The Synod on Synodality

Are we journeying together down a cul de sac?

almost two and a half years since Pope Francis launched the Synod on Synodality and it seems at this point to be all about assemblies, working groups and reports that float high above the lives of the man and woman in the pew. The publicity and the posters are a rapidly fading memory. The idea of walking together’ as a body of people with different backgrounds, expectations and priorities has generated a lot of process but little more. On the ground, outside the meeting rooms, there’s really nothing to see.

Yes, of course we know the synod is meant to be an ongoing project rather than an event. But wasn’t it to take place in the real world of the local faith community, the parish? Not just at chains of meetings whose purpose seems to be about generating documents which in turn require more meetings where they are sent off into the ecclesial ether to be synthesised with others into something even more bland than they were to begin with. When, and if, this synthesis finally gets to be read by the people who supplied its raw material they’ll find little more than woolly aspirations rather than anything substantive that can be applied in their local community.

After two and a half years, a list of seven priorities has emerged here in Ireland. In order, they are the need for a more welcoming Church, for greater cooperation between laity and clergy, more support for families, more catechesis, better support for victims of abuse, openness to women and their gifts and better engagement with youth.

As someone who engaged peripherally in the process, I can say that list loosely covers the concerns of vocal participants. However, there are a few observations to be made. Most people who engaged with the process tended to be those who wanted to see substantive changes in church teaching and believed the synodal process was a pathway to achieving that. Their aspirations and hopes are somewhat muffled by the lack of specifics in the list but they can be discerned.

A practising Catholic who had no involvement with the process, and that, it must not be forgotten, is the vast majority of practising laity, may wonder what is meant by ‘a more welcoming Church’. If anyone thinks it’s about meeting people at the church door with a smile and warmly inviting them to an after Mass ‘cuppa’, they’re well off the mark. This number one priority on the list refers to those whose life situations are at odds with Catholic moral teaching and welcome means affirmation, in whatever way that is envisaged.

The second priority, the need for greater support for “families” carries a very open understanding of how the family is defined. It is certainly not a call to promote the family in its traditional or nuclear iteration as the institution that offers the optimum milieu for raising children.

The next priority is the need for cooperation and ‘co-responsibility’ between laity and clergy. Those of us already engaged with parish and diocesan bodies understand well that within ecclesial structures the role of the laity is canonically limited to a ‘consultative’ role. They also know from experience that the consultative space is controlled to a point where very often it can be hard to be heard. Those who participated in good faith, believing or at least hoping the church might become more democratic on the synodal way weren’t disabused of their assumptions.

I think it’s fair to say that the fourth priority, catechesis, came largely from more orthodox or conservative participants. Again, the blanket terminology used does a disservice to the particular concerns that were raised. Very specifically, the central and important role of the Sunday homily was highlighted as a tool of evangelisation. Very specifically, the need for ongoing, adult faith formation, including for parents with children preparing for sacraments was cited. Specifics, again, are all bleached away in a wishy washy, make-of-it-what-you-will soup of generality.

The need to continue to address the issue of abuse and its cover up remains a priority that comes ahead on the list of the need for better outreach and inclusion for women and youth. Those actively involved in church are aware of the enormous investment in child safeguarding and the degree of engagement with victims that realistically is as much as can be done at this point. It strikes me that those raising the issue are unduly influenced by the incessant media focus on clerical abuse and the demands for never ending apologies and redress, not exclusively out of concern for victims but as a way of keeping the church silent and stigmatised in the public square.

The penultimate priority of the need for greater openness ‘to women and their gifts’ is a somewhat disingenuous pitch for the ordination of women to the diaconate and priesthood, perhaps not in the immediate future but as a clear possibility when the heel draggers have passed on. The disingenuousness of those raising the issue was matched by the disingenuousness of those who choose to hear in it a call for greater gender balance, knowing full well the local church is as conscious of gender optics as any right-on organisation and more so than most.

The final priority of better outreach to youth indicated the out of date belief that the Church and its liturgical ministry in particular must adopt the idioms and vibe of popular youth culture to awaken the young to faith. A better knowledge of how the faith is flourishing today would show that youth like everyone else responds best to authenticity, sincerity, genuine holiness and reverence in our religious celebrations along with a clear and coherent presentation of the truths of faith.

In this list of synod priorities there is no recognition of the root priority which is the need to renew our faith in Christ and our unequivocal commitment to preaching his Gospel against the tide of a hostile, secular culture. On our synodal path of journeying as Church, there are many forks on the way which call for careful and courageous choices if we are to journey in fidelity to our faith.

Synodality is both good and necessary for the Church in our time but a re-set is needed if it is to bear real fruit. There needs to be a recognition that some voices are under-represented or not there at all. Every representative opinion deserves to be heard and people encouraged to speak without equivocation or evasion. Responses should be in the same spirit of candour and clarity.

The Church is not a democracy but neither is it the Communist Party, thinning out voices through a pyramid structure of committees that can be choreographed into delivering what the controlling elite are prepared to accept. A curious thing about the synod reports I am familiar with is that there’s no mention whatsoever of ‘clericalism’, the kind of elitism that applies here. It was one of the first obstacles to building vibrant faith communities highlighted by Pope Francis in the early days of his pontificate.

Whether the context is secular or sacred, power guards itself by weaponising laws, canons and procedural norms. These are generally sufficiently firm to be evoked by those with the authority to enforce them yet loose enough to be interpreted in a way that doesn’t require any action at all, if that is what is desired. A pertinent example, that speaks for itself, of soft-baked regulation is the canon on pastoral councils. It reads “ (they) are not strictly mandatory in all cases but strongly recommended and expected insofar as pastoral circumstances suggest”.

It can of course be legitimately argued that power holders are often motivated by the desire to preserve the integrity of their mission rather than wanting power for its own sake. For two reasons, this argument doesn’t stand up. First, the Catholic Church is, as it has been since its beginning, a centralised hierarchy in matters of moral and doctrinal governance. The laity’s role in that respect is a consultative one only as already stated. Second, it is very clear that challenges to orthodoxy today are just as likely to come from clergy as laity. Both are shaped by the same dominant and domineering culture that has already raised its flags over most public institutions.

The synod mood-music leans strongly towards liberal heterodoxy which could leave us journeying together down a cul de sac. An eventual course correction will find us back where we started, with nothing more than disillusion to show for all our assemblies and documents.

Real revival, meaningful synodality, must happen at the grass roots. Church organisation has become sclerotic because the arteries of communication and accountability are either jammed or never existed. Parish councils, with due formation for members, should be mandatory, not sort of mandatory. They should be part of a diocesan wide network that links them horizontally to each other and vertically to diocesan bodies such as the Diocesan Pastoral Council and the Council of Priests. That is where real diversity in voices can come through. That is what enables real conversation and more importantly real learning and allows space for the Holy Spirit to work unfettered in so far as that’s ever possible in human controlled affairs.

The alternative is to make a virtual, Potemkin church of assemblies, committees and reports in never ending circles, producing plans top down that, like hothouse flowers, are unlikely to flourish outside the rarefied air of the committee room. Meanwhile, the roots of faith in the local community continue to struggle against chilling cultural winds or succumb to them.

The Parable of the Sower teaches us the importance of preparing the soil first. The soil, understood as ‘the grassroots’, the local community, the complex organism that is every parish has been given nothing to nourish it after more than two years of synodal journeying in circles.