Talk:Synod of Bishops in the Catholic Church

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Consistency of title

Is it "Synod of Bishops" or "Synod of the Bishops"? Both forms are used in the article. Is there an inconsistency in English translations? Elizium23 (talk) 17:28, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

"Synod of Bishops" is what is used in English on the Holy See website. The Romance languages all use the article. Latin, of course, has no article. I find curious the German term, Bischofssynode, which seems to mean literally "Bishop's (singular) Synod" (the plural of Bischof is Bischöfe), but no doubt that is the idiom of the language, which I don't have time or interest enough to check. Esoglou (talk) 17:42, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

Citations

I've noticed several anomalies in the citations in this article.

1) Documents by the Popes are attributed to their given name (e.g. Montini, Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria), not to their name as Pope (e.g. Paul VI). The papal name appears on all papal documents as published. Furthermore, the VIAF shows that most national libraries use some form of Paul VI as authoritative.

2) Documents published by the Vatican have the place of publication as Rome, IT. The Vatican is a separate country and the place of publication should be either Rome (no country) or Vatican City.

3) The publisher of Vatican documents should normally be given as the Libreria Editrice Vaticana, not The Vatican.

Before diving into this, I'd like some comments. --SteveMcCluskey (talk) 23:38, 8 November 2015 (UTC)

I made the changes suggested above.--SteveMcCluskey (talk) 21:34, 10 November 2015 (UTC)

Requested move 29 November 2018

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: no consensus to move the page to any particular title at this time, per the discussion below. Dekimasuよ! 06:19, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

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Synod of Bishops in the Catholic Church → Synod of bishops in the Catholic Church – Noun. Chicbyaccident (talk) 14:41, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

• Oppose - " Synod of Bishops is an advisory body for the Pope". It's the title of an advisory body. 'In the Catholic Church' is a dab phrase. Oculi (talk) 17:07, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

• Wouldn't Synod of Bishops (Catholic Church) be better? After all, Catholic Church is not part of the proper name. Marcocapelle (talk) 18:00, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

• @Chicbyaccident and Oculi: What is your opinion about Synod of Bishops (Catholic Church)? Marcocapelle (talk) 09:01, 1 December 2018 (UTC)

If so, I would say the preexisting article name is more suitable? Chicbyaccident (talk) 23:37, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

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The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

"The Ministerial Priesthood", II. Synod of Bishops in 1971

Can we add the Document "The Ministerial Priesthood" to the II. Synod of Bishops in 1971? Has anyone this document in an english translation? I can only find the document in latin (and german): De Sacerdotio Ministeriali - "Ultimis temporibus", Acta Apostolicae Sedis 63 (1971), p. 898–922. TuxJoe (talk) 10:07, 15 April 2019 (UTC)

Disambiguate

Can someone please suggest a less ambiguous title for this article? There are other synods of bishops in the Catholic Church. Bealtainemí (talk) 08:58, 13 September 2020 (UTC)

Bealtainemí, why can't this article cover them all? Elizium23 (talk) 11:04, 13 September 2020 (UTC)

Unfortunately, Elizium23, apart from the mere mention I have inserted of other, merely possible, uses of the phrase, the article covers only one unique synod of bishops in the Catholic Church. I don't feel up to trying to revise the article in such a way that the reader will actually see that, apart from a mere footnote about other possible Catholic meanings, it isn't true that there is in the Catholic Church only one Synod of Bishops that is worth talking about. I hope you feel up to doing it. It strikes me now that you might well describe the episcopal conference as a "synod of bishops in the Catholic Church": it too is a permanent body that meets only occasionally, like the Vaticsn II (or whatever you want to call it) Synod of Bishops that the article is at present about, and like the synods of bishops of the Eastern Catholic Churches. There should perhaps be no need to speak of "synod" (of bishops) in the historical sense of one-off events such as the "Synod of Nicea" (the "council", as it is usually called in English, although not quite always) or the yearly synods of the bishops of each province of the Roman Empire that the Council of Nicea ordered to be held. Bealtainemí (talk) 14:13, 13 September 2020 (UTC)

For a quick reaction from a medievalist, the citations in the recent edit seem to focus on the Eastern Catholic Churches, citing the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches. A more balanced discussion would also treat the historical role of regional Synods (often called Councils) in the West. In fact, one of the terms regularly used for Ecumenical Councils is Synod, so in a sense Vatican II, Vatican I, Trent, … and Nicaea could all be called Synods of Bishops. The modern Synod, established by Pope Paul VI in 1965, is only one use of the phrase. Since there is a distinction here, I'm not certain whether it would be useful to confuse the two entities by putting them in a single article or whether it would be better to have a separate article on Regional councils and synods in the Catholic Church. --SteveMcCluskey (talk) 15:48, 14 September 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for intervening. There is an important difference between these events (councils and synods) and the standing bodies that exist even when not actually convoked (this article's Synod of Bishops and those of the catholic patriarchal and major archiepiscopal churches). Bealtainemí (talk) 19:10, 14 September 2020 (UTC)

I see your distinction, between permanent standing bodies, with their own institutional continuity and bodies established ad hoc, like councils. The criterion of permanence also applies to the various national and regional bishops conferences, which are already covered in their own article. It is worth noting that that article has a section devoted to other episcopal bodies, including the Eastern synods. I don't think it would be wise to duplicate that material here, although it may be useful to expand that article to discuss the nature and legal basis of the synods and how they relate to / differ from Episcopal conferences. We might also want to provide an About template at the head of this article to direct concerns with the synods of patriarchal churches and major archiepiscopal churches in the Eastern Church to the article on Episcopal conferences. A suggested draft follows:

This article is about The Synod of Bishops established by Pope Paul VI in 1965. For a general discussion of synods in the Catholic Church, see Synod § Catholic. For synods of patriarchal churches and major archiepiscopal churches in Eastern Catholicism, see Episcopal_conference § Other_episcopal_bodies.

If we take this approach and refer exclusively here to The Synod of Bishops established by Pope Paul VI and currently described in Chapter II of the Code of Canon Law, a way to further resolve the ambiguity would be to use a title reflecting the usage of Chapter II, such as: The Synod of Bishops (Catholic Church). The definite article "The" makes it clear the article deals with a specific synod, while removing the phrase "in the Catholic Church" would clarify that it is not dealing with all synods in the Catholic Church or with the concept of synodality. If this seems OK, we can formalize it with a requested move. Comments welcome. --SteveMcCluskey (talk) 21:40, 14 September 2020 (UTC)

@Bealtainemí: Thanks for adding the link to Holy Synod#Catholic Church to the article; I wasn't aware of that article so I added it to the about template I'd drafted above which I just put at the head of the article. I didn't remove your addition, although some might consider it's redundant now. --SteveMcCluskey (talk) 16:40, 26 September 2020 (UTC)

Neither was I aware of that other article until yesterday. But more work is needed. The Catholic synod of bishops of a patriarchal or major archiepiscopal church is not the same concept as the Holy Synod of other churches, which corresponds instead to the Catholic concept of the standing or permanent synod. In addition, the contrast between the advisory papal synod of bishops and the other Catholic synods of bishops cannot be dealt with in the Holy Synod article, where it would be altogether out of place: it must be considered here, unless a new article is provided. It cannot be shunted off to Holy Synod § Catholic Church. Bealtainemí (talk) 10:39, 27 September 2020 (UTC)

(←) If a comparative discussion of the synods of the Eastern Churches is to be presented in this article, it certainly does not belong in the lead. I'd suggest moving that discussion to a separate section further down in the article. On a slightly different topic, the creation of the term "Papal Synod of Bishops" is not documented; the term in the Code of Canon Law is "Synod of Bishops" and it should be followed in this article. Here's the outline of Canon Law's treatment of the Church hierarchy.

• Part II. The Hierarchical Constitution Of The Church
  • Section I. The Supreme Authority Of The Church (Cann. 330 - 367)
    • Chapter I. The Roman Pontiff And The College Of Bishops
      • Art. 1. The Roman Pontiff
      • Art. 2. The College Of Bishops
    • Chapter II. The Synod Of Bishops
    • Chapter III. The Cardinals Of The Holy Roman Church
    • Chapter IV. The Roman Curia
    • Chapter V. Legates Of The Roman Pontiff

The fact that the Synod of Bishops appears before the Cardinals and the Curia suggests the importance of this body. --SteveMcCluskey (talk) 17:05, 27 September 2020 (UTC)

I recently came across this dissertation for a doctorate in Canon Law that you may find interesting. --SteveMcCluskey (talk) 18:13, 27 September 2020 (UTC)

I certainly agree that the details of the other synods of bishops in the Catholic Church should not be elaborated on in the lead. Nor should the synod of bishops that O'Malley says was set up as "an expression of papal primacy, not of collegiality [...] a preemptive strike by the center". I used "papal" as a stopgap adjective, until some other way of distinguishing it from the other Catholic synods of bishops is proposed and agreed on. It is certainly better than "the preemptive-strike synod of bishops". The proposal by Maximos Saigh that you have drawn my attention to calls for a word of explanation of what he had in mind, i.e., something like the arrangement in his own Melkite Church with its own synod of bishops. The essence of that outline part of the Code of Canon Law that you gave is found more succinctly in canon 334. You will notice that the Code of Canon Law does not capitalize any "synod of bishops", as if it were unique. I intended to do no more than draw attention to the ambiguity of the term, but I am being gradually drawn further into discussion of the article, in spite of my resistance. Bealtainemí (talk) 20:38, 27 September 2020 (UTC)

Following the links you added, I found this passage opening the article Eastern Orthodox Church: "The Eastern Orthodox Church, officially the Orthodox Catholic Church…." I'm not certain what your intent is here, but the present article is about the the Synod of Bishops in the Catholic Church, which includes those Eastern churches in union with Rome. I follow as guidance on use of the term Wikipedia:Catholic and Catholic_(term)#Contemporary_use. I don't think it's wise to add material on the Orthodox Churches, which are not in union with Rome, to this article. --SteveMcCluskey (talk) 21:11, 27 September 2020 (UTC)

I disagree with but will accept your exclusion of explicit mention of the fact that the Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox maintain their traditional institution of a collegial holy synod. Bealtainemí (talk) 09:14, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

References

Requested move 16 September 2020

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: consensus not to move (non-admin closure) Megan☺️ ^{Talk to the monster} 16:51, 23 September 2020 (UTC)

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Synod of Bishops in the Catholic Church → The Synod of Bishops (Catholic Church) – As discussed in the section above, this move is requested to remove an existing ambiguity in the title. The definite article "The" is added to makes it clear that the article deals with a specific synod: "The Synod of Bishops" described under that name in Canons 342-347 of the Code of Canon Law. Replacing the phrase "in the Catholic Church" with a parenthetical "(Catholic Church)" further clarifies that it does not deal with all synods in the Catholic Church or with the concept of synodality in the Catholic church. SteveMcCluskey (talk) 15:25, 16 September 2020 (UTC)

• Cautious support Bealtainemí (talk) 18:23, 17 September 2020 (UTC)
• Oppose the proposal that has just been clarified as excluding an explicit indication within the article of the ambiguity of the term "synod of bishops", leaving only a hatnote or hatnotes referring to as yet unspecified article(s) on one or more other senses. The proposal needs to be reformulated and afterwards proposed afresh. Bealtainemí (talk) 19:44, 17 September 2020 (UTC)
  • Comment I see some misunderstanding here, as I had not proposed removing the current text within the article referring to "the Synod of Bishops, in the sense considered in this article" while the hatnote (strictly speaking, the About template), as proposed above, does refer to specific articles on the other senses. It seems that the requested move may have gotten ahead of the discussion of proposed edits in the section above. I'm willing to return to consideration of those matters first. --SteveMcCluskey (talk) 20:04, 17 September 2020 (UTC)
  • Comment I agree. Thanks. Bealtainemí (talk) 06:33, 18 September 2020 (UTC)
• Oppose I am skeptical of an effort to narrow the scope of this article without discussing the duplication of information that will subsequently be spread across multiple articles on other types of synods. This is a de facto WP:CFORK without a clear mandate or rationale. Elizium23 (talk) 18:27, 17 September 2020 (UTC)
  • Comment As proposer, I would note that until an addition made early this month, the article focused entirely on The Synod of Bishops in the narrow sense proposed here. This sense was recognized by the editor of the addition, who added an allusion to "the Synod of Bishops, in the sense considered in this article." The proposed change of title does not seem to be a fork, as it is only returning to the original sense of the article. The articles mentioned in the proposed hatnote are also not forks but existing articles on distinct but related topics WP:RELART. --SteveMcCluskey (talk) 19:21, 17 September 2020 (UTC)
• Oppose. I get 64,000 ghits for the current title ("Synod of Bishops in the Catholic Church" -Wikipedia was my search, your results may differ) so it's a good natural disambiguation and preferred to the proposed parentheses. And the proposed addition of The seems completely unsupported by policy. Andrewa (talk) 16:42, 23 September 2020 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.