On November 10, a “Synodal Committee” created by the recently completed German “Synodal Way” met for the first time. The committee’s mandate is to prepare the foundations for a “Synodal Council” of laity, clergy, and bishops to govern the Catholic Church in Germany from 2026 on. The idea of such a “Synodal Council” has already been rejected by the Holy See. And in a recent letter to four German laywomen who had resigned from the “Synodal Way” to protest deviations from settled Catholic truths and practices, Pope Francis reiterated that the “Synodal Council” cannot be reconciled “with the sacramental structure of the Catholic Church.”