How to Be a Missionary Synodal Church

"THE CHURCH IS not a democracy!” is a slogan that in the past has served to silence church members who proposed to tell bishops and priests how to run the church.The appropriate response to that slogan would be, “If not, why not?” A model of “democracy”, after all, where everyone is supposed to have a say is much closer to the New Testament view of what a Christian community should be than any of the other models we have used in the past: monarch, dictator, feudal lord, corporate manager, hereditary chief, mouthpiece of God, and so on.

In any case, a system of governance which acknowledges the rights of the individual person, co-responsibility and authority as service to the common good, is closer to what the Catholic Church is searching for in the process we now call “the synodal way”.

The Synodal Way

Along with many small group conversations, the synodal way, in its current version, involves two synods of bishops, the first of which took place in October 2023 and a second planned for October 2024. The preparatory document for next month’s synod, “How to be a missionary synodal Church” (published by the General Secretariat of the Synod, 9 July 2024), asks all Catholics to re-examine their understanding of the church by responding to the question of “How to be a synodal Church in mission?" This central question breaks down into a number of more focused questions:

• how to engage in deep listening and dialogue;

• how to be co-responsible in the light of the dynamism of our personal and communal baptismal vocation;

• how to transform structures and processes so that all may participate and share the charisms that the Spirit pours out on each for the common good; and,

• how to exercise power and authority as service.

Deep Listening and Dialogue

For those who have already been involved in the discussions that led up to and followed the 2023 synod Assembly, the first of these questions (“How to engage in deep listening and dialogue”) has already been partly answered through the experience of “spiritual conversations” where people in small groups were asked to listen deeply to one another’s thoughts and feelings about the church without judgement and without debate. The preparatory document for the 2024 Assembly gives a definition of “synodality” as “the particular style that qualifies the life and mission of the church, a style that starts from listening as the first act of the Church” (par 36).

This practice is intended to distance these “spiritual conversations” from other kinds of persuasive talking such as religious “preaching”, political propaganda, ideological grandstanding, parliamentary heckling, and even the “robust debates” of academic argument.

These spiritual conversations are ones in which everyone is listened to, especially those who have been at the margins of power and influence. They are also intended to be different from the more hierarchical top-down style of many official Catholic church institutions.

The Stage of Discernment

The second question proposed in preparation for next month’s Assembly of the Synod is: “How to be co-responsible in the light of the dynamism of our personal and communal baptism.” This question places responsibility for the state of the church on our common Baptism rather than any special “Ordination”. It is a step beyond listening. It requires discernment.

We should note here that this preparatory document is not proposing to abolish hierarchy or authority in the church. This whole process is instigated and managed by the church hierarchy. The document recognizes though that we need changes in our current understanding of church authority. It holds firmly to the responsibilities arising from Baptism but it leaves the "how" of this co-responsibility up for discussion along the synodal way.

The document does not solve the question of how this discernment will resolve the contradictions between different kinds and degree of responsibility. But it does give us some pointers along the way. It advocates for “transparency, accountability, and evaluation" (par 73) in the church’s decision-making. It makes clear, too, that this means accountability to the community, not just to established authority (responsibility downwards as well as upwards) (par 77).

Transforming Structures and Processes

The third question (“how to transform structures and processes so that all may participate and share the charisms that the Spirit pours out on each for the common good”) digs deeper into the heart of co-responsibility and it is here that our “walking together”, the synodal way, may begin to stumble. Listening and spiritual conversations are an amiable stroll in the park. Transforming established church structures is a struggle through tough undergrowth.

This document is a preparatory document and is not meant to solve the issues before the actual synod assembly itself. Yet there is a sense in the document that, although its intention is to transform, many of these issues are going to remain business-as-usual.

We could name some of these as they affect our own local churches. One, the most obvious, and already noted in this preparatory document under the heading, “Sisters and brothers in Christ: a renewed reciprocity”, is gender inequality in the church. The current lack of reciprocity is already emptying the churches and remains the largest issue in “participation”. This synod of bishops will need to solve it or at least show a willingness to do so.

Mission Priorities

A second major issue is the unclarity about the church’s mission. While “participation”, in the sense of transforming the structures and processes of the church receives major attention in this document, “mission” is a dim drumbeat in the background, insistent but undirected and unfocused. Yet how we participate in the church’s life, and especially the kinds of leadership skills needed, will change depending on our mission priorities.

Is our mission about serving God’s mission for a better world, a more just world, a more peaceful world, a more equal world, a healthier planet? Or is it about increasing the numbers of church members? Or, more simply, is the church primarily a means for each of us to obtain our individual salvation?

Whichever we decide is our priority, mission will require different kinds of structures and processes in the church. It is the mission that determines the style of participation, not the other way round.

Reform of Sunday Eucharist

A third major issue is like a sacred cow wandering about and interrupting the flow of people on the synodal way. The preparatory document repeats (often) that the Eucharist is the source and culmination of the church’s life (par 50, 55). Yet our Sunday Eucharists, rather than a people walking together, where all are listened to and all are valued, show a formal local church dominated by a solo male presider who occupies a central place, talks for most of the time and wears colourful, flowing robes to demonstrate his authority over this assembly. This is not the source and culmination of a synodal way.

Any other reforms of the structures and processes of the church, and especially its mission orientation, require a major reform of our Sunday Eucharists.

And this leads us rather abruptly into the fourth, glaringly unaddressed, question of this preparatory document: “How to exercise power and authority as service”.

Tui Motu Magazine. Issue 296 September 2024: 12-13