What Happened at the Synod of Bishops Just Concluded?

The interventions by the bishops were not "electric." However, the bishops did not move forward regarding scripture--the synod's focus this year--and not backward, as some feared. Mr. John L. Allen Jr. summarized today that the bishops

in broad strokes the bishops steered a middle course between two possible extremes: secular skepticism and fundamentalist literalism. They endorsed the use of historical-critical methods of study, while also calling for a distinctly “theological” and “spiritual” reading of the Bible.

They also endorsed the laity in a surprising way with one of their proposals to Pope Benedict. (That proposal follows logically from something Pope Paul VI had done after the Second Vatican Council.)