Vatican readies October synod on young people, faith, vocations

VATICAN CITY — The working document for a gathering of the world’s bishops focused on young people, the faith and vocational discernment has been published, and it underscores the direction that Pope Francis wants to take the church. 

The 70-page text, written after an 18-month global consultation and two meetings with young Catholics in Rome, gives the bishops an honest sense of life for people in their teens and early adulthood and their involvement with the church.  

This in itself is a shift. While synods in the past were tightly controlled by the Roman Curia, Francis has thrown the process out to the wider church, introducing consultations and open discussions. The aim is to create space for discernment and debate. But that can’t take place unless the bishops are well informed about the realities for young Catholics on the ground. 

The “instrumentum laboris,” as the document is known, covers a vast array of topics from digital dependency, fake news and the dark web, to unemployment, the part-time economy and migration, and is aimed at pulling together a wide range of concerns from believers across the globe. 

It honestly admits that a large number of young Catholics disagree with church teaching on issues such as contraception, same-sex marriage and abortion, yet at the same time “express the desire to remain part of the church.” Young Catholics, according to the text, want a church that listens to them, is authentic and can relate to their experiences.

Written in a notably inclusive tone — although published only in Italian — it highlights the need to offer “LGBT youth” better pastoral care, in what appears to be the first time a Vatican document has used the expression “LGBT.” And the instrumentum laboris also calls for an honest debate about the role of women in the church. 

The task now falls to the bishops, who will gather in Rome Oct. 3-28, to take this document and come up with some viable pastoral solutions, but they have a working text that they can be confident has correctly taken the pulse of young people. 

Pope Francis has made the synod of bishops a key part of how the church makes big decisions about its future. He wants a “synodal church” that “walks together.” Last month, the International Theological Commission — an important Vatican body that helps establish official Catholic teaching — fleshed out what this means in a document on synodality. 

It stressed that the voices of ordinary believers are an “indispensable” part of church decision-making, and that canon law ought to be updated to make it compulsory for parishes to have councils that consult the laity. 

The key figure in drafting the latest theological commission document is Father Carlos Galli, an Argentinian priest and theologian who is one of the pope’s advisers. He is widely considered one of the theological architects of this papacy, and has written extensively on the “theology of the people.”

While the synod on young people starts this October, a 2019 synod in the Amazon region is being planned, and is likely to debate the possibility of ordaining married men and giving official recognition to women’s ministry. 

For Francis, the synod does not just take place when the bishops meet in Rome but is a constant process, and should become the normal way for the church collectively make decisions. 

That doesn’t mean that Francis doesn’t have a crucial role. In this vision of a pilgrim church journeying together, he is sometimes showing the path forward, other times in the midst of people and also hanging back to ensure no one gets left behind. The crucial thing is to avoid becoming stationary. 

Walking together is also a key phrase for Francis when it comes to his vision for Christian unity, a top priority of his pontificate. In keeping with this, on June 21, the Latin American pontiff became the first pope to make a visit expressly dedicated to the World Council of Churches in Geneva, Switzerland.

Made up of 348-member churches, the pope visited as the organization marked its 70th anniversary. The Catholic Church is not a member of the council for practical and theological reasons, but is an observer and actively involved in the organization. 

While in Switzerland, the pope celebrated the first ever papal Mass in Geneva, the city that is closely connected with the Protestant reformer John Calvin.