I was not alone when I cringed upon hearing of synodality and going to the peripheries. The secular media along with some Catholic sources mislead us to fear that synodality and going to the peripheries are primarily processes for subverting Catholic sexual morality. The peripheries to which we should go are the so-called LGBQT communities. While at these peripheries, synodality is accompanying representitives of LGBQT communities so that we can better understand and accept them as they are. Ultimately, such acceptance requires explicit admission that traditional Catholic prohibitions of certain sexual activities, begining with the intrinsically disordered masturbation, were in error. Such an admission would put the Catholic Church in conformity with the sexual morality of the mid-twentieth century Sexual Revolution; but a cruel betrayal of all who rely on the spiritual resources of Catholism in their struggle to be chaste.

Fortunately, in his August 15, 2025 address sent to the participants of the Peruvian Social week Pope Leo XIV has subtly calmed fears of subversion. He used “synodality” and “going to the peripheries” as normal terms for describing how the Church has been built up since Apostolic times. With special references to the missionaries and saints who built the Church in Peru he sketched out how, of course, they were at the peripheries in the New World. Of course, practiced synodality by learning the ways of those they encountered at the peripheries so they could convert them.