On October 9, Pope Francis invited all baptised to participate in the preparation of the 16th Ordinary General Synod of Bishops on Synodality, which is taking place between October 2021 and October 2023.
The objective of this synod is itself quite intriguing: it almost implies that although 15 synods have already been called, we have not yet understood the purpose of a synod. Although we have enough official and unofficial literature explaining the concept, still our Church has not yet been imbued by a synodal way of being a Church.
Hence, the title of the preparatory document throws us in medias res: ‘For a Synodal Church: Communion, Participation and Mission’. This requires a new mindset both in the Church as the people of God and in the Church as an institution.
Resistance to change was presaged by John XXIII in his opening speech of Vatican II. He was experiencing as many spokes in the wheels as Pope Francis is experiencing now.
Hence, Pope Francis’s plea made at the end of the synod opening address: “Come, Holy Spirit! You inspire new tongues and place words of life on our lips: keep us from becoming a ‘museum Church’, beautiful but mute, with much past and little future.”
‘Communion, Participation and Mission’ recalls two pillars of the Church.
Paul tells us clearly: “You can all prophesy one at a time so that everyone can learn and be encouraged.”
Peter gives us the reason why: “You are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy but now you have received mercy.”
The feudal model of the Church as an institution must change because, to be the same in times of change, a change is a necessary.
The Church is a human reality and saving mystery. Her model must be God Incarnate; her relationships modelled on the Trinitarian love. The higher echelons of Catholicism need to be humbler. As Pope Emeritus Ratzinger said: “The Church is becoming for many a main obstacle to faith. They can no longer see anything but ambition for power” (1977).
The stress should not be on authority (much less, on power) but on communion, not on blind obedience but on participation, not on exclusion but on inclusion, not on maintenance but on mission, not on the elite but on all the people.
The Church must end all forms of clericalism and nepotism. Listening is only the prelude of dialogue. As Pope Benedict VI said, “there is still a tendency to identify the Church unilaterally with the hierarchy, forgetting the common responsibility, the common mission of the People of God, which, in Christ we all share” (2009). A Church without dialogue lacks something intrinsic to its very nature.
The feudal model of the Church as an institution must change- Fr Joe Inguanez
For Karl Rahner, the German Jesuit and theologian, the human person is the hearer of the free revelation of God in history. We are oriented by our very nature toward the self-communication of God. Christians must remember that God has “hidden these things from the wise and learned and revealed them to little children”.
“A two-way flow of information and views between pastors and faithful, freedom of expression sensitive to the well-being of the community and to the role of the Magisterium in fostering it, and responsible public opinion all are important expressions of ‘the fundamental right of dialogue and information within the Church’.
“This principle of transparency does not respond to a demand of democratic society but more radically to the character of the Church as communion” (Ethics in Communications, 26, Pontifical Council for Social Communications).
As the professor of public opinion at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, Norberto Gonzalez Gaitano, wrote “… if the Church does not apply to itself these moral criteria, it could not be able to morally demand that the political society should guarantee the right to information, specifically ‘access to the sources and channels of information and the right of free expression’”.
To conclude, Pope Pius XII, the first pope to speak of public opinion in the Church, told us that if this [public opinion] is missing, the fault would fall on its pastors and on its faithful (1950).
Fr Joe Inguanez, Sociologist and national chaplain, Żgħażagħ Ħaddiema Nsara