Someone below asked exactly what is this Synod I keep posting about and what is it supposed to do. In The Tablet, a primer:

Is the synod deliberative or consultative?
This is the twenty-first time the Synod of Bishops has met since Pope Paul VI instituted it in 1965 at the end of the Second Vatican Council. There have been 11 ordinary sessions (roughly every three or four years), two extraordinary sittings, six special “continental” assemblies, and one special meeting for the Netherlands. The synod’s original purpose was to bring together bishops in order to offer counsel to the Pope on issues facing the universal Church. The synod was designed to be consultative, although Paul VI clearly stated that the Bishop of Rome could grant it deliberative powers if he deemed it useful. Neither he nor John Paul II ever did, which has only supported the critics’ claim that the synod, far from being an instrument of collegiality, is really an emasculated organ.

Why is this one on the Eucharist?
At the end of the last ordinary assembly of the synod in 2001, bishops sent suggestions for the topic to be discussed at the 2005 gathering. Though the world never saw the list of proposals, the synod’s general secretariat – the permanent Vatican-based office that coordinates and plans the assemblies – said the Eucharist was at the top of the list. Pope John Paul II subsequently “took the bishops’ advice” and chose it to be the theme for this, the eleventh ordinary assembly.

Who is involved? From where?
There are 256 synod Fathers (voting members) at the current ordinary assembly – the most in the history of these gatherings. All are bishops or their equivalent: 177 of them were elected by their national episcopal conferences; 40 were appointed by the Pope; 26 are heads of Vatican offices; and 10 are superiors of men’s religious orders.

Someone else snarled in another comment thread that this was pointless and unnecessary, and all we need is a Pope to lay the smackdown. Well, that’s not exactly consistent with the breadth of Roman Catholic decision-making practice, which has taken many shapes over the years. There is, as one can tell from the interventions, a great deal of pro forma droning going on, but there are also some intriguing tidbits, moments in which it is clear why such a gathering has the power to be a real blessing – in which the Romanian prelate can speak passionately of his Church’s oppression under Communist rule, the bishop from Papua New Guinea can wonder out loud how the Eucharist can be the source and summit of his people’s lives when they hardly ever see a priest, and bishops from developing nations from around the world can be heard speaking of the struggles of their people and what the presence of Christ in Eucharist, in all of its richness, can be in that context.

It is a big Church, with many different types of challenges. It is good for bishops to be forced to sit and hear each other, so they remember that their dioceses’ problems are not universal, and the Church exists in and through the entire world. Collegiality is not a buzz word. It is a vital, historically-grounded element of Church authority, one which, as I said, has taken different forms over the centuries in its expression, but is real nonetheless.