Logicians have identified - and demolished - what they term a "circular argument." Basically, to propose an example, a circular argument goes something like this:

The synodal Church is the Church foreseen by the Second Vatican Council.

Why?

Because the Second Vatican Council foresaw the synodal Church.

In a circular argument, the conclusion is in the premise - and that's that.

For anyone proposing this particular argument, it doesn't matter that Lumen gentium ("The Dogmatic Constitution on the Church") never uses the term synodal as it is used here and doesn't remotely suggest what the circular argument assumes. Yet the Gregorian University in Rome announced Monday that it will hold a three-day conference at the conclusion of the current synod titled, "From the Council to the Synod. Rereading a Church's journey 60 years after Lumen Gentium (1964-2024)."

Lest anyone think this is intended merely as a historical overview, the "rereading" that will take place will tell "the story of the Church's journey, which the congress intends to reread, taking the circularity between the Synod and the Council as the criterion for interpretation: rereading the Synod in the light of the Council and the Council in the light of the Synod. The 60 years of the Church's journey are a challenge to understand the complexity of the reception process and the question of whether what the Church is experiencing with the Synod process is really the mature fruit of the Council and its ecclesiological proposal." [Emphasis added.]

It's safe to say that, despite a lack of evidence, the unembarrassed "circularity" mentioned here will answer the question of whether the "synodal process" is the mature fruit of the council in the affirmative.

Most of the delegates to the synod, however, have been expressing deep weariness at the repetitive nature of what's already transpired. As one put it: "We're drowning in BS," emphatically spelling out the final two letters. Several journalists have already gone home. (Your humble scribe must as well on Saturday in order to fulfill other duties, before the final votes on the synodal document - but analysis to follow.)

Several other commentators who once regarded the synod as exciting evidence of a Church "on the move" are now writing in a somber mood of a potentially dangerous "disappointment" after years of work, if substantial changes do not materialize. One goes so far as to fear that a whole generation of women will now be lost to the Church.

Bishop Georg Bätzing, president of the German Bishops' Conference, is reported to have said as much on the synod floor: "For the cultural sphere I come from, an answer to this question [women deacons] will determine whether women will continue to seek and find their home in the Church."

This sounds not so much like an argument as an ultimatum. Which won't be likely to work.

Everything we have heard from the pope, from some synodal spokesmen, and from the few leaks - a minor miracle in Rome that participants have not abundantly spilled the beans to their favorite outlets - makes us believe that approval of deaconesses will not happen at the synod.

(By the way, this session of the synod has taken the extraordinary step - allegedly to assure confidentiality and candor among the commenters - of not sending the text of the draft document to participants in an electronic file. They've also been forbidden to copy or photograph it.)

An unprejudiced observer might think that after one, then two month-long sessions, that after the establishing of ten "study groups" to deal with "hot button issues, after several previous studies about the possibility of deaconesses that said "no," the question would be settled. But the synod continues to tantalize.

In just the last week, a meeting was scheduled between representatives of the group that is studying this question to which about 100 people are said to have shown up. Cardinal Fernández was also rumored to be there, but wasn't because, he says, t...