The new “listening to everyone and excluding nothing” process so far undertaken in the first two phases of the Synod on Synodality has been trumpeted as revolutionary and indicative of a new era in the Church, but it contrasts starkly with the previous legislation of Pope John Paul II.
In 1997, John Paul II issued an Instruction on Diocesan Synods, which addressed the danger he perceived in the postconciliar era that questions which are definitively settled by the papal or conciliar magisterium might be treated as open to discussion.
