Will LGBTQ+ Issues Even Make the Synod’s Agenda in October?

As the Synod on Synodality’s second and final General Assembly begins next week, it is an open question whether LGBTQ+ issues will be part of the agenda. Today’s post examines why that is and one commentator’s thoughts on how they might come up anyway.

In recent months, leaders of the Synod have downplayed or even rejected outright suggestions that next month’s General Assembly would consider topics like gender and sexuality, women’s ordination, or liturgy.

The Instrumentum Laboris, or working document for the meeting, omitted mention of LGBTQ+ inclusion altogether. And Cardinals Mario Grech and Jean-Claude Hollerich, respectively the Synod’s secretary general and relator general, keep emphasizing the assembly is about process issues, not substance ones.

Synod leaders point to the ten working groups that were established by Pope Francis in March as the means through which specific questions raised during the multi-year synodal process could be address. LGBTQ+ issues were not named directly, but might fall under working groups for “controversial doctrinal, pastoral, and ethical issues” and matters of “specific ministerial forms.” (For a deeper analysis on this dynamic from New Ways Ministry’s Senior Fellow, Brian Flanagan, click here.)

Despite Synod leaders’ desire not to wade back into last year’s disputes over gender and sexuality, which were prominent and at times heated, both Catholic commentators and people in the pews have questioned whether the Synod on Synodality can truly be successful if it ignores topics the faithful so clearly desire be addressed.

Fr. Thomas Reese, SJ, a seasoned Vatican observer, argued in a recent column that the General Assembly “needs to set its own agenda, even if that means rejecting the pope’s agenda.” While Reese affirms that Francis’ desire to embrace synodality at every level of the church is good, it is not sufficient, writing:

“My fear is that simply focusing on synodality will reduce the synod to a meeting on meetings. Talking only about synodality can lead to a level of theological abstraction that goes nowhere. The most effective way to learn synodality is to do it on concrete issues facing the church. Rather than discussing musicology, we need to be an orchestra playing a symphony with actual instruments.”

Reese cites Synod delegate Mercy Sr. Elizabeth Davis as representative of many participants’ feelings about removing questions of gender and sexuality from the agenda:

“Davis also notes that the [working] document insists that all final decisions will be made by the hierarchy. It ‘keeps reminding us that despite our baptism, we do not have equality in our church because God created me as a woman.’

“She is also distressed at ‘the failure to be much more overt about the inclusion of members of the LGBTQ+ communities.'”

According to Reese, there is precedent for upending the Synod assembly’s agenda even at this late stage—and that is none other than Vatican II. Reese concludes:

“It’s unclear whether other delegates will be upset enough to demand a revision of the agenda. The fathers of the Second Vatican Council threw out the documents drawn up by the Vatican Curia and set their own agenda. Could history repeat itself?”

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—Robert Shine (he/him), New Ways Ministry, September 26, 2024