After Sunday’s beautiful canonization of four saints, including the parents of St. Thérèse of Lisieux, Monday marked the beginning of the third and final week of work of this month’s Synod. As Pope Francis and some 270 Synod fathers conclude their deliberations in Rome, here are three points to consider.

First, there is no majority in favor of admitting the divorced and civilly remarried to sacramental communion. Other issues have predominated at this Synod.

As the Synod on the family enters into its third and final week, discussions in plenary and small group sessions are turning toward the last part of the Instrumentum Laboris on “The Mission of the Family Today.” Comprised of four distinct chapters, part three is the lengthiest section of the entire document. It ranges across chapters entitled “The Family and Evangelization,” “The Family and Formation,” “The Family and Accompaniment by the Church,” and “The Family, Procreation, and Upbringing.”

Some of the issues scheduled for discussion this week include “Missionary Conversion and a Renewal in Language,” “Pastoral Care for Couples Civilly Married or Living Together,” “Persons who are Separated and Divorced but Remain Faithful to their Marriage Vows,” “Streamlining the Annulment Procedure and the Importance of Faith in Cases of Nullity,” “The Integration of Divorced and Civilly Remarried Persons in the Christian Community,” “Spiritual Participation in Church Communion,” and “Pastoral Attention towards Persons with Homosexual Tendencies.” The titles alone suggest lively discussions in the coming days.

But, up until this point, conversations in the thirteen small groups have not focused on the vexing questions of the admission of divorced and civilly remarried persons to sacramental communion, homosexuality, and cohabitation. Monday morning changed that, however.

At this afternoon’s Synod briefing inside the St. John Paul II Hall at the Holy See Press Office, both the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem and the Archbishop of Brisbane in Australia, indicated their small groups had begun talking about communion for the divorced only this morning. The two men are members of different small groups.

In the first two weeks, other subjects predominated. His Beatitude Patriarch Fouad Twal said Middle Eastern Catholics consider other topics of greater significance, especially as terrorism and civil unrest sweep his part of the world. And, Archbishop Coleridge agreed that the kind of questions enjoying priority status in the Western world don’t always attract the same degree of attention in other parts of the globe. Until now, the Synod fathers have been more focused on how to provide better pastoral care to families in an atmosphere of ecclesial accompaniment.

Nonetheless, regarding the admission of divorced and civilly remarried persons to sacramental communion, Archbishop Coleridge said he could not cite percentages of people in support of the initiative. In saying this, he was stepping away from comments he made earlier in an interview with the National Catholic Reporter.

Even still, he said he could not recall a single intervention explicitly calling for the adoption of the motion. Instead of dwelling on that issue, more interventions have concerned the pastoral practice of mercy, especially in light of the approaching Extraordinary Jubilee Year.

The Archbishop indicated there are no majority numbers in support of admitting divorced and civilly remarried persons to sacramental communion. In fact, he believed that the moderate numbers in favor of that proposition have dwindled since the beginning of the Synod. That could be the result of either the small group sessions or the synodal experience itself as it unfolds cum et sub Petro.

Second, that being the case, this Synod’s success will not be measured by its ability to build consensus for one or more controversial propositions, but by its capacity to promote language at the service of ecclesial accompaniment.  

Brisbane’s man on the ground affirmed that the three-week-long meeting on the “Vocation and Mission of the Family in the Church and the Contemporary World” is a pastoral synod, not a theological workshop. Pastoral questions have had a certain pride of place, he said. As such, it is not concerned with changing magisterial teaching. And, he added there has been no movement on the ground in favor of doing so. This compares positively with Pope Francis’ assertion that it is not the task of this Synod to abandon or otherwise change Church teaching.

As a pastoral event, Archbishop Coleridge hopes one of its primary outcomes will be the adoption of more pastorally appropriate language. He described the Second Vatican Council as a ‘language event,’ remarking that this Synod could follow that suit. The Synod will be successful to the extent that it can communicate traditional doctrine in a new language that is more accessible to the people in the pews, affording greater ecclesial accompaniment. The Archbishop called for healthy pastoral creativity, privileging language that is anchored in the soil of human experience, not abstract theologizing.

(On October 10, 2015, I wrote about some of the problems and challenges entailed in adopting such a move.)

In this connection, he offered two examples of ecclesial language needing refinement for the sake of evangelization: the 'indissolubility' of marriage and the 'intrinsically disordered' nature of homosexual tendencies. He underscored that he does not advocate the abandonment of magisterial teaching on these matters, but that he favors searching for language that expresses the integrity of a teaching while using language that effectively communicates it to contemporary persons. ‘Indissolubility’ is a negative term describing something marriage is not or cannot do (i.e., be dissolved); it springs from intra-ecclesial verbiage, he said. In place of the theological-canonical language of ‘indissolubility,’ some small group reports – like Circulus Anglicus ‘B’ moderated by Cardinal Vincent Nichols from Westminster in England – issued earlier in the month spoke of “life-long covenants of love.”

Presumably, the purpose of adopting language that resonates with human experience is that it better disposes persons to listening and receiving the message of the Gospels. Active listening and receptivity are hallmarks of the synodal experience, according to both Pope Francis and Archbishop Coleridge. And, they need to be more actively promoted through the renewal of the synodal structure.

This leads into the third point worth bearing in mind as this month’s Synod nears its conclusion end.

Third, the synodal structure remains a much discussed issue, especially in light of recent papal remarks. How the Synod of Bishops will be refined in coming years remains a question without a specific answer, at least for the moment, however.

This afternoon’s press conference featured additional discussion about Pope Francis’ recent remarks at a fiftieth anniversary commemoration of the institution of the permanent Synod of Bishops. On Saturday morning, Pope Francis spoke approvingly of the synodality of the Church, calling for ‘sound decentralization’ – something he already discussed in n. 16 of his first Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium. There, he said that “It is not advisable for the Pope to take the place of local Bishops in the discernment of every issue which arises in their territory. In this sense, I am conscious of the need to promote a sound ‘decentralization’” (EG, n. 16).

When asked about these remarks, Archbishop Coleridege refused to describe them as revolutionary; but, he did call them dramatic, especially given their context. Further, he styled the Pope's comments as programmatic, outlining a pastoral approach for further exploration and enactment.

At the general consistories of cardinal electors that took place ahead of the March 2013 conclave that elected Cardinal Bergoglio to the Chair of St. Peter, there were repeated calls for the development of the synodal structure. And, Pope Francis indicated Saturday that it has been his intention since he took office to refine the synodal moment in the Church. This weekend, he made another case for a synodal Church that is committed to the pope, bishops, and people journeying together and listening attentively to the Word of God.

Coming out of this nearly-month-long synodal experience, Archbishop Coleridge indicated that Sunday will not see the conclusion of work. He asserted that discussions will continue long after Sunday’s closing liturgy. This month’s meeting of the Pope and bishops is a beginning, not an end.

What might this mean? The Archbishop provided one concrete example, citing the possibility of a national Synod for Australia. Still others have invited a lengthening of synodal sessions to a period of two to three years, allowing for consultation at the level of the local or particular churches and the episcopal conferences. Perhaps, national synodal meetings could be part of this refinement of the synodal institution. Certainly, issues of human sexuality, marriage, and the family will continue to be discussed at this summer’s 31^st World Youth Day, which is expected to draw bishops from around the world as tens of thousands of young people meet with the Pope for a week of catechesis and discipleship-building.