Neil Darragh discusses the invitation to the Church to engage in synodality for the reform of the Church for the world.

"Synodality” is a word we are going to hear a lot more of in the Catholic Church over the next few years. The “walking together” Francis plans is a new process of renewal of the Catholic Church. The tradition of “synods” is a long and varied one in many of the Christian Churches. This one is a little different though. This “walking together” is a two-year process from October 2021 leading up to the synod of bishops in October 2023. The theme of this synod is “For a Synodal Church: Communion, Participation and Mission”. The hope is that all members of the Church will take part in this process, and the three dimensions of the theme — communion, participation, and mission — spell out more specifically what this “synodality” means.

Communion emphasises the deep roots we share in the love and unity of the Trinity. We share a common “instinct” of faith (a sensus fidei) and we all have a role to play in discerning and living out God’s will for us.

Participation emphasises that we all have gifts, a rich diversity of gifts, to share. We are called together to pray, listen, analyse, dialogue, discern and offer advice on making pastoral decisions. There is an emphasis here also on ensuring the inclusion of those at the margins or who feel excluded.

Mission emphasises that we can never be centred on ourselves. The intention is that this two-year process will enable us as Church to better witness to the Gospel, especially with those who live on the spiritual, social, economic, political, geographical and existential peripheries of our world. The Church exists not for itself but in service to the coming of God’s kingdom.

The 2023 assembly of the Synod of Bishops has been delayed for a year to give more time for input from local churches — from everyone, not just bishops. And the Handbook of this synodal process proposes practical ways in which the views of every parish, every organisation, every diocese and eparchy in the world can be collected, discerned and fed into the October 23 synod. There is a strong effort by the Secretariat of the Synod of Bishops to engage as much as possible every member of the Church.

Believing in the Process?

This is a synod of bishops, nevertheless. In the end it is the bishops, including the pope, who will take the final decisions. But this invitation to synodality is the strongest push there has ever been in the Catholic Church to involve all members of the Church in a movement for renewal. Yet the Church, including the pope and bishops, does not start off with a clean slate here. There are inevitable suspicions that all this is mostly glorified words, a kind of ecclesiastical “spin” which sounds good, but is basically a way of rescuing the institutional Church from recent scandals and its image as “teaching” rather than “listening”.

There was a time when we could say that criticisms of the Church came from outsiders, people who did not understand it. But recent calls for reform come from within, from loyal and active Church members, from theologians, and from priests and religious.

Many of the older generation of Catholics lived through the excitement of the 1970s and 1980s (the decades immediately following the Second Vatican Council), when there was genuine hope for a participatory Church focused on justice. They have become disappointed as that hope faded. The Church hierarchy, even while it retained a commitment to social justice, became at the same time more centrally controlling, less open to the wider world, and “consulted” rather than listened to the wider Church membership.

Actively Hoping?

In the Spring 2021 issue of the Christchurch Catholic Worker newspaper, The Common Good, economist Paul Dalziel explains how many of the Catholics who lived through the post-Vatican II period have experienced suspicion, exclusion and rejection rather than the promised communion, participation and mission. Yet he still hopes that the Church in this country and abroad will recognise the richness of acting in communion with all people working to promote the common good, of opening up leadership to inclusive participation and of encouraging everyone in the mission of social and ecological justice.

A statement from the group “Be the Change Aotearoa” called for more equitable access for lay women and men to authenticated ministerial and decision-making roles in the Catholic Church. It challenges those aspects of Canon Law that perpetuate the clergy’s monopoly on decision-making in the Church. It also calls for more autonomy for the Church in Oceania to reflect the decision-making processes common in democratic and participative societies.

This kind of engagement, seeking reform of current decision-making processes, is surely the kind of action called for in the official documents of “A Synodal Church: Communion, Participation and Mission”.

Abandoning the Tradition?

We need not worry that such reform might be abandoning too much of the Catholic religious tradition. The hierarchical skeleton is still firm and unmoving. The Synod hopes to put more lively and malleable flesh on the skeleton, but the skeleton is firmly upright and stable. The bishops are the filters and monitors of this process and the consultative bodies set up after the Second Vatican Council, like diocesan and parish councils, are an integral part of it. There is no discarding here of Church structures controversially and painfully hammered out over 2,000 years.

The Catholic Church is not anytime soon going to turn into a larger version of the Society of Friends (Quakers) or even a Congregational Church.

Nor, on the other hand, will there be a large-scale “restoration” of the 19th-century hierarchy so heavily influenced by ideas of monarchy and obedience. There is a scent here of a new spirit bringing in a new sense of community and mission.

There is a hope that this synodal process will be an ecclesial (whole Church) process rather than just a bishops’ synod. Churches in Australia, Germany and Latin America are already well down the track on this process.

What about Here?

The preparatory documents make clear that “walking together” must begin with all the members of the local churches. This includes input from all our cultural variety as well as those on the periphery and those recently disaffiliated. We need to begin with ourselves as local churches. It also includes conversations with non-Catholic Churches. Most of these, after all, have more experience with church reform than Catholics have.

The fundamental question proposed to us is: How is this “journeying together” happening today in your local church? What steps does the Spirit invite us to take in order to grow in our “journeying together”?

Bishops have often consulted the people in preparation for previous synods, but this 2021-23 process is the most thorough and most convincingly resourced search for input from Church members.

How much influence a small local church like Aotearoa New Zealand can have on the universal Church is difficult to assess, but our first focus needs to be on our own local church. If we can be positive and enthusiastic about this, we should at least stimulate a strong sense of where and how the Spirit is active today within the Church communities of Aotearoa New Zealand.

Tui Motu Magazine. Issue 264 October 2021: 6-7