AN OVERLOOKED, BUT CRITICAL, PART OF THE SYNODAL PROCESS

Bishop Fabio Fabene, Undersecretary of the Synod of Bishops, said that it remains an “open question” if propositions will be part of the Final Report and whether each will require a two thirds majority to pass.

The same machinations attempted by the Synod Office at the 2015 Ordinary Synod on the Family appear to be at play once again.  

Remember, ahead of the Synod on the Family when the idea of shelving propositions was suggested, 13 Cardinals voiced their disapproval, among other concerns, in a letter to Pope Francis ahead of the meeting. 

The Cardinals' initiative enabled the ballot on propositions to stay. The absence of a vote on each proposition was thought to limit debate.

“The absence of propositions and their related discussions and voting seems to discourage open debate and to confine discussion to small groups,” the Cardinals wrote. “Thus, it seems urgent to us that the crafting of propositions to be voted on by the entire synod should be restored.” They also said “voting on a final document comes too late in the process for a full review and serious adjustment of the text.”   

This question regarding propositions is even more critical during this Synod.

If an attempt made to omit the propositions succeeds, it potentially could be even more problematic now that the Final Report may become part of the ordinary Magisterium of the Church, subject to the Pope’s approval, as decreed by Pope Francis in his recent Apostolic Constitution, Episcopalis Communio (Episcopal Communion). 

In the past, final documents did not hold such weight, but Episcopalis Communio changed that last month.

Of concern is the possibility that not having Synod Fathers vote on individual propositions would enable contentious proposals to more easily push through.

As noted in a previous post, Cardinal Lorenzo Baldisseri, Secretary general of the Synod of Bishops, said he had no intention of removing the LGBT acronym from the Instrumentum Laboris, the synod working document, despite the fact that no preparatory documents used it.  

Knowing the number of votes for each proposition has proved a useful tool for revealing the points of unity, and of division, at various synods. 

For example, at the end of the Ordinary Synod on the Family in 2015, 265 synod fathers voted on 94 propositions, all of which obtained a two-thirds majority. 

But one of the most controversial ones, related to admitting some remarried divorcees to Holy Communion, only barely managed to do so. Number 85 scraped by with just one vote but was deemed enough of a mandate for the Pope to include the change in his post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation, Amoris Laetitia). 

Furthermore, the numbers revealed that those controversial propositions would not have passed had the Pope’s personally-chosen Synod Fathers not been present.

The two-thirds rule for propositions was equally instructive during the first Synod on the Family in 2014 as two paragraphs on admitting some remarried divorcees to Holy Communion and a third on welcoming homosexuals failed to obtain a two-thirds majority. 

Nevertheless, Pope Francis controversially broke with custom, which he can do, and authoritatively insisted that all three rejected proposition be kept in the Final Report, thereby enabling them to be carried over into the working document for the Ordinary Synod on the Family the following year.

Voting procedures are a critical, but often overlooked, tool in assessing the import of Synodal pronouncements.

This continued effort to influence the manner in which voting procedures are determined remains my greatest concern that, along with other issues,  a manipulation of the Synod itself may be at stake.