Michael Kelly
Pope Francis with The Synodal Pathway by Columba Books. Michael Kelly in Rome
As the Church in Ireland continues the process of bishops, priests and laypeople working together to chart the future, Pope Francis has pleaded for Irish Catholics not to cling to past ways of doing things.
He was speaking in unscripted remarks after receiving a group of Irish people involved in Catholic education and being presented with a copy of a new Irish book on the synodal process.
The Pontiff insisted that returning to the roots of the faith is where the Church in Ireland will find life on the synodal pathway, but that Catholics cannot be imprisoned by the past.
“Dialogue,” in the Church, the Pope said “is very important”.
He said parishioners involved in the synodal process must discern the roots of the Faith “because the tree, in order to grow, needs close relationships with the roots”.
However, he warned: “Don’t stay stuck at the roots, no, but be in relationship with the roots…Only with the roots do we become real people: not statues in museums, like some cold, starched, rigid traditionalists, who think that life means living attached only to the roots.
“There is a need for this relationship with the roots, but also to move forward,” he said.
Church teaching, the Pope said, “should grow instead of just hiding in the past.
“And this is the true tradition: taking from the past to move forward. Tradition is not static: it is dynamic – moving forward,” he said.
Referring to the new book The Synodal Pathway: When Rhetoric meets Reality, Pope Francis said that the idea in the subtitle “is a very beautiful thing”.
“To educate is not to say merely rhetorical things; educating is bringing together what is said with reality”. People, he said, “have the right to make mistakes – but the educator accompanies them on the path to guide them…the true educator is never afraid of mistakes, no: he or she accompanies, takes people by the hand, listens and talks”.
The Pope was speaking during a private audience with a delegation led by Prof. Eamonn Conway of Mary Immaculate College in Limerick from Global Researchers Advancing Catholic Education (GRACE) – an international research-based partnership on Catholic education.
The Synodal Pathway: When Rhetoric meets Reality is available now from Columba Books.