If you relied on the mainstream media, you would think that the three-week synod on the Amazon last month was mainly focused on the issues of whether or not to ordain married men and to restore the female diaconate. It wasn't.

"If we read the outcome document of the synod, we see the ministerial shifts for the Amazon are in part about servicing people so their human and economic rights are protected," says Eric LeCompte, executive director of JubileeUSA. "We read that as Catholics we must protect indigenous communities and our planet. Ultimately, the synod's message is that we all deserve to live in a world where we have enough, and not too much."

LeCompte argues that the synod document puts forward the most robust articulation of the concept of "social sin" since that concept came into official disrepute in the 1980s.

"Much of the Amazon synod's final document can be boiled down to the reality that we are consuming too much," he told NCR in an email. "Whether we live in the Amazon or the United States of America, we all are consuming too much. It's a tough message and it may be the closest the Catholic Church has ever gotten to the reality that there is social sin, that as an entire society — our level of consumption is sinful." This bringing back of the idea of social sin is a significant development in moral theology.

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