Catholicism’s unknown future
Synodal reform
The present synodal renewal called for by Pope Francis is a time of opportunity
photo: alamy, Maria Grazia Picciarella
The history of the Church is not a journey forward in a fixed direction but an open-ended drama. And it might be about to undergo another great moment of change and renewal – one that will also transform the world.
Between the first and second sessions of the synod, new tasks and challenges have emerged. There is much more to synodal renewal than simply doing away with a rigid clerical system within the Church. Synodality, syn hodos (“the common way”), is designed to renew, revive and deepen not only relationships within the Church, but how the Church relates with other institutions and groups in society, with other cultures and religions, and with the whole human family.
Synodality is a response to the question of how to overcome the crisis of globalisation, how to transform a civilisation of technological, informational and economic interconnection, with its dangerous divisions and tensions, into a culture of coexistence in peace and justice. It is a way of developing the catholicity – the universality – of Christianity. Catholicity, together with unity, holiness and apostolic character, is not only a “mark” and a gift of the Church but it is a task in its journey through history. This includes ecumenical and interreligious cooperation, as the Second Vatican Council insisted. And Pope Francis has further enriched our understanding of catholicity with his emphasis on ecological responsibility: care that the planet becomes a secure home for the whole human family and all life on earth.
To embark on the path of synodal renewal requires openness, hospitality and inclusiveness – not a naive and uncritical conformity to the external world, but a receptivity to the dynamics of the Holy Spirit. The God we confess speaks in the polyphony of Scripture and tradition, through the teaching authority of pastors and theologians and through the nonconforming and often unwelcome voices of prophets and mystics. God also speaks through the sensus fidelium, the daily practice of the people of God, and through the “signs of the times”, events in history, society and the world around us. The seeds of God’s Word are richly scattered in the fields of different cultures, philosophies, religions and artistic creations.
Synodal renewal requires the courage to be led across many boundaries by the dynamics of the Spirit, which Jesus compares to the wind, “which blows where it chooses … you do not know where it comes from or where it goes”. At the same time, the synodal journey must be a journey of spiritual discernment. One must carefully discern the zeitgeist, the superficial “language of the world”, from the signs of the times, the language of God as seen in events in the world, through profound changes in society and culture. The art of spiritual discernment is the fruit of a contemplative approach to reality, of contemplative prayer.
In the epoch of modernity, Christianity has lost its cultural-political role as a religio in the sense of “binding together” the whole of society. Synodal reform can prepare the Church for the role of religion in another sense, the sense of the verb re-legere (to “re-read” or “read anew”). The Church can be a school of “new reading”, of a new hermeneutic, of a new, deeper interpretation of God’s speech, of God’s self-sharing. This is one of the indispensable tasks of the Church of our time: to be a school of the contemplative approach to reality.
A contemplative approach to reality allows us to perceive the constant presence of God: to perceive our relationship with the natural environment as our relationship of cooperation and responsibility for the creatio continua (the ongoing process of creation), to understand the missionary task of the Church as a participation in the incarnatio continua, the inculturation of the Gospel into people’s everyday way of thinking and living, and to consider the pains of the Church, of individuals and nations, as a passio continua, as participation in the cry of the Crucified and in the difficult silence of the Holy Saturday.
The Church participates in the drama of Easter not only through the liturgical celebrations of Holy Week but through the death and extinction of its many forms – institutionally, doctrinally and spiritually – in its history and through the many individual and collective “dark nights of faith”. The mystery of the cross cannot be emptied cheaply; without death there is no resurrection.
And just as Christ’s resurrection was not a mere resuscitation but a startling transformation, so it is with every awakening of the Church to new life. The Church is semper reformanda (“ever renewing”) but this semper has its own dynamics. The history of the Church is not a procession but an open drama. The ongoing event of the Resurrection happens not only in individual stories of conversion. The present synodal renewal called for by Pope Francis is also a kairos, a time of opportunity – for transformation, for renewal, for another of the many great conversions of the Church.
Synodal reform must be more than a mere continuation of the line of the Second Vatican Council. It must open up space for the mission of the Church in a postmodern age of radical plurality. Pope Francis has identified synodal reform as the Church’s programme for the third millennium. Synodality is to be the form of the Church throughout its future history – to its final eschatological consummation. It is a journey through history into the arms of God.
To regard any particular state of society or of the Church, of scientific or of theological knowledge, as final and unchangeable is to succumb to the temptation of triumphalism. Triumphalism consists in mistaking the present imperfect state of the Church in history (ecclesia militans) for its eschatological form, the ecclesia triumphans, the perfect Church of the saints in heaven. The heresy of triumphalism is often accompanied by paternalism, clericalism, fundamentalism and traditionalism. Paternalism forgets that the teaching Church must also be a learning Church. Clericalism is a manifestation of “worldliness” – it understands authority in the Church as worldly power, not as ministry. The bearers of this ministry then behave like a “ruling class” or upper caste, separated in many of their actions and lifestyles from the whole of God’s people. Fundamentalism forgets that here we see and understand “only in part, as in a mirror and in riddles” (1 Corinthians 13:12). The images presented to us by scripture and tradition are icons for meditation, means of adoration of the Mystery; not idols that need no further interpretation. Fundamentalism objectifies and flattens the mystery of faith, of binding it into the shape of a closed ideological system. And traditionalism is a denial of the meaning of tradition as a living, creative transmission of faith. It is a heresy in the original sense of the word, an arbitrary selection – it takes a certain historically conditioned form of the Church or of its doctrine out of context and absolutises it.
Faithfulness to the faith is a commitment to courageously, creatively and responsibly revive and transform the forms of its expression so as to enable its content to be communicated in an intelligible and credible way. Both the abundance of responsible theological reflection and the variety of practical examples of living the faith reveal the inexhaustible richness of the “treasure of faith” and the inexhaustible variety of its authentic interpretations. The synodal development of the Church will show, in the words of Pope Francis, many new ways of being Christian, and new – and unexpected – ways of being the Church in the world. All attempts to shackle the freedom of the Spirit of God, to reduce the richness of God’s self-expression and to enclose it in a rigid, closed ideological system, run the risk of the gravest sin: the sin against the Holy Spirit.
The synodal reform of the Church is a long- term project; expectations of major institutional changes immediately after the second session of the Synod in October should be tempered. Nevertheless, the Instrumentum Laboris provides some important suggestions already ripe for implementation. In addition to the ministry of acolytes and catechists, the establishment of other ministries that do not require ordination is proposed. One of these is the ministry of spiritual accompaniment, which includes all the main elements of synodality – listening, openness to the action of the Holy Spirit, spiritual discernment and a common search for the right way forward. This proposed new ministry would be a way of discovering God’s presence in peoples lives, including in the lives of “non-religious people”. In addition to parishes, “centres of spirituality” could be established as places for spiritual accompaniment and pastoral counselling. Synodal groups could continue to meet in these centres on a permanent basis, sharing their experiences in an atmosphere of prayer and contemplation.
The ministry of spiritual accompaniment is not only about accompanying individuals. The Church also has a “political”, therapeutic and prophetic mission. The synodal reform presupposes a shift from static theological thinking to an emphasis on the dynamics of relationships, which need constant renewal and deepening. At the centre of the Christian understanding of God is the Trinity – God as relationship. Human beings are created in God’s image: “human nature” is therefore a life in relationships, in being with and for others, sharing in a syn hodos, a common way.
The shift from thinking in terms of static, unchanging natures to an emphasis on the quality of relationships involves a renewal of the understanding of the Church and of Christian ethics, including sexual and political ethics. The Church is to be a community of pilgrims, in order to contribute to the transformation of the world, of the whole human family, into a community on a shared journey. The Church is a sacrament, a symbol and an instrument of the unity of all humanity. And this unity is to be synodal, not totalitarian. This unity is an eschatological goal – it cannot be fully realised in history.
The process of globalisation is necessarily incomplete. It is in crisis mainly because technological and economic interconnection is not able to create a consciousness of belonging and co-responsibility on a global scale. No political regime, no ideology, no religion or theocratic state can offer an external framework for the coexistence of a multitude of so many different cultures and civilisations, all clamouring for their own free development.
The Church must not try to impose Christianity on the state or create a theocracy (the Russian Orthodox Church is a warning of where that can lead). Instead, it proposes a new quality of relationship between people, cultures, religions and states. The vision of Vatican II was dialogue – dialogue between the Church and the world, between Churches, between religions, and between cultures, peoples and civilisations. But this is no longer enough. The Church and the world can no longer be seen as separate; the Church is always already thrown into the world before it is able to reflect on its relationship to it. Civilisations and religions, states and nations can no longer be seen as separate entities. We are all interconnected – and we are all invited to understand, develop and cultivate the way of this interconnection.
Synodal renewal is not trying to replicate democracy in the sense of majority rule, or the way democracy is often exercised today. Rather, the principle of synodality could inspire a renewal of genuine democracy, a nurturing of what democracy currently lacks, which is making it so vulnerable to populism and the attraction of authoritarian systems. The Church must bring more than dialogue into the world today – namely, the inspiration of the life of the Trinity, of life in relationships. Synodality, as a common journey, moves all creation towards a deeper mutuality – that which the theology of the Trinity calls perichoresis, a mutual interpenetration that does not mean the destruction but the fulfilment of the identity of each of the participants in the process. By cultivating relationships with one another, by overcoming mental boundaries, we contribute – whether we are aware of it or not – to deepening all our relationships to a common ground: to God, who is all in all.
Adapted from Fr Halík’s address to a meeting of the European delegates to the forthcoming second session of the Synod on Synodality in Rome at the Catholic University of Linz.
Tomáš Halík is professor of sociology of religion at Charles University, Prague. He was awarded the Templeton Prize in 2014.
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