The Furrow – Gerry O’Hanlon SJ: After Kilkenny and Rome – A Synodal Update

This article is from the current edition of The Furrow.

Last October, November and December (2025) there were several significant occurrences along the Irish and Universal synodal pathways. In what follows I will note these, and indicate progress made and outstanding questions and issues that arise. I do so while also noting that we in Ireland are now preparing for a full national synodal Assembly this coming October (2026), and while the universal church is in preparatory mode for a global ecclesial Assembly in 2028.

Kilkenny:

The Irish pre-synodal National Assembly met in Kilkenny on Oct 18^th, 2025. The over 230 participants had been provided well in advance with a preparatory document, Baptised and Sent.  This document had whittled down the 17 themes previously identified as part of the consultation begun in 2022 to 7 priorities for action by the Catholic Church in Ireland at this time. These were, in alphabetical order – belonging (especially of the marginalised); co-responsibility and lay ministry; family; formation and catechetics; healing (in particular of the wounds of abuse); women; youth. And all these priorities were viewed through the lens of the primacy of Baptism as the unifying paradigm.

These priorities were received by the Kilkenny gathering and there were many expressions of ‘it is good for us to be here’. Nonetheless, there was also an undeniable sense of anti-climax and even confusion, as if, despite the meticulous preparation and good will, something had not quite gone right. I tried afterwards (The Irish Catholic, Oct 23) to understand this in terms of Ignatian consolation and desolation, and, in particular, what we can learn from the experience of desolation. Julieann Moran, general secretary of the Synodal Pathway in Ireland, wrote about it (The Irish Catholic, Oct 30) in terms of quiet gestation, practice contractions in view of labour pains and imminent birth, a necessary part of the new creation which was happening in the Irish Church.

Rome:

The Jubilee meeting of synodal teams in Rome, from all over the world, later in October was an occasion of unequivocal consolation. Brendan Hoban, for one, gave a glowing account of it at the AGM of the Association of Catholic Priest meeting in Athlone on Nov 5^th, 2025 (available on ACP website). The inputs at various workshops was excellent, the sharing in groups enriching, and the dialogical meeting with Pope Leo enlightening. At the latter the representative of the European region, an Austrian female theologian, Klara-Antonia Csiszar, raised the issue of women in the Church, and, in particular the issue of female diaconate. The Pope replied in terms of cultural resistance and respect for the pace of change in diverse regions of the world. I will return to this.

And then, also from Rome, the Interim Reports of the various Study Groups established by Pope Francis in March 2024 were published. Among the topics covered were the digital mission, the role of women, polygamy, liturgy, the ministry of bishops, the cry of the poor and the earth, controversial doctrinal, pastoral and ethical issues, canon law changes to integrate synodality, and the selection of bishops. The original deadline for the delivery of the final reports has been extended to 31 December 2025 by Pope Leo[1], who had added two new groups to the original list of Pope Francis (one on liturgy in a synodal perspective and the other on the statutes of Episcopal Conferences, Assemblies and Councils). Interestingly for our immediate concerns here in Ireland, it was confirmed by Group 5 on the participation of women in the ministerial life of the Church that the specific issue of diaconate ordination had been handed over for consideration to the Second Study Commission on the Female Diaconate reactivated by Pope Francis, which published its ‘Petrochhi Report’ in December 2025.[2] And, with respect to controversial issues, Group 9 stressed the importance of operating within a horizon of the ‘principle of pastorality’ and, in certain instances, of speaking about ‘emerging’ rather than ‘controversial’ issues. Again, I will return to this.

Underlying issues

From this brief survey it is evident that the synodal pathway initiated by Pope Francis is being pursued with commitment and determination by Pope Leo and, indeed, by the Irish Bishops. This, then, is no passing fad, and is becoming increasingly mainstreamed within ecclesial discourse and, more slowly, practice. What can we learn from these recent milestones in Kilkenny and Rome?

1. The role of ‘conversation in the Spirit’

At one level the negative issues that arose in Kilkenny are easily fixed. There, in hindsight, it has become apparent that a weighty minority of participants were not familiar with the ‘conversation in the Spirit’ process, so that genuine listening to the Spirit gave way to a more partisan articulation of deeply felt convictions. To remedy this it will be helpful to have skilled facilitators at each table, and to ensure that all participants have prior experience of the process. It may also help to reduce the number of priorities, or at least to ensure, by means of the preparatory working groups, that each priority is put before the Assembly in such a way that it is expressed in a concrete proposal for action which can be voted on. All this is eminently do-able.

At a deeper level we might also take time to reflect on the ‘conversation in the Spirit’ method in terms of its value and limitations. We are all learning about this and it is good to keep an open mind. Interestingly the Interim Report of Group 9 (on controversial issues) has this to say: ‘First and foremost, the conversation in the Spirit must be highlighted: however, this is neither to be absolutized nor employed mechanically’ (my emphasis). This qualifier recalls some remarks in the 2023 Synthesis Report (A Synodal Church in Mission): ‘Conversation in the Spirit is a tool that, even with its limitations, enables authentic listening in order to discern what the Spirit is saying to the Churches…it is crucial to promote anthropological and spiritual visions capable of integrating and not merely juxtaposing the intellectual and emotional dimensions of faith experience, overcoming any and all reductionism and dualism between reason and feeling…it is important to clarify how conversation in the Spirit can integrate the contributions of theological thought and the humanities and social sciences, alongside other models of ecclesial discernment…indeed it is appropriate to value the plurality of forms and styles, methods and criteria that the Holy Spirit has suggested over the centuries and that are part of the Church’s spiritual heritage’ (2, d, g, h and i-my emphasis).

This plurality of styles includes, I suggest, the ordinary give and take of robust discussion and debate, whether in the public forum or in the relative private space of kitchen tables and even pubs and cafes. This, after all, is how we all also learn: listening and contributing to the sometimes heated and even rowdy exchanges between fellow human beings, weighing it all up, coming to our own ‘take’. The intellectual pedigree is clear, stretching at least from the Socratic Dialogues recorded by Plato, through the ‘merry disputations’ of Aquinas and his medieval contemporaries, through Hegel to the naming of dialectics by Lonergan as one of his 8 functional specialities in theology.[3] All this is based on the ordinary human reality of learning through talking and listening.

Of course there are risks and excesses inherent to all this. Academic discourse can sometimes be characterized by a competitive animus that is far removed from the ‘pure desire to know’, while Joyce and Myles na gCopaleen have left us memorable portraits of the bar stool bore, interested only in airing his own opinions. The urge to defeat the other, to shout ‘opponents’ down, all this has not gone away and, indeed, is arguably all the more frequent and dominant in today’s public sphere, so heavily influenced by social media and the loud voices of ‘might is right’ autocrats. Nonetheless we ought not to completely discard a time-honoured way of attaining knowledge (and of discerning the whispers of the Holy Spirit), but should look instead to rehabilitate discursive discourse in a constructive say.

So, for example, in a piece in the Irish Times (Nov 17, 2025), journalist Joe Humphreys refers to the four-step method of debate championed by cognitive scientist Daniel Dennett: 1. Attempt to re-express the other person’s position so clearly and fairly that they say: ‘Thanks, I wish I’d thought of putting it that way’. 2. List any points of agreement. 3. Mention anything you’ve learned from the other person. 4. Then, and only then, offer a rebuttal or criticism. This is not a million miles away from the presupposition proposed by St Ignatius of Loyola in Annotation 22 of his Spiritual Exercises, which is the background to Pope Francis and his injunctions about open speech and patient and generous listening in the synodal process: ‘So that the director and the person making the Exercises may collaborate better and with greater profit, it must be presupposed that any good Christian has to be more ready to justify rather than to condemn a neighbour’s statement. If no justification can be found, one should ask the neighbour in what sense it has to be taken, and if that sense if wrong he or she should be corrected lovingly. Should this not be sufficient, one should seek all suitable means to justify it by understanding it in a good sense’.

I think conversation in the Spirit is best understood as a crucial moment in the overall process of discernment, which also includes competent research and analysis, informed discussion and debate, the use of theological and other relevant specialties. This was what happened at Vatican II, when, as O’Malley tells us, there was also lobbying, partisanship, gossip and all kinds of all too human behaviour, as well as theological workshops and the like, all knitted together by God’s Holy Spirit.[4] On the practical level it may be asking too much to pack all this into a day or two next October. However we might imagine one session then with inputs putting pros and cons of particular issues, followed by free exchange. And certainly we can envisage some such sessions in the lead-up to next October (as happened, for example, in Limerick in the lead-up to their own Synod back in 2016).

It is within this broader context that the particular value of the conversation in the spirit process may be appreciated. It corrects our desire to be always right ourselves, and it prioritizes listening to what God is saying to us. Left to itself however it may breed some frustration in being experienced as too precious, and may also harbour an innate bias towards the status quo, unconsciously avoiding conflict in a way that Pope Francis, for one, did not approve.

• The role of women

One can envisage a proposal coming before the full synodal Assembly next October recommending that the Irish Catholic Church avail of all opportunities under current law to enhance the visibility and decision-making role of women in the church, including at ministerial level. This is in line with the conclusions of the Final Report of the Synod on Synodality (par 60), and of the Petrocchi Report. It is consonant with our own National Synthesis Report in 2022. It is already happening in some parts of Ireland, with the 2025 commissioning of lay pastoral leaders in Kerry as but one example among many others.

As to the ordination issue, the Petrocchi Report has made a clear recommendation that women not be ordained as deacon. However, it also made it clear that this judgement was as a help towards discernment, and was by no means a definitive recommendation, much less, decision. This needed to await desired further study which would focus on the theological issue, and not primarily on the historical one (which had been the approach of the Commission). They also made it clear that for them, despite attempts to distinguish diaconate as ministry and diaconate as sacramental participation in Holy Order, in the real order discussion of the diaconate inevitably had repercussions for what they termed the Church’s ‘definitive’ doctrine on female ordination.

Revealingly, in the closest they came to a theological explanation of why women could not be ordained, and seemingly in response to the synodal discussions, they debated and voted on the thesis that the masculinity of Jesus Christ was crucial in the ‘nuptial’ meaning of salvation and the ‘spousal’ sense of Orders. However, they were split 50-50 on this vote, leading Petrocchi to conclude that there was an intense theoretical and existential dialectic between two different theological orientations underlying the issue. He went on to conclude that this impasse required further study, to be undertaken in a transparent mode. This latter is significant: analysis of the time-lines involved has revealed that the Commission’s work was kept secret at times when a more open approach would have benefitted synodal participants as well as the general body of the Catholic faithful. This has led to leading to a reduction of trust in the entire synodal process.[5] Trust needs to be restored by a renewed commitment to the kind of transparency which, to their credit, has been characteristic of synodal offices in Rome and elsewhere around the world, including in Ireland.

This deep difference, while helpfully revealing, is not surprising. It is due, inter alia, to the attempt to reduce a richly symbolic motif in the Christian tradition (Christ as Bridegroom, the Church as Bride, in the nuptial meaning of salvation) to one that is literal (as is often done in the case of the associated Petrine/Marian trope). But figurative speech (simile, metaphor, analogy) cannot easily be so reduced. In this case the masculinity of Christ (the price for safeguarding the ban on women’s ordination) comes at the expense of the humanity of Christ (which is the key Patristic reason given for how we are all, men and women, saved, and according to which women as well as men can represent Christ –as happens, for example, in every Christian sacramental marriage that takes place). This literal translation begs all kinds of awkward questions: are hetero-sexual men in the Catholic Church now to envisage themselves as Brides of Christ? Are gay men, not to mention gay priests, somehow to imagine themselves as wedded to the male Christ? What of lesbian women? And so on…the absurdity multiplies and this is a house of cards about to collapse, a house not built on solid foundations (Mt 7: 24-27).

A more hopeful interpretation of what is happening, then, may be in accord with Irish Spiritan John O’Brien’s notion of ‘incipient development’, culled from N. American theologian John Thiel. This occurs when, out of a period of ‘dramatic development’ (when the ‘sense of faith of the faithful’ finds itself in conflict with settled magisterial teaching), there gradually arises a new orthodoxy which the whole church can accept in peace.[6] Within this context we may be better able to listen to the refreshingly authentic voice of someone like the French-Irish woman Soline Humbert who, in her recent memoir outlines an account of her own call to priesthood first discerned when she was 17.[7] Her account captures well the spirit of par 60 of the Final Document of the Synod: ‘what comes from the Holy Spirit cannot be stopped’.

It is good to remember that in Acts and Paul it was through experience (of the disciples in Antioch, of the dreams of Peter and Cornelius), and indeed through conflict (between Peter and Paul), rather than through theology alone, that the Council of Jerusalem came to its dramatic conclusion about Gentiles. We may be in a similar phase now. According to this more hopeful hermeneutic we as Body of Christ may well be in the throes of birth pangs which, in the fullness of time, will issue in new life.

In any case, even the Petrocchi commission advises us to continue the discernment about ordination (and in a transparent mode), as well as opening up all other avenues to female leadership.

Therefore, a request coming from the Irish Synodal Assembly next October to revisit the issue of ordination, as well as to avail of existing opportunities to advance female leadership on every parish and diocese in Ireland, is entirely in line with this advice and even more necessary now due to the widespread disappointment occasioned by the Report, including a blow to the trust engendered by the transparency of the synodal process.

Pope Leo is of course right in naming cultural resistance as a major factor in this protracted process, as well as respect for the different pace of change in various parts of the world. But we need, as Church, to take responsibility for our own role in this culture: why are we laggards in the matter of female equality, as we once were in climate change? Why do we time and again reinforce a culture of inequality (remember the almost all-male liturgical celebrations of the death of Pope Francis and the inauguration of Pope Leo, for example). The Irish Catholic Church has an opportunity to give leadership here.

• Controversial Issues:

There has been a malaise at the heart of Catholic teaching on sexuality and gender since at least the promulgation of Humanae Vitae in 1968. So while Study Group 9 may with a certain justification prefer to speak of ‘emerging issues’ (it cites homosexuality, conflicts and non-violent practice of the Gospel, and violence against women in situations of armed conflict), nonetheless there is no denying that language like ‘controversial’ and even ‘neuralgic’ rightly apply to decades of malaise.

Put simply, since Humanae Vitae (‘intrinsically evil’) there has been focus in Catholic magisterial teaching on the physical ‘act in itself’, to the detriment of an understanding which takes account of personal and contextual factors. This has meant that the Magisterium – supported by a distinguished group of theologians like Anscombe, Finnis, and Grisez- has been opposed by the ‘sense of faith of the faithful’ – supported by an equally distinguished group of academics like Fuchs, Schuller, Haering, McCormick, McDonagh and McNamara. The latest iteration of this debate among theologians, largely avoided in recent times perhaps due to topic fatigue, has taken place in the pages of the Irish Theological Quarterly, between, on the one side, Michael Lawler and Todd Salzman, and, on the other, Thomas Finegan.[8]

It would be a pity if, under the rubric of ‘the principle of pastorality’, Group 9 were to avoid the opportunity of addressing this Gordian doctrinal knot which has bedevilled the Church for so many decades and diminished its credibility ad intra and ad extra.

Conclusion:

It would be wonderful if after next October’s meeting the Catholic Church in Ireland could announce that its synodal pathway was alive and well, and could instance as evidence, for example, firm and concrete commitments to the practice of co-responsibility at parish, diocesan and national levels, as well as a strong statement on the role of women. This would be done within the understanding of Baptism as the unifying paradigm, and with healing of the abused and their families as a constant practice.

If we could do that, we would be well on the way to addressing with greater credibility the arguably more important issues like secularisation, poverty and housing, immigration, war and peace, climate change and bio-diversity. We would be well on the way to presenting the Church as an attractive place of encounter with Jesus Christ and with a mission of hope for our world.

It remains the case that the elephant in the room is often the resistance and reluctance of priests to get involved. Priests are frequently the gate-keepers in terms the involvement of others – their role is crucial. Pope Leo’s words on Oct. 28, 2025 are apt here, when he asks us ‘…to reflect upon what synodality is about, and to invite the priests, particularly even more so than the bishops, I think, to somehow open their hearts and take part in these processes’, asking us at the same time to be patient with one another, noting that we travel at different speeds, and that we should avoid the risk of ‘a rift in the ecclesial experience’. Now is the time to act.

Gerry O’Hanlon, S.J.

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[1] At time of writing (January 2, 2026) these final reports had not yet been published.

[2]  https://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/it/bollettino/pubblico/2025/12/04/0950/01725.htmlt : named after the Cardinal who chaired the Commission. For the much longer history of Vatican studies on the female diaconate, see Phyllis Zagano, Survey of Vatican Studies on the Diaconate of Women, Theological Studies, 2024, vol 85 (3), 490-516

[3] Bernard J.F.Lonergan, Method in Theology, (London, 1972)

[4] John W. O’Malley, What Happened at Vatican II (Harvard University Press, 2008). See also Ladislas Orsy, The Furrow, Dec 2012: ‘…the conciliar discourses, debates and battles were part and parcel in a process of “development of doctrine”’, and his positive remarks about a ‘culture of merry debate and cheerful disputation’ in Doctrine and Life, October, 2012

[5] See the forensic analysis by Luca Badini Confalonieri:  https://www.wijngaardsinstitute.com/petrocchi_commission_women_deacons/

[6] John O’Brien, Transformative Renewal in the Catholic Church, (Berlin: LIT, 2025, ch 9)

[7] Soline Humbert, A Divine Calling, (Dublin: Liffey Press, 2025).

[8] ITQ, vol 90, n4, 2025, pp 503-528, with references there to previous contributions in ITQ to this debate.