SoS Sat Report: The Synod and the ecclesiological perspectives outlined by Vatican II

A look at the work ahead as the Synod on Synodality begins it's second week

A blessed Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary to you all, and the anniversary of the great victory of Christendom over the Ottoman Turks at Lepanto. Today is also the the first anniversary of Hamas' brutal attack on Israel, which was followed by military escalation throughout the Middle East. Marking the anniversary, the Holy Father wrote a letter to Catholics in the Middle East, expressing his closeness to them.

As the Synod on Synodality enters it’s second week, having defined what Synodality is, relax they have told us either, it moves on to addressing the points of the Part 1 of the Instrumentum Laboris. As Jean-Claude Cardinal Hollerich, S.J., Relator General of the Synod, said in his presentation this morning; “we are looking for steps to make operational today the ecclesiological perspectives as outlined by the Second Vatican Council.”

I guess the ecclesiological perspectives of Vatican II have been offline for the last 60 years, and need to be made operational, except that instead of implementing the Council documents we have this. More concretely -the famous buzzword of this Synod- this week Synod delegates will look at i) Christian initiation, ii) charisms and ministries of the laity, iii) the relationships between the laity and the ordained ministers “at the service of harmony”, and iv) relations between the Churches in the Catholic Church and relations between the Church and world. The module heading is “Relations” and will take up 9 hours of time over the course of the week. Yes, it is a very short amount of time for such a broad important topic, but Synodality seems to only be done in a rush.

Cardinal Hollerich in his introductory address went on to pose two questions that he wants delegates to have “concrete answers” to; “What does the Holy Spirit invite us to do to make relationships within our Churches more transparent and more harmonious, so that our testimony is more credible?”. Or, with a more concrete example and adherent to the text we are considering: “What does the Holy Spirit invite us to do to move from a pyramidal way of exercising authority to a synodal way?” There is that word again, concrete, used 7 times by Cardinal Hollerich in his short address. Concrete is the word of the Synod, like churches built after the Council.

Cardinal Hollerich concluded his remarks; “The challenge of the coming days will be to maintain the delicate balance that removes the risk of falling into an excess of abstraction on the one hand, or an excess of pragmatism on the other” adding “without renouncing either of the two and without being afraid to outline the profile of concrete proposals that the individual Churches will then be called upon to adapt to different circumstances.”

Some women do sense a call to the priesthood

Present at today’s Synod Press Briefing were His Eminence Oswald Cardinal Gracias, Archbishop of Bombay, India, His Excellency Gintaras Grušas, Archbishop of Vilnius, Lithuania, and Sr. Mary Barron, OLA, President of the International Union of Superiors General (UISG).

The press conference began with a reminder of the two “Pastoral Theological Forum” on Wednesday evening, which is open to journalists, and are supposed to be livestreamed. One will be hosted in the Jesuit Curia, titled “People of God: Subject of Mission”, the other at the Augustinianum, titled “The Role and Authority of the Bishop in a Synodal Church.”

Cardinal Gracias recounted that at the Asian Assembly of Bishops in 2022, much of the same topics being discussed in this Synod were discussed there. He said that “Synodality comes natural to us in Asia”, adding that the two main points that came out of this meeting were “that the church must be a bridge builder and a bridge herself”, and that “our relationship to other religions, we know longer refer to them as non-Christian religions or other religions, [instead] we begin to refer to them as neighbour religions, so a certain closeness, all of us working together searching for God.”

Archbishop Grušas. said that praying for peace in the Middle East on today’s anniversary, highlighted how the Synod actually works, through prayer and by the Holy Spirit: “the Synod can sometimes look as if it is very bureaucratic movement, we’re redacting documents and doing a lot of paperwork, but today and in a special way it was brought home because we started the section on Relations, relations which are rooted in God and prayer and that's where all our interrelationships actually start from, and as we face questions of War we've faced the rootedness which we are all one family and that flows from our relationship to God and makes us related to one another.”

Sister Mary Barron gave her impressions of the Synod so far saying “We are growing in our capacity to listen to each other, we are really deep in that, and I think it's we began last year we set the foundations but this year there's a deeper quality of the listening.” She elaborated further; “what had challenged me, that when I have a passionate conviction if that is God's will for the Church it's very easy for me to go along, but if I have a passionate conviction which maybe is not aligned with God's will for the church right now then how do I journey with that and how do I open to listen.” I highlighted ‘right now’ because it is important to examples of passionate convictions Sister Barron would give later.

She would also emphasise that Synodality is finding who are the “marginalized and excluded and how can we listen better [to them]. As church we have to continue to listen better we promise that Synodality would be a listening Church so we're being challenged to to go there and listen more deeply to those still marginalized by the process.”

Interestingly, Sr. Barron noted the UISG set-up a dedicated Synodality Office in September 2023. Remember dear reader, Synodality is not more meetings and bureaucracy.

Sister Barron intervention promoted a journalist to ask her about the female diaconate and the ministries available to women in the Church, to which she responded; “we need to explore other options that are available, even if at the moment we may not be looking at ordained ministry. I think what I would say about that is we tend to look at it from the question of can women or can they not be ordained in the church today, and I think we have to look at the question very much from the you know the Spirit, is the Spirit calling women? Some women do sense a call to the priesthood or the diaconate. And [what are] the mission needs? I think we have to look at it broader than just a theological or canonical point of view, but in terms of the Spirit calling women to ministry today, and in terms of the needs of mission today. Are those calls there and can there be a continued discussion. I think that's what we would be asking at this point, that we can continue to discuss in relation to that also.”

I don’t know whether people call this loyal opposition or just plain opposition.