SoS Sat Report: Sins against Synodality
Round up of the conclusion of the two day pre-Synodal Retreat
Today is the first day of the month of October, dedicated to the Most Holy Rosary of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the most weapon Catholics have at our disposal against the wickedness of the devil. Today is also the Feast of St. Thérèse of Lisieux, one of my favourite saints and whose ‘Story of a Soul’ is one of the best books that I have read. If you haven’t already read it please do yourself a favor. This post will be free for everyone as it deals with the theme of clerical sexual abuse.
The two day Pre-Synodal retreat for Synod Delegates ended today with a Penitential Vigil in St. Peter’s Basilica, where the Holy Father in the name of all the baptised asked forgiveness of the Lord for sins against peace, creation, indigenous peoples, migrants, sins of abuse, sins against women, family, youth, the sin of using doctrine as a stone against others, sins against poverty and sins against synodality.
Lawrence, a survivor of clerical sexual abuse from South Africa, who is now living in Germany gave a powerful testimony of his experience. He laid bare the absolute failure of the Church on this issue. Please watch what he said in full. I will update this post with links when these become available. I will just put his concluding remarks here, I think the words speak for themselves. “For decades accusations were ignored, covered up or handled internally rather than reported to authorities. This lack of accountability, has not only allowed abusers to continue there behaviour, but has also eroded the trust that so many once placed in this institution. The reluctance to address these crimes openly has been a disservice to the victims and a betrayal of the Church’s ethical and spiritual responsibilities. The consequences of these abuses extend far beyond the walls of the Church. They have shaken the faith of millions, tarnished the reputation of an institution that many look to for guidance, and caused a crisis of trust that reverberates through society. When an institution as prominent as the the Catholic Church fails to protect its most vulnerable members, it sends a message that justice and accountability are negotiable, when in reality when in reality we all know that they should be fundamental.”
Two more people also have very powerful testimonies. A migrant from Cameroon who lives in Italy recounted her harrowing journey to Italy, and a nun from Syria, recounted her experiences of living through and escaping the Syrian Civil War.
In the morning Father Timothy Radcliffe, a Dominican Friar and former Master of the Order of Preachers, offered two reflections the first titled "Resurrection: Searching in the dark", and the second “The Locked Room.” Mother Maria Ignazia Angelini, Abbess of the Benedictine Monastery of Santi Pietro e Paolo in Viboldone, offered a reflection on Gentleness and severity of the synodal path, before Father Timothy Radcliffe, a Dominican Friar and former Master of the Order of Preachers, offered two reflections titled “Resurrection Fishing”, and “Resurrection and Breakfast Conversation”, respectively.
Beggars of God’s Mercy
At the Penitential Vigil, Pope Francis gave his own remarks, where he clarified that it was his choice that the sins against peace, creation, indigenous peoples, migrants, sins of abuse, sins against women, family, youth, the sin of using doctrine as a stone against others, sins against poverty and sins against synodality, were chosen and explicitly called out. The Roman Pontiff said “I wanted to write down the requests for abuse that were read by some of the cardinals, because it is necessary to call our chief sins by name.”
It was a very sombre sermon which hit the right tone, considering the testimonies that preceded it. “How could we be credible in mission, if we do not acknowledge our mistakes and stoop to heal the wounds we have caused by our sins?” Credibility is a key theme that I think we will see repeated at this Synod. Following the sexual abuse crisis the Church credibility is on the floor. With the Zanchetta and Rupnik scandals, questions have been raised about Pope Francis’ own credibility.
“have we taken up all the space ourselves, with our words, our judgments, our titles, our belief that we alone have merit? Today we are all like the publican, our eyes downcast and ashamed of our sins. Like him, we lag behind, clearing the space occupied by conceit, hypocrisy, and pride.”
The Holy Father also nicely summarised what the Church is; “The Church is always the Church of the poor in spirit and of sinners seeking forgiveness, and not only of the righteous and holy. Indeed, she is the Church of the righteous and holy who recognize we are poor and sinners.” The Holy Father also reiterated that this Synod on Synodality “is an opportunity to restore trust in and towards the Church, a trust shattered by our mistakes and sins; and to begin to heal the wounds that do not stop bleeding.”
‘To you, silence is praise:' Gentleness and severity of the synodal path
Mother Maria Ignazia’s morning reflection focussed on silence, and was delivered in rather poetic prose. She said that “the 'synodal' art of Jesus offered to the synodal assembly: in order to walk, in addition to learning the gaze that discovers the new measures of the world - the silent narration - it is also necessary to learn the art of gratuitous relationships, without giving the Divider anything to grip.” The warning is clear that disagreements and divisions will arise, but I guess she is trying to say that better to be silent than let these disagreements break into arguments and we lose the friends we made along the way stereotype of the Synodal process thus far.
She continued, "You do not know what kind of spirit you are of; for the Son of Man did not come to destroy people’s lives, but to save them." This specific word also sets up a discernment process for the Synod Assembly, when the journey is already well underway, as it did for the disciples.” I think a legitimate criticism of the official Synodal documents, and the Instrumentum Laboris in particular, has been a lack of emphasis on the primary mission of the Church, namely the salvation of souls. Everything needs to done in relation to this, and I am pleased the Mother Maria Ignazia is hammering home this message to the Synod delegates.
She goes on “this trait, today, closely concerns us. I think it concerns this Synodal Assembly embedded in an epochal turning point in history and in the church, the contours of which we confusingly sense but do not see clearly.” I am not sure how helpful this, the Pope himself has often referred to the time in which live as not an ‘epoch of change, but in change in epochs.’ I don’t really agree with his assessment, the last change of epochs was the fall of absolute monarchies for plebiscite democracies, which is not going to change any time soon but I digress. The rhetoric is aimed at injecting a sense of urgency into the Church, a sense of urgency that may be generational. The Church used to move in centuries, course correct errors quickly, but not reacting to the fancy of each passing age. The Church in the last 60 years, has done the opposite, slow to course correct errors, quick to adopt the zeitgeist. This has disastrous effects, as the Pope’s recent trip to Belgium exposed.
The final thing that I want to highlight from Mother Maria Ignazia’s reflection is her reassurance to those who are losing faith in the Synodal process or are finding the point of it incomprehensible; “Jesus does not give in to the disciples' incomprehension, he patiently, lovingly pushes them forward. And a silence of conversion is preparing in them for the irruption of the paschal novelty that follows.” The Vatican needs to do more of this direct outreach to the Synod critics to try to understand their concerns. Doing this would be better than accusing them of sinning against synodality.
Resurrection Fishing
Fr. Radcliffe used his two meditations to today to reflect on the Resurrection narratives found in the Gospel of St. John. The first on John 21:1-14.
What is interesting about all the addresses at the the pre-Synodal Retreat is that they can all be summarised as trying to reassure the the Synodal delegates that this entire almost four year process wasn’t for nothing. Fr. Radcliffe put it like this; “We have all known those moments when we seem to achieve nothing. The initial enthusiasm has faded. As we start his second Assembly, I bet some of us feel that. Those who had begun with enthusiasm and excitement might be wondering whether we are going anywhere. Some of us never believed we were anyway. Ou! The most common question I have received about the Synod these last eleven months has been sceptical: Has anything been achieved? Isn’t all a waste of time and money?”
On a more broader point, it clear that the Vatican is hearing from the very people who have been practising Synodality, and these people are beginning to have doubts on its utility. If delegates are wondering what the point is, what chance do the octogenarians in the pews have of making sense of it. And if this is indeed the case, the Vatican, the Pope, the Synod Secretariat are to blame for these doubts.
There is also a clear attempt to prevent the heated debates that occurred at the last Synod, with respect to homosexuality and the female diaconate, topics that will not be discussed at this session of the Synod. Fr. Radcliffe trying to ensure that this doesn’t happen this time around said; “We do not gather in synod so as to negotiate compromises or bash opponents. We are here to learn from each other what is the meaning of this odd word ‘love.’ Everyone of us is a beloved disciple who has a particular gift for seeing the stranger on the beach and saying: ‘It is the Lord.’”
He again outlined that “we must dare to trust that the Divine providence will bless this synod abundantly.” Trying to reassure Synod Delegates that their precious time is not being wasted is the ringing endorsement that I was not expecting to see. Perhaps the reality of the situation is more dire than I assumed. I was always under the impression that the people directly involved with the Synod, understood its purpose, the direction of travel and believed in the process. The tone coming out thus far suggests something different.
Fr. Radcliffe himself admitted that “When I came to the Synod last year, I thought the great challenge was to overcome the poisonous opposition between traditionalists and progressives. How can we heal that polarisation that is so alien to Catholicism?” If this is what he really thought, then I’m afraid our clergy are completely detached from the smell of the sheep, and live mostly in the online world, where the overriding theme on Catholic twitter is are you pro or anti Pope Francis, which is a completely ridiculous dichotomy, especially when one criticising the Holy Father’s inconsistent record on sexual abuse.
Fr. Radcliffe continues; “But as I listened, there seemed to be an even more fundamental challenge: How can the Church embrace all of the diverse cultures of our world? How can we haul in the net with its fish from every culture of the world? How can the net not be broken?” I mean this has been the modus operandi of Catholicism since 33 A.D, but for whatever reason Catholicism since Vatican II has been more interested in inward looking debates between progressives and conservatives, completely forgetting that the point was to usher in a new Springtime, and all it did was expose divisions, that most people don’t care about. We want Christ and we want to know how to attain salvation, the same thing that made Andrew and Peter drop their nets and follow Jesus. Christ has not lost his power to attract souls to Him, some in the Church seem to have lost sight of this.
Fr. Radcliffe ended this meditation, saying “May God bless this synod with such loving cultural encounters, in which the two become one but remain distinct. No culture can dominate. But we need to be acutely aware of how power imbalance is at play in our conversations. The encounter of cultures is never innocent or merely cerebral. Colonialism still structures our world. Robator shared an African proverb: ‘Until the lion learns to write and speak, the hunt will always glorify the hunter.’ The lion does now speak but the West does not listen.”
Resurrection and Breakfast Conversion
The final meditation of Fr. Radcliffe at the pre-Synodal focused on John 21:15-25.
“Now here is a lesson of the utmost importance for this Synod. Jesus trusted Peter, and entrusted the flock to him, although so far, he had been untrustworthy. The Church is founded on the rock of God’s unmerited trust in Simon Peter. Will we dare to trust each other, despite some failures? This Synod depends on it.” Again this highlights a theme that has emerged from this retreat, the sense that the Synod delegates have concerns about the process and that the organisers are trying to allay their fears. Fr. Radcliffe is right though, we need to trust the Pope, who has supreme jurisdiction over the Church, and trust his judgements, which at times may seem perplexing, but as Pope Francis has done on numerous occasions in his Pontificate these can be undone and changed by the very next Pope.
Fr. Radcliffe should be praised for not shying away from one of the most contentious documents of this Pontificate, Fiducia supplicans, which permitted the blessing of individuals in couples in homosexual relationships, or as was later clarified the blessing of individuals who may present themselves together for a blessing, because they are a couple, but it is not a blessing of the couples, but the individuals in the couple.
Fr, Radcliffe said “it is no secret that Fiducia supplicans provoked distress and anger among many bishops around the world. Some members of this Synod felt betrayed. But the Church will only become a trustworthy community if we take the risk, like the Lord, of trusting each other, even though we have been hurt.” Before going on to state bluntly, “The Lord entrusts himself into our hands again and again, at every Eucharist, even though we betray him again and again. The sexual abuse crisis has taught us painfully that this cannot be an irresponsible trust which puts others at risk, especially minors. But a trust that embraces our own risk of getting hurt.”
On the mission of Peter, Fr. Radcliffe outlined that, “Jesus commissions Peter to pasture his sheep. My sheep, Jesus says, not yours. Peter is to be the good shepherd who leads the sheep out of the narrow confines of the sheepfold to feed in the broad pastures of the world, where wolves lie in wait. He knows his flock by name, and they will trust his voice.” The role of the Pope is to feed the sheep. Fr. Radcliffe moves on the accountability that the Instrumentum Laboris asked for “The Instrumentum Laboris says that often we have demanded that the People of God be accountable to the hierarchy, but the hierarchy must be accountable to the People of God too (75, 76). In the darkest time, Peter gave an account of himself to his people. This turned his shame into joy. This is the shepherd’s ministry of unity, to gather us together so that we ‘dare to say Our Father.’ Clerical elitism is thus not just a lack of humility but a negation of priestly identity. It would like being a gardener who thought his job was to pull up the flowers.”
The Zanchetta scandal comes to mind, probably the biggest scandal of this Pontificate, where there has been zero transparency from the Vatican and zero accountability from anyone. As Fr. Radcliffe said, though making no direct reference to Rupnik or Zanchetta; “This is why a failure of transparency and accountability corrupts the very heart of the priestly identity. The transparency of Peter the sinner is the foundation of his authority. There can be no cover-up. We are not expected to openly confess all of our sins but at least not to be hypocrites. The People of God are speedy to forgive all else except hypocrisy.” The People of God are speedy to forgive all else except hypocrisy, this is very true.
His meditation ended with these words, “So in this Synod may we discern each other’s authority and defer to it. What new ministries are needed for the Church to recognise their authority and commission them to exercise it? The gospel sheds light on so many who acted with authority in that time. May we do so today. For today is the only day we have. Carpe Diem!”
Tomorrow the Synod opens, and we will bring analysis of Pope Francis’ sermon at the opening Mass, his address to the General Congregation of the Synod, as well analysis of addresses of Mario Cardinal Grech, Secretary General of the Synod of Bishops, and Jean-Claude Hollerich, S.J., Relator General of the Synod of Bishops.