Synod’s high ideal is to avoid familiar ideological divide

Pope Francis is banking on an unprecedented consultation of the Faithful revitalising the Church, but discernment remains hard to pin down, writes Michael Kelly from Rome

Pope Francis has opened a global consultation process on the future of the Church warning that it is not a parliament or a matter of putting Church dogma up for debate.

Launching the synodal pathway – which is due to culminate in a Synod of Bishops in Rome in 2023 – Pope Francis said the key to understanding the process was to see it as discerning what God is saying to the Church.

Speaking at Mass in St Peter’s Basilica on Sunday, the Pontiff warned that involving as many people as possible in the process and prayerfully listening to all of them is the only way to recognise the call of the Holy Spirit.

“I underline this because sometimes there is an elitism” among priests and bishops “that causes them to separate themselves from the laity,” the Pope said leading a day of reflection at the Vatican as part of the official launch of the process.

Widespread involvement “is not a matter of form, but of faith. Participation is a requirement of the faith received in Baptism,” Pope Francis insisted during his talk to cardinals, bishops, priests, religious and laypeople meeting in the Vatican Synod Hall.

Participation

“Without real participation by the people of God, talk about communion risks remaining a devout wish,” he said. “In this regard, we have taken some steps forward, but a certain difficulty remains, and we must acknowledge the frustration and impatience felt by many pastoral workers, members of diocesan and parish consultative bodies and women, who frequently remain on the fringes.”

The attempt to create a new synod process, one that involves everyone and attempts to give the entire Church a synodal character of widespread consultation and group discernment, he said, carries “certain risks.”

The first, the Pope said, is that of making the whole process a show that is only apparently one of all participants praying and listening for the Holy Spirit’s message by listening to each other.

Without attention to the Holy Spirit, he said, the process is simply a formality, it “would be like admiring the magnificent facade of a church without ever actually stepping inside.”

Other risks, he said, include turning the synod into an intellectual exercise where no one listens and everyone sticks to their opinions, “ending up along familiar and unfruitful ideological and partisan divides” that do not respond to the Holy Spirit and people’s needs and concerns and “paralysis, the attitude that says: ‘We have always done it this way’ – this is poison in the life of the Church.”

If done prayerfully, openly and with widespread involvement, Pope Francis said, the process could help build “a synodal Church, an open square where all can feel at home and participate,” a Church that listens to the Holy Spirit and one another.

“May this synod be a true season of the Spirit,” he prayed. “We need the Spirit, the ever-new breath of God, who sets us free from every form of self-absorption, revives what is moribund, loosens shackles and spreads joy.”

“The Holy Spirit guides us where God wants us to be, not to where our own ideas and personal tastes would lead us,” he said.

Different Church

Pope Francis quoted the late Dominican theologian, Fr Yves Congar, who said, “There is no need to create another Church, but to create a different Church.”

“For a ‘different Church,’ a Church open to the newness that God wants to suggest,” he said, “let us with greater fervour and frequency invoke the Holy Spirit and humbly listen to him, journeying together as he, the source of communion and mission, desires: with docility and courage.”

Welcoming participants, including those following online because of Covid-19 restrictions, Cardinal Mario Grech, synod secretary-general, said his office has seen great enthusiasm for the synod process.

However, he said, some people are not convinced.

“I sense the difficulty of some brothers and sisters who still feel uncertain and afraid in the face of this path, deliberately left open as to the so-called decisions to be made. I address them fraternally, saying: Do not be afraid to let us know your fears,” the cardinal said. “The synod secretariat is also here to listen to your perplexities and fears: They can be beneficial to this synodal process.”

Christina Inogés-Sanz, a theologian from Spain, told the gathering that the entire synod process is meant to be a spiritual exercise, with prayer imbuing every moment from listening sessions on the diocesan level to the gathering of bishops in 2023 and the implementation of decisions they and the Pope make.

“All the people of God are summoned, for the first time, to participate in a Synod of Bishops,” Dr Inogés-Sanz said. “All those to whom we did not know how to listen, who left us without us even missing them; they also are invited to make their voices heard, to send us their reflections, their concerns and their pain.”

She prayed that God would “teach us to be better Christians. Teach us to recover the essence of Christian community, which is communion, not exclusion.”

Listening

Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich of Luxembourg, named by the Pope to be the relator general of the synod, encouraged his fellow bishops to be open to listening to everyone and to hearing the Holy Spirit speaking through them.

“We are not the masters of the Gospel; we are its servants,” he told his fellow bishops. “Our listening must always include our conversion to the Gospel, the Gospel that is, at the same time, both the living word of Christ and the word of the Church. The bishop proclaims the Word of God in his homily only after having listened to Christ and the Church. It is this same attitude of listening that characterizes our role in the synodal journey.”

Cardinal Grech, before sending participants off to share their reflections in small groups, shared an idea he said he had been pondering.

“I wonder, what if, instead of ending the (2023) assembly by delivering the final document to the Holy Father, we were to take another step, that of returning the conclusions of the synodal assembly to the particular churches from which the whole synodal process began?” he said.

The final document would still be given to the Pope, “who has always and by all is recognised as the one who issues the decrees” resulting from a synod or council, he said. But if it were sent back to Catholics on a local level first, it would “manifest at one and the same time the consent of the people of God and of the College of Bishops.”

The following morning at Mass in St Peter’s, the Pontiff took up the idea of a culture of encounter – one that has been central to his papacy.

A synod calls on everyone to become experts in “the art of encounter” he said.

“Celebrating a synod means walking on the same road, together” just like Jesus did – encountering, listening and discerning with all who one meets, the Pope said.

“Are we prepared for the adventure of this journey? Or are we fearful of the unknown, preferring to take refuge in the usual excuses: ‘it’s useless’ or ‘we’ve always done it this way?’” he asked.

The overall theme of the synodal journey is to explore the theme, ‘for a synodal Church: communion, participation and mission.’ Bishops around the world were to open the process in their dioceses on October 17. The diocesan phase, which runs until April, will focus on listening to and consulting.

In his homily, the Pope said they should begin the synodal process “by asking ourselves – all of us, Pope, bishops, priests, religious and laity – whether we, the Christian community, embody this ‘style’ of God, who travels the paths of history and shares in the life of humanity.”

Celebrating a synod, he said, means walking on the same road as others and living out the “three verbs” that characterise a synod: to encounter, listen and discern.

“We too are called to become experts in the art of encounter. Not so much by organising events or theorising about problems as in taking time to encounter the Lord and one another,” to devote time to prayer and adoration, and to listen to what the Holy Spirit wants to say to the church, the Pope said.

Change

Jesus shows that an encounter has the power to change someone’s life – “the Gospel is full of such encounters with Christ, encounters that uplift and bring healing,” the Pope said. In fact, Jesus was never in a hurry, and he would never have looked at a watch to signal it was time to wrap things up. “He was always at the service of people he met in order to listen to them.”

Each encounter requires “openness, courage and a willingness to let ourselves be challenged by the presence and the stories of others,” the Pope said. It means not hiding behind a façade or stiff formalities indicative of a spirit of clericalism or of courtiers, but it means being a father.

Sincere listening involves the heart, not just the ears, Pope Francis said. The aim is not to be able to answer people’s questions, especially with pre-packaged or “artificial and shallow responses,” but to provide an opportunity to tell one’s story and speak freely.

“Whenever we listen with the heart, people feel that they are being heard, not judged; they feel free to recount their own experiences and their spiritual journey,” he said.

Listening to one another “is a slow and perhaps tiring exercise” but it must be done, including listening to “the questions, concerns and hopes of every Church, people and nation,” and to the “challenges and changes” that world presents, he added.

Encountering and listening “are not ends in themselves” where everything stays the same, but must lead to discernment, he said.

“Whenever we enter into dialogue, we allow ourselves to be challenged, to advance on a journey. And in the end, we are no longer the same; we are changed,” he said.

Journey

The synod is “a journey of spiritual discernment that takes place in adoration, in prayer and in dialogue with the word of God,” the Pope said to the 3,000 people present.

Discernment is what lights the way and guides the synod, “preventing it from becoming a Church convention, a study group or a political congress, but rather a grace-filled event, a process of healing guided by the Holy Spirit,” Pope Francis said.

Jesus is asking everyone “to empty ourselves, to free ourselves from all that is worldly, including our inward-looking and outworn pastoral models, and to ask ourselves what it is that God wants to say to us in this time and the direction in which he wants to lead us,” he said.

Pope Francis wished everyone “a good journey together! May we be pilgrims in love with the Gospel and open to the surprises of the Spirit”.