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Theologians warn that open-ended proposals and questionable theological foundations in the new text could allow activists to push forward controversial agendas
If the Vatican’s newly released working document guiding the Synod on Synodality’s closing session in October is any indication, delegates at the monthlong assembly in Rome will spend little, if any, time deliberating over women deacons, LGBTQ inclusion and other hot button issues that dominated last year’s session.
The 32-page document, called the Instrumentum laboris, scarcely mentions those controversial topics, several of which were shifted to the purview of separate study groups — a welcome development for theologians like Larry Chapp.
A frequent Register contributor, Chapp has previously raised concerns that the Synod was being used as a “stalking horse” to change moral teachings, but he described the new text as “balanced, focused, and concrete.”
“I think the document is really quite good. Far better than I had hoped for,” he told the Register.
But not everyone who has reservations about the Synod is ready to relax.
“This is a big, ‘general’ document that opens a lot of doors, for good and for ill,” Chris Ruddy, a theologian at The Catholic University of America, told the Register. “I think the synodal organizers know that the hot button stuff is off the table for October, but they’re laying the groundwork for big transformations/deformations.”
Continued below.
www.ncregister.com
If the Vatican’s newly released working document guiding the Synod on Synodality’s closing session in October is any indication, delegates at the monthlong assembly in Rome will spend little, if any, time deliberating over women deacons, LGBTQ inclusion and other hot button issues that dominated last year’s session.
The 32-page document, called the Instrumentum laboris, scarcely mentions those controversial topics, several of which were shifted to the purview of separate study groups — a welcome development for theologians like Larry Chapp.
A frequent Register contributor, Chapp has previously raised concerns that the Synod was being used as a “stalking horse” to change moral teachings, but he described the new text as “balanced, focused, and concrete.”
“I think the document is really quite good. Far better than I had hoped for,” he told the Register.
But not everyone who has reservations about the Synod is ready to relax.
“This is a big, ‘general’ document that opens a lot of doors, for good and for ill,” Chris Ruddy, a theologian at The Catholic University of America, told the Register. “I think the synodal organizers know that the hot button stuff is off the table for October, but they’re laying the groundwork for big transformations/deformations.”
Continued below.
Synod on Synodality: Guiding Document Skirts Hot-Button Topics, But Does It ‘Open The Door’ To Big Changes?
Theologians warn that open-ended proposals and questionable theological foundations in the new text could allow activists to push forward controversial agendas
