Debating the draft document

As I wrote in a previous post, we received the draft of the final document in a very short session of the general assembly of the Synod, so that we would have the rest of the day to read it. Today was the day dedicated to discussion of that draft. And believe me, we took the whole day.

As synod members we are asked to maintain confidentiality regarding the internal proceedings of the Synod, and so this blog post will be necessarily brief. Let me just say that, in general, there was a strong sense of appreciation for the work that had been accomplished, accompanied by a substantial engagement with the text for the sake of improving its contents. I, for example, submitted a couple of amendments suggesting wording changes to parts of the text that seemed to forget the ecumenical dimension of the life of the Church today. I also hope we can avoid certain ambiguous wording that seemed to imply that being "young" necessarily meant being "adolescent". We cannot forget that young adults are, well, adults.

There was one area of substantial debate around ecclesiology. I did my licentiate in theology in this area, and so when the final document is approved and released I will probably write a further blog post on the subject. The debate arose as a bit of a surprise for me, as it wasn't really part of our initial discussions over the past couple of weeks (at least not as I remember), but heck, what's a Synod without a few surprises? Maybe we'll have another Synod about it further down the road. If so, I'm game!