This article discusses the significance of the extensive data-gathering procedures incorporated into recent synodal preparations and how they advance Pope Francis’s commitment to forging a church informed by a dialogue between theological ideas and empirical realities. Drawing on my prior case analysis of the Synod on the Family, I argue that despite the limits in place then on lay participation in the formal synod discussions, the diversity of the laity’s self-reported experiences penetrated the bishops’ deliberations. This achievement is in part a function of the synod communication structure whereby participants are allocated to shared-language groups, thus avoiding self-selection based on a priori doctrinal or country-specific biases; the resulting (forced) dialogue with difference helps foster the gradual development of more inclusive doctrinal framings as seen in the post-synodal Amoris Laetitia. In a historic expansion, the Synod on Synodality formally includes lay voting participants and therefore lay perspectives will directly shape the synod proposal outcomes. Like the bishops, lay Catholics do not speak with one voice, and thus the task of finding moral consensus will still necessarily require respectful mutual listening and reciprocal dialogue.

Already in St. Bonaventure's Collationes in Hexaemeron there is a rudimentary theory of doctrinal development that confronts the historical problematic encountered most forcefully in modernity. This is the result of Bonaventure's urgent need to respond to the difficulties of Joachimism wherein Francis of Assisi is believed to have ushered in the new age of the Holy Spirit disassociated from the Bible, sacraments, and the institutional Church. In response Bonaventure elucidates an understanding of divine revelation in which new historical epochs allow the Church through the wise and holy mystic-contemplative to read more deeply of the word of God so as to gain a deeper insight into what has already been given in Jesus Christ. In this way the newness of Francis is preserved by grounding his radical way of life in continuity with the once-for-all revelation of God and the Church. In so doing Bonaventure anticipates the particularly modern historical problematic and paves a way forward that preserves the integrity of revelation centuries before the likes of John Henry Newman, Yves M-J Congar, and others.

The twentieth century has seen a dramatic shift even within Catholic theology when it comes to how the Church understands divine revelation and her own historical reception of it. The Second Vatican Council was a pivotal point in which contrasting views of doctrinal truth seemed to meet head-to-head. But while it might seem that the now popular understanding of revelation as an event, rather than a set of propositions, represents a victory for modernism, there is no contradiction between this personalistic paradigm and the propositional, which reigned in the neo-scholastic era. Rather, there are points of contact between the traditional Thomistic approach of an early-twentieth century Dominican theologian, Francisco Marin-Sola, and the understanding of revelation, particularly, the nature of doctrinal truth, that has risen to prominence thanks to the so-called nouvelle theologie. It is especially evident in the work of Yves Congar and Joseph Ratzinger that it is possible to reconcile the Tubingen approach to reality, which inspired the new school, and the (Augustinian-)Thomistic insistence on the immutability of truth.

How credible is the Catholic Church's teaching on Islam in the light of some modern appreciations of Islam? Does the teaching about Islam at the Council, welcomed by so many, represent a discontinuity of magisterial doctrinal teaching? This paper argues that Pope Benedict's hermeneutic for the Council can be tested using this question. It is argued that the discontinuity at Vatican II lies at the level of historically contingent circumstances, with continuity at a doctrinal level. Hence, the Church retains credibility in looking at a new issue and developing a “new” response, discerning the signs of the times, without contradicting previously held doctrinal teachings.