring of hell in Dante’s Inferno — and interest in it is slowly petering out.
The synod’s agenda is not entirely clear to those of us who aren’t sitting at round tables in the St. Pope Paul VI Hall, but we do know a couple of things: First, the female diaconate (perhaps the controversial issue the synod was supposed to comment on) is not on the agenda. Back in March, the pope handed that issue to a study group, but he never gave it a deadline for when to turn in a report.
Then, in May, he told 60 Minutes in no uncertain terms that a female diaconate involving the sacrament of Holy Orders was not in the works. So it seems the issue is mostly resolved. One imagines the media will continue to stir up controversy over female ordination for years to come, but at least there’s a definitive statement that one can point to as assurance that major changes to the way women are involved in parish life are not coming to the Catholic Church anytime soon.
What may be on the agenda, whether the Vatican hierarchy likes it or not, is blowback to Fiducia supplicans, the document released by the Dicastery of the Doctrine of Faith (DDF) last December, which allows Catholic clergy to bless homosexual couples (although it does not permit them to bless the union between those couples).
Continue reading at the American Spectator