Others say the field of discussion has been narrowed to the point of meaninglessness.
“Given that the Synod is about developing processes of communication, discernment, and decision-making within the church, it would be surprising for anything substantive to arise from it — on LGBTQ+ or other issues,” said Cristina Traina, a progressive activist and assistant professor of religion at Fordham University.
“It seems LGBTQ+ questions may have been shunted off to a committee dealing with controversial issues,” she added. “The question is, will there be a serious attempt to deal with them, or is this a case of an issue being sent to committee to die, rather like the question of female deacons?”
Conservatives, meanwhile, worry about the exact opposite.
In a pamphlet published just before last year’s sessions, theologians Julio Loredo de Izcue and José Antonio Ureta cast the Synod on Synodality as an attempt by the Pope to smuggle politically correct ideas into church doctrine.
The language used by the event’s organizers, they said, was replete with “ancient errors and heresies,” in an “attempt to convince us that an embrace of heresy and immorality is not sinful but rather a response to the voice of the Holy Spirit.”
