The Synodal Pathway of the Catholic Church: Progress and Challenges

The Synodal Pathway of the Catholic Church: Progress and Challenges Gerry O'Hanlon SJ (bio) It is a good time to take stock of where the Catholic Church is at in its daring ambition to reimagine itself globally along synodal lines. The first session of the 16th Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops on Synodality concluded last October (2023) and preparations are under way for the second and final session next October (2024). The publications from the Synod (the brief Letter to the People of God and the more substantive Synthesis Report), as well as the ensuing commentary (including the report of Bishops Alan McGuckian and Brendan Leahy, the two Irish episcopal nominees at the Synod),1 are helpful sources of evaluation. This is so despite the fact that the Synod itself, in order to facilitate honest and open exchanges, was conducted by agreement in a confidential mode, the kind of ecclesiastical equivalent of the secular 'Chatham House Rules'. The background to the Synod was the conviction of Pope Francis, already adumbrated in his first major interview in 2013 to a number of Jesuit journals and then more formally launched as a project in his speech to mark the 50th anniversary of the Synod of Bishops in 2015, that ' … it is precisely this path of synodality which God expects of the Church of the third millennium'. For Francis synodality is much more than a system of governance characterised by synodal events. It is rather a style of being Church, grounded in a faith encounter with Jesus Christ, the merciful face of God; it is missionary and non-self-referential in nature, seeking to bring hope and good news to our troubled world; and for all this to happen, in line with the teaching and dynamics of the Second Vatican Council and in congruence with some emerging trends in secular culture discerned to be compatible with the Gospel, there is required a change of church culture, structures, institutions and law. Why synodality? Maynooth theologian Michael Conway has analysed this need for change with particular reference to the Irish context.2 We are living in a period when patriarchal, hierarchical institutions are being deconstructed–exclusively End Page 115 male leadership is being rejected; a pyramidal, hierarchical type of socio-cultural institution is yielding to one which is more egalitarian, challenging a type of authority which does not offer reasons for policies and decisions. What is valued today is an alternative order, more horizontal, person-centred and communitarian, with a priority given to experience, story and narrative over a more metaphysical discourse. There is enormous appreciation for the authenticity of the human person. There is openness to previously marginalised voices. In this context the life of faith must learn to listen, engage, enable, dialogue, critique respectfully, counter courageously and, at times, simply keep its own counsel–it respects the time and timing of others. What is required in this new, evolving cultural matrix is less top-down, command-and-obey type teaching and governance, and more open-space interaction nourished by the Gospel and common life, which facilitates an adult taking of responsibility for our lives of faith. This is particularly important at a time when the 'transmission belts of faith' have broken down, when widening and deepening secularisation challenges us to faith that is not simply culturally based but which takes the form of intentional discipleship. With reference to the Catholic Church Conway concludes by saying that ' … I think we can say that the once powerful, monolithic institution is being slowly disempowered, and what remains will have to be reshaped into a new, more culturally appropriate institution'.3 Our non-Roman Catholic sister churches and institutions, including the Orthodox, have retained elements of this wider notion of synodality over centuries, and the Catholic Church has much to learn from them. Its own pathway to change follows on the adoption of the model of Church as People of God proposed in Vatican II, with an emphasis now on the priority of the Sacrament of Baptism such that all the faithful are called to share in the 'office' of Jesus Christ as priest (the universal call to holiness), prophet (the...