The Synod: Obstacles and opportunities
The third phase of the Synod convened by Pope Francis is taking place this October 2024. Its focus is on the theme of synodality, the process of walking together as a Church, emphasizing participation, dialogue, and collaboration among all members of the Church, including clergy and laity. The Synod is a decision-making consultative process that involves clerics, bishops, religious, and lay men and women. Objectives of the Synod include:
- Promoting inclusivity: Encouraging participation from all members of the Church, including marginalized groups, women, youth, and those who may feel excluded from traditional structures.
- Fostering dialogue: Creating an environment where open discussions can take place about faith, doctrine, and contemporary challenges faced by Catholics today.
- Addressing contemporary issues: Engaging with pressing social issues such as climate change, social justice, interfaith dialogue, and human rights.
- Strengthening community: Building stronger connections among local communities and between different regions of the Catholic Church.
- Renewing pastoral approaches: Exploring new ways for clergy to engage with their congregations effectively while adapting to changing societal contexts.
Irish Jesuit theologian Gerry O’Hanlon SJ of the Jesuit Centre for Faith and Justice is well known for his involvement in the synodal process in Ireland. He has recently published an article for the Irish Catholic ‘Musings on the Synod’, in which he reflects on the strength and weaknesses of the Synodal Process to date.
He begins, by addressing a concern that most Catholics may not have even heard of the Synod and that “bishops are mostly lying low”. So as the Synod now reaches its culmination he speaks to the question “has the situation changed?” or “is the process too complex and complicated, the documents too numerous, the high hopes of the recent past assuming all the characteristics of a damp squib?” He responds with two general points.
The first is that the chief protagonist in this whole process is not ourselves but rather the Holy Spirit, as Pope Francis often points out. He also references the Liverpool based theologian John Sullivan who uses the analogy of marriage as a helpful tool in understanding events like the Synod on Synodality. They are “like the wedding, public celebrations of the much more mundane, routine process and life of a marriage. Ultimately Synodality will be judged on how deeply Synodality with it’s call to co-responsibility of all the baptized takes route in everyday church life. This will mean a retreat from clericalism, the search for a new identity and role for clergy and a call to all the People of God to have a meaningful say in Church teaching and governance.”
Father O’Hanlon goes on to say that there are several issues emerging as obstacles and aids to continuing on the synodal journey and he outlines five of them.
The first obstacle relates to the many photographs advertising the October Synod which consist of “a panel of mostly clerical clad men pictured smiling on a platform at the Vatican as they outlined what we could expect at the Synod. Given the deeply inclusive synodal logo, the repeated insistence on the Church as being for all, male and female, cleric and lay, this continued resort to the default clerical male leadership is a shot in the foot.”
Secondly he advises that we need to move as fast as possible on abandoning the position that synodality has nothing to do with doctrine. He writes, “It is disingenuous to continue to insist that what is involved is only ‘pastoral’ as if the pastoral and doctrinal were not just distinct but completely separate, a proposition that would have the great Karl Rahner SJ spinning in his grave.”
Thirdly, Father O’Hanlon highlights the need for attention to be given to the Pope’s own concern to reform the papacy.
Fourthly, Father O’Hanlon is anticipating the finding of the ten study groups as desired by the 2023 Synthesis Report that theology is beginning to play a more prominent role in the synodal journey “which to date, has been predominantly a matter of ‘conversation in the Spirit’. I would simply note that this is an opportunity for theology to make a positive contribution in all humility to clarifying the synodal project.”
Fifthly, he comments on the position of bishops noting that up to now “the insistence, rightly has been on the responsibility of the bishop to consult and to listen, but less on what he himself might think, especially if his thoughts might be at some variance with official teachings.” Father O’Hanlon gives an example of a bishop that might be sympathetic to the ordination of women and be delighted if the Pope were to allow same but stays “stumm because of reasons of unity. I am wondering if in the end it’s not a habit which we need to question and begin to allow more discussion at an episcopal rank? Can we not allow for a more authentic expression of a unity which we now accept must include diversity?” he asks.
In conclusion Father O’Hanlon believes that we can expect greater clarity from this October Synod and the Papal Apostolic Exhortation, on ‘differentiated co-responsibility’ which is at the heart of synodality. He says that the synodal outcomes expressed in this exhortation will in turn feed into the lives of those at parish and diocesan levels. “It will nourish the series of mini-synods which the Irish Episcopal Conference has proposed in Ireland over the next few years.” he says adding, “There is real hope then that we can recover the ’embers under the ashes’ of our Irish Catholicism and Christianity, and be once more, of service to our world and part of the ‘reckoning’ which the victims, survivors and families of the abused so richly deserve.”
